GIRALDI: The 'Israelization' of the U.S. military is proceeding

A persistently pro-Zionist Congress has accomplished this shift in the relationship quietly, almost secretly.

BY PHILIP GIRALDI

Few Americans know the history of how Israel’s “wag the tail” relationship with the United States developed. Israel’s 1967 successful war against its neighbors demonstrated to military planners in Washington how a qualitative edge in weapons could enable a small country to resist much larger and seemingly more powerful adversaries.

Israel was largely supplied with French weapons at the time that reportedly outperformed the Russian equipment in the hands of Syria and Egypt.

As a consequence, in 1968, with strong support from a heavily lobbied Congress, Zionist influenced U.S. President Lyndon B Johnson approved the hitherto blocked sale of F-4 Phantom fighters to Israel, establishing the precedent for continuing U.S. support of Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge, generally referred to by the acronym QME, over its Arab and Christian neighbors.

Five years later, in the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the United States and Israel came to an understanding whereby they tacitly adopted the doctrine of active U.S. maintenance of Israel’s QME. After that war, the United States also quadrupled its foreign aid to Israel, effectively replacing France as Israel’s largest arms supplier.

This de facto commitment to maintaining Israel’s qualitative edge was subsequently made explicit by President Ronald Reagan and has been confirmed by every U.S. administration since that time.

Substantial supplementary weapons shipments under Presidents Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Donald Trump have even supported Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its attacks on non-threatening Syria and Lebanon.

This policy was in part justified initially based on a US adoption of the Cold War strategy of opposing Arab client states of the Soviet Union and was also due to the growing power of Israel’s U.S. Lobby.

Today, Israel is by far the largest recipient of US foreign military aid, receiving $3 billion per year guaranteed, plus many extra weapons in support of specific needs and initiatives which many have linked to the enablement of a policy of systematic aggression by Israel and the commission of war crimes.

So what was once seen as a form of security guarantee for Israel has now become a monster, with Israel using the support provided by the relationship to initiate wars against its neighbors, to include most recently Lebanon, Syria and Iran.

The White House and Congress have invariably supplied Israel with all the weapons it seeks, as well as providing money for its economy and political support in international organizations like the United Nations.

Israel’s Lobby, regarded as the most powerful foreign policy lobby deployed against Congress and the White House, has used its access to power to constantly expand its role in weapons development to satisfy what Israel sees as threats against it.

And Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has become the dominant partner in the relationship, including regarding the decision-making about war and peace.

Currently, Israel and its friends in Washington are moving to complete integration of many aspects of how our military operates at various levels with Israeli counterparts. No other US “ally,” which the Jewish state is not technically, including NATO members, has anything like this access and ability to influence developments.

Those who think Israel has too much power have a point as it is even strong enough to shut down First Amendment Freedom of Speech, both by suppressing or even criminalizing what it regards as criticism of itself.

Few Americans are aware that even though Israel is widely known to be a major nuclear weapons power, members of the U.S. government are not allowed to state that that is the case because it would embarrass the Jewish state and plausibly trigger legal restrictions on the weapons that the U.S. could supply it with.

And the irony is that Israel only has the weapons because it stole the nuclear fuel and timers from the United States.

President John F Kennedy tried to stop the nuclear weapons program and many believe he was assassinated by Israel as a result!

And the one-way street benefiting Israel gets worse!

Per the story that I reported recently, Congress is considering passing a bill that will give Americans serving in the Israeli army U.S. government provided full benefits like education, jobs and medical care just as if they had been serving in the United States military.

Indeed, the legislation currently working its way through Congress would, for the first time in American history, treat service in a foreign army both legally and in practice as equivalent to service in the U.S. armed forces — but only where that foreign army is Israeli.

House Resolution 8445, sponsored by Republican Congressmen Guy Reschenthaler of Pennsylvania and Max Miller of Ohio, would amend existing legislation so that Americans who enlist in the Israel Defense Force (IDF) are treated “in the same manner as service in the uniformed services” of the US. Not surprisingly, many of the “Americans” involved are also dual national Israeli citizens. If the changes come into effect the result will be to considerably and uniquely narrow the gap between Israel and the U.S. in terms of rights and benefits but with benefits going only in one direction, i.e. to serve Israeli interests and with the US taxpayer paying the bill!

In addition to that, the most recent US government gift to Israel sponsored by the United States House of Representatives, a misnomer as the House is actually the Knesset West, is the national Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2027 released on May 13^th. Section 224 of the House version of the Act entitled “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative” integrates “U.S.-Israeli military research and development, co-production of weapons systems, licensing agreements, AI, directed energy, data integration, and missile defense.” It creates the framework for “bilateral research and development, co-production of weapons, joint ventures, licensing agreements, and seemingly every manner of US-Israeli military-industrial complex cooperation.”

The result is to completely connect the functionality of the US military with that of the Israeli military.

The implementation of the agreement would arguably do more to irreversibly link the U.S. military to the Israeli military than the $200 billion in military assistance Israel has received from the United States since its founding in 1948.

Critics note how Section 224 would combine the US and Israeli defense sectors in many areas particularly vital to the battlefields of the future, including autonomous systems and cyberwarfare. It would also greatly increase Israeli influence over the US beyond what it already has through the Israel Lobby and its dominance of the mainstream media. It would enable Israel to expand or start new co-production facilities like it already has in a number of states, giving the Israeli government additional leverage through providing jobs in the US, thereby securing friends in Congress whose districts are affected. The result could well be a White House backed by Congress that is even more prone to go to war based on the Eretz “Greater” Israel fantasies of people like Netanyahu and his insane Security Chief Itamar Ben-Gvir.

A persistently pro-Zionist Congress has accomplished this shift in the relationship quietly, almost secretly.

Though it has been done clearly channeling through the White House and Netanyahu’s leadership, it has been obtained without the knowledge and consent of the American people to whom the US government is allegedly responsible. And, of course, all the integration expenses will be borne by the US taxpayer. Interestingly, of course, it should also be noted that the integration of the US military with that of Israel comes at a time when the American public is expressing unprecedented levels of distrust in and dislike of the Israeli government. That is perhaps no coincidence as Netanyahu seeks to create unbreakable legal and administrative ties between the two countries, though with little in the way of obligations on the part of Israel.

Ben Freeman at the Quincy Institute observes how “The shift will strip away the political and diplomatic oversight mechanisms that make the relationship publicly accountable, moving it from a visible annual aid vote into the opaque machinery of defense acquisition, where oversight is limited and political accountability is minimal. The result would be a defense relationship that is simultaneously deeper and less transparent. And this all comes at a time when the Israeli military has repeatedly used U.S. weapons in strikes that have violated international humanitarian laws in Gaza, and as Israel has repeatedly violated ceasefires (as has the US itself) in the Trump administration’s unnecessary war with Iran.”

So there you have it.

The United States is on a downward spiral engineered by its own government in collusion with a tiny apartheid state that specializes in crimes including torture, genocide and assorted other offenses against humanity. Where and how will it all end? Ask Donald Trump!

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is

https://councilforthenationalinterest.org

P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

The views of this author are not necessarily shared by The Trends Journal