In message -
(Kevin Brooks) writes:


[snip]

points apparently did not stick with you. I am merely pointing out
that whining about your economic/military dependency upon the US and
any negative impacts can easily be rendered moot by declaring you
won't accept further US aid (like *that* will ever happen).

It started to happen gradually when Benjamin Netaniyahoo was at the
PM post: Israel started on its own a multi-year initiative to reduce the
aid sum by 100M$ per year. But he only stayed 3 years at this post -
after failing to prevent Netaniyahoo's win in 1996, in 1999 elections
the US made every effort to not let it fail again and with lots of
US-funded pro-Barak "associations" Netaniyahoo lost to the most
worthless PM I remember. Needless to say, Barak stopped the process
of gradual reduction of aid that Netaniyahoo started. In general, US
administrations from both sides prefare Israeli elections to be
won by our left (which act to increase the ammount of aid we take) than by
our right (which act to gradually decrease the ammount of aid). It almost
looks like US administrations are not interested in Israel stopping
asking for aid. Why? I had a hunch but you gave a figure few lines
below which supports my hunch:



American defense contractors would not be too happy if that were to
happen.

Please. Take a gander at what portion of US defense exports go to
Israel; the last figures I found (covering 97-99) indicated that
Israel accounted for just over 5% of total US sales. Given that even

Only 5% of US weapons given away for free to Israel? That explains why
US administrations would prefare things to remain as they are now.

The F-16 alone has about 800 changes in them suggested by IAF as a result
of their operation and which worth billions to the F-16s manufacturer when
selling to other states. In a similar way, almost any US weapon in IDF has
lots of "bugs" found and reported, which translates to higher profits when
selling to other states. Also, there are other issues that salespeople
know worth a lot:

The first A-G use of F-16 was by IAF, the destruction of the Iraqi reactor.
The first A-A victory of F-16 also happened in IAF few weeks earlier.
The first A-A victory of F-15 also happened in IAF.

When a salesperson from General Dynamics (those old days, Lockheed today,
IIRC) competes on a fat contract against, say a salesperson from Marcell
Dassault (sp?) from one of these other 95% states, the words "our product
had been tested by Israel" worth LOTS of money. So it makes a perfect
business sense: give away 5% of weapons to Israel, which'll debug them
and most probably use them in real combat and after that use the weapon
record in IDF to rip profits from the remaining 95% of the market.

Like another poster mentioned in this thread, nothing is given for free.

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* Arie Kazachin, Israel, e-mail: *
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