Letter: US and Israel: The $3 Billion Bargain

Dear Letter to the editor:

One often hears critics of Israel complain that America should not be sending Israel $3 billion plus per year. In fact numerous high ranking American military officers, high ranking Israeli military officers and major American military contractors — many of whom appear regularly on zoom webinars in the United States, Canada and around the world — repeatedly declare this $3 billion/year expenditure by the United States to Israel to be a bargain for the US taxpayer for many reasons, including the following:

1. Each year Israel provides GRATIS to the American military and American intelligence community intelligence worth the value of one to two CIAs. That is $2 to $4 billion dollars worth of intelligence every year.

2. By federal law all money Israel receives must be spent in the United States with American companies. So the reality is that American workers in American military contracting companies are employed because of and pay taxes with this $3-plus billion dollars that Israel receives each year — and then spends in the United States.

3. Whenever an Israeli pilot flies an American supersonic jet — because of the very small size of Israel — he is immediately in enemy air space and must put the plane with all its complicated parts through the stress of enemy avoidance maneuvers that would never occur in a test flight over the wide open peaceful spaces of Iowa, Missouri or Nevada. The combat stress atmosphere of these kinds of maneuvers enables Israeli pilots to learn about defects and design flaws in American designed equipment that would never be discovered in peaceful test flights over the United States. Israel immediately and at no cost to the American taxpayer is constantly advising American military contractors of these design flaws as it discovers them so that the performance of these aircraft can be improved .

This free information provided by Israel to American contractors about design flaws that are common but not easily discoverable — except in the stress of actual combat — in newly manufactured, multi-million dollar supersonic fighter aircraft saves the American taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars in military research and development. Some American military contractors are on record as saying that without the suggestions of Israeli pilots based on their flying American supersonic jets in exclusively combat situations and discovering weaknesses and design flaws, even millions of dollars of research and development might not reveal some of the design flaws that are discovered by Israeli pilots.

Such a failure to discover and correct such design flaws would of course put American pilots at risk were they to fly into combat situations. Further the Israeli Defense Forces successful use of American defense technology in combat situations is the best possible marketing the American defense industry could have. Also the high tech military equipment that Israel develops which is not insubstantial is offered for free by Israel to the American military.

The bottom line as the above makes clear is that the $3 billion plus that Israel receives from the US each year is a very good bargain for the American taxpayer.

Richard Sherman
Margate, Florida