Originally posted by Capt. Pork
Are there any Israelis who support this idea?
If so, what are their motivations? I've heard all sorts of speculation regarding the military industry being held back by contractual obligations to the states but haven't been able to find any concrete evidence.
As always, any Israel related thread is being redirected to the "who's the most evil nation" question and no one actually replies to the original topic.
Cap. Pork, I belive you are refering to statments made by me in a few old threads.
Absurd as it may sound, the american military aid hurts israeli economy in more than one way. Many people recognize Israel today as a hi-tech super power. In the late 90s, there were more startup companies in Israel than entire western europe and almost every major world company had their research centers in Israel (Intel, IBM, 3COM, etc). But until the late 60's Israel was mainly an agricultural society - we were known for our fruits (mainly oranges).
What made this shift? mostly the hi-tech military industry. untill the 70s France was Israel's weapon supplier. But when they layed the embargo, Israel had to get the weapons else where - some were baught from the US and the others were developed localy. Israel's "Kfir" fighter was own development to match the Miraze V that the french didn't sell us (OK, the Mosad got hold of the plane's plans which helped a bit). Then we built our own tanks (Merkava) our own fighter (Lavi) our own balistic missile / sattelite launcher, our own radars, A2A missiles, electronic-warfare, guidance systems, night vision, unmaned-aircrafts... etc etc.
All those scientists and engineers would end up in civilian hi-tech companies, with their knoledge, to create Israel's modern economy. Plus some profits from selling the systems to other countries.
Now, this works the same in the US. The budgets that goes to NASA for example provide the US economy with a lot of technology developed originally for other purposes.
So the US wants to keep the military industry running - both for the jobs it provides and for the technology and to keep it in a condition to build arms in case of a large war. But it doesn't want to buy uneeded weapons - so, by providing forien aid to other countries, they both get Political/Diplomatical profits and pour money into their military industry to keep it running.
The aid is not in cash - it's like coupons used to buy weapons from american companies - the US goverments is paying it's own industries. The countries who uses these coupons find it cheaper to buy from the americans using this paper money instead of buying from the local industry. This is how american industry beats foreign companies to contructs.
the IDF buys even uniform and canned food from the US, ruining many local small factories.
As time goes by, Israel is becoming more and more dependent on this "aid" and less capable to support itself, because local companies shift their business to other areas. It is now a whip that america uses against Israel.
Israel has to get approvements from the US for it's PRIVATE companies deals with other countries. we can't sell radars, night vision, upgrade planes and such without US approval.
The most extream case was when the US goverment forced "EL-AL" Israel's airline, to buy Boeing instead of Airbus, after they decided they prefer airbus.
Another famous cases were the billion dollar deal to sell radar plane to China (this is NOT an offensive weapon and the US is not in war with china) and the India radar deal (the "Arrow" system's radar to detect and track balistic missiles).
No goverment in Israel had the balls to cut back on this aid - they always prefer the short sighted easy solutions. Yes, Israel needs the aid. If it was gone suddenly we'd be in trouble. But it also needs to cut back on it gradually. The threats on Israel's security are not what they used to be. Terrorism will hurt but will not whipe us out.
Bozon
