A group of highly-ranked retired U.S. officers have stated that Israel is “highly important to U.S. Middle East Policy”:
Close to 50 generals and admirals have signed a letter that termed
Israel a key element in U.S. global strategy.…The retired officers, who have toured Israel, said the Jewish state was highly important to U.S. policy in the Middle East and Mediterranean region.
“We brought with us our decades of military experience and, following unrestricted access to Israel’s civilian and military leaders, came away with the unswerving belief that the security of the State of Israel is a matter of great importance to the United States and its policy in the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean,” the letter, released on April 2, read. “A strong, secure Israel is an asset upon which American military planners and political leaders can rely.”
“…We also recognize that the important countries of the region won’t like us any better if we shed Israel as an ally.”
“They will wonder how quickly we will shed them when they are inconvenient.”
JINSA [the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs] has been lobbying the Defense Department and U.S. military regarding Israel since the early 1980s. In January 2010, the organization released a report that asserted that Washington was denying Jerusalem — the largest recipient of U.S. military aid — a range of weapons in what could harm Israel’s military superiority over its Arab neighbors.
….The retired senior officers said they could not rule out the prospect that “political differences may be allowed to outweigh our larger mutual interests.”
“As American defense professionals, we view events in the Middle East through the prism of American security interests,” the letter said. “In the Middle East, a volatile region so vital to U.S. interests, it would be foolish to disengage — or denigrate — an ally such as Israel.”
The admirals and generals said Israel and the United States have engaged in defense and military cooperation at all levels. The letter cited training, law enforcement, counter-insurgency as well as research and development.
The United States would require Israeli cooperation for a range of threats, the officers said. They said this would include nonconventional and ballistic missile proliferation as well as CI [counterintelligence] operations.
Unfortunately, the great strategic importance of Israel to the US and the unreliability of the Arabs is something that has to be learned over and over by new American administrations, usually the hard way.