Why the US/Israel Alliance?

‘The Jews took Israel from the Arabs after the Arabs had lived there for a thousand years. Israel like South Africa, is an Apartheid state.’ – South African Prime Minister, Hendrick Verwoerd, 1961

‘Ally - My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide’ by Michael B. Oren is the ex- Israeli ambassador’s observations of the relationship with America.

He reveals “Israel furnished airstrips and ports to American forces, and warehouses for prepositioning nearly a billion dollars in U.S. military gear,” and that “the allies remain militarily bound.” Oren explains  one of the main reasons why the ‘outpost’ had helped to establish itself saying, “oil, of course, and not Israel, was America’s Middle east priority.” Why not establish an outpost that “afforded the United States in intelligence sharing, weapons development, and high tech. Israel’s indispensable role as America’s sole democratic and unreservedly pro-American ally in the Middle East….”

Oil is the raison d’etre of U.S. intrigues in the Middle East, not merely because of the need for supplies, but mainly to guard the price. Oren points out “...the presence of an American ally at the world’s most strategically crucial crossroads, deploying an army more than twice the size of Britain’s and France’s combined, cannot be undervalued….the United States will remain inextricably linked to the Middle East, bound to the region both by the profits and threats it generates”

“Profits” - quite a revealing term, he uses.

The Israeli state, both in the manner in which it controls the Palestinians, but also in its corporate military economy is supported by billions of U.S. dollars and is sought after by many nations around the world. The high tech instrumentation, the security technology, and the field tested armaments and crowd control techniques are sold to monarchs, dictators, and nominal democrats with equanimity.

The establishment of the State of Israel aroused a variety of misguided responses. Zionists regarded it as a secure homeland in which the future of the Jewish people would be free from the problems of their tragic past; anti-semites saw Israel as a country populated by wealthy Jewish businessmen who, fed on the rich cream of American investments, would live in isolated prosperity. Rival Arab nationalists condemned the crimes of Israeli militarism, forgetting the barbarous actions undertaken by their armies. not least against fellow Arabs. So the history of Israel has been confused by much hypocrisy, with Zionist and Arab butchering each other — one in the name of Judaism, the other in the name of Islam. Israel is just another capitalist state. The Zionists who thought they could create a land of security for all should go and talk to the destitute Jewish workers of Israel. The ignorant anti-semites who imagined that every Jew drove a big car and smoked fat cigars should look at the slums in which their fellow wage slaves live. And before the Arab nationalists gloat at the failure of Israeli nationalism, let them ponder on the fact that while Arab oil billionaires are loafing in palaces their subjects are dying of malnutrition or living on paupers' incomes. 

Adapted from here