The Plain Truth II
– then Secretary of State, General Alexander Haig
President Donald Trump, former Secretary of State Gen. Alexander Haig, and Admiral James Stavridis (ret.)
The last vote in Congress about military aid to Israel demonstrated that truth: 422-6 voted for supporting Israel, even Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.[1] The same assessment was expressed and further emphasized by Chairman Admiral James Stavridis, USN (ret.), whose posts throughout his career included Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) and that of leading United States Southern Command. Stavridis wrote: "American General Alexander Haig famously made the case for Israel as 'the largest American aircraft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk,' but Israel's value as a partner is manifold. While its geostrategic position makes Israel valuable for projecting U.S. power in the Middle East, more crucially it projects its own power in service of mutual interests and assumes its fair share of burdens in doing so. This is near-unique among U.S. allies, and increasingly important amid growing regional threats and Americans' reticence for overseas involvement."[2]
It is not AIPAC's support of legislators' campaigns that impacts their vote, as anitsemites say. Rather, it is the chance that AIPAC gets to talk to representatives face-to-face in private about what Israel means for America.
Israel and its citizens are the only ones in the whole pro-American camp that will never betray American interests but rather go along with American interests since they are her own strategic and military interests.
It is the only state where an American soldier is embraced in any home. It is even a little America in the Middle East far from the mainland U.S. Like Hawaii but in a region basically hostile to America.
MAGA isolationists claim that America bombed the Iranian nuclear sites for Israel and that the war was not America's war. They claim that billions granted to Israel were not justified and that America's support of Israel risked embroiling it in regional wars again. They ignore the following facts, probably on purpose:
Iran's hatred of America is many decades old – since the 1979 Islamic revolution almost 50 years ago: "Death to America" and "Death to Israel" went together. The new regime of the ayatollahs' regime seized the American Embassy and held Americans hostages for 444 days.
The U.S. military suffered hundreds of fatalities as a result of direct Iranian terrorism and many more by Iranian proxies. The Ayatollahs' regime destabilized the Middle East and weakened America's Arab allies – recently it even threatened to assassinate President Trump. Iran is threatening America with its ICBM power that can reach the United States. Their efforts to develop nuclear weapons are a threat to the whole free world.
Iran's Houthi proxies harm the east-west maritime passage and thereby the economy of the West – and that of Israel as well, but only partially.
Israel's attack on Iran was to defend itself but given the above-mentioned facts, it was at the same time for America. To claim that without Israel, America would not have any problem with Iran, as MAGA isolationists imply in their discourse, is totally false.
The B-2 bombing of the nuclear facilities was to affirm the American principle set by President Trump as the leader of the free world that a regime like that of the Ayatollahs cannot have nuclear weapons. This principle was not set for Israel. It was set to counter the strategic danger emanating from a jihadist regime that seeks to export its revolution to the whole world and impose it.
That is why the support for Israel in the Congress has always been bipartisan. In the end, the only arguments MAGA isolationists can raise against President Trump's support for Israel are antisemitic and not based on logic or American strategic considerations as expressed by General Haig and Admiral Stravidis.
* Yigal Carmon is Founder and President of MEMRI.
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