FWIW the US only started giving Israel money in the 70's but Israel was doing fine before and innovation in Israel goes further back. As an anecdote to the importance of science and technology the first president of Israel (1948) Chaim Weizmann had a Ph.D in bio-chemistry. As another anecdote, the Technion, the sort of Israeli parallel of MIT was established in 1912, 36 years before Israel became independent.

The Israel-Arab conflict became a proxy for the US-Soviet conflict and while the Russians were aiding the Arab countries surrounding Israel the US was aiding Israel. As mentioned a lot of the US aid to Israel is a form of subsidy to the US defense industry and comes with many strings tied. A good example of the trade-offs there is that Israel was effectively forced to cancel it's Lavi fighter aircraft program and buy "expensive" F16s instead. Another good example is President's Obama decision to stop providing Israel with missiles for its Apache helicopters at some point during one of the last conflicts.

Saudi Arabia's hypothetical alignment with Israel is a fairly recent phenomena as some sort of my enemy's enemy is my friend. But for the longest time Saudi's money and political influence was invested in working against Israel (and those sums dwarf US aid to Israel).

> A good example of the trade-offs there is that Israel was effectively forced to cancel it's Lavi fighter aircraft program and buy "expensive" F16s instead.

See http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/the-lavi-a-dream-aborted-in-m...

"There is a myth that it was American pressure that led to the cancellation of the Lavi program. Nothing is further from the truth. It was a self-inflicted wound, a shot in the foot."

The reason the program was cancelled was because it was very expensive and there weren't enough potential international buyers of the plane. The unit costs of F16:s were unsurprisingly much lower because they have been mass-produced for decades.

There are a lot of stories around this and I'm not quite sure who to believe. What is clear is that those F16s could be purchased by US aid while the Lavi could not and that the ability of Israel to export the Lavi and compete with the US would be greatly hampered by direct and indirect US influence. I.e. a project that was potential competition to the US defense industry got cancelled and replaced by US funding to purchase the competing US product. That must have been a factor in the decision making, right? I think at any rate the point I was trying to make stands regardless of whose version of the story you want to believe here.

I see that the page I linked only titles Moshe Arens with Haaretz contributor... In fact, he was a minister of the Israeli government for the larger part of the 80's and the Lavi project was something he advocated strongly for. Meaning that if he says that the project wasn't cancelled due to US interference he is probably right.

I know who Moshe Arens is. I agree the story carries some weight but it's not conclusive. Arens has/had his own interests and even ministers do not always get the entire picture. At the time he was a "minister without portfolio" which means he was probably excluded from some of the meetings.

WikiPedia says this: "On 30 August 1987, Israel's cabinet conducted a decisive vote on whether to continue the development of the Lavi; this development was influenced by considerable lobbying by the U.S., who made several compensatory proposals in exchange for the cancellation" and provides 3 references as support which I didn't pursue in detail though the ynet article is fairly recent and has some interesting tidbids: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4695739,00.html

How can there be doubt that the US aid and influence was a factor? Would the same decision have been made otherwise? Who knows.

I suspected you'd know, but I thought it was good to clarify who Moshe Arens was for other people reading. ;)

The article you link is interesting, and it mentions a special tax that would be levied on the populace to continue funding the project. Which gives you a hint about how expensive it was! It also mentions that the US didn't like the project. But if US pressure was factor, then why was the project started in the first place? Recall that in 1987 the project was over 10 years old.

Fact is that Israel does a lot of things that the US does not like, like building settlements, but it has never used the military aid as a means to put pressure on Israel. So sure, the US could theoretically exert influence by threatening to stop the aid, but it hasn't done so and probably won't. It would be too much like slaughtering a holy cow for them.

The Lavi story isn't unique. Half a dozen countries have tried to build fighter planes but then cancelled the programs because they were too expensive. I believe the only countries currently producing modern fighter jets are USA, Russia, France, EU, China and Sweden. And I can tell you that the Swedish fighter jet program has been incredibly close to being cancelled numerous times over the last decades.

If you're interested in reading more about the Lavi Wikipedia seems to have a pretty good article. The specifics of the cancellation story are here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAI_Lavi#Controversy_and_cance...

Israel had previously designed and manufactured the Kfir ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAI_Kfir ) though that design was based on the French Mirage. The Kfir wasn't really that successful though...

US aid to Israel is about 1% of Israel's GDP. Arguably Israel might be better off without the aid, the aid killed a large part of Israel's defense industry and it restricts the technology they can transfer to secondary markets such as China and India.

One should also note that most of that money isn't actually given as cash, only a few 100's of million of the 3 bln are direct cash allocations intended to fund defense projects within Israel, the rest has to be spent on buying toys from US defense contractors.

So for the most part US aid to Israel is a US job program.

Israel is the 7th largest arms dealer in the world. The US aid has not killed anything of it. On the contrary, it has helped it grow since (until this year) 25% of the aid given was given in cash and could be spent on domestic weapons. Today he Israeli and US weapons industries have many competing products thanks to the aid.

It is true that Israel is supposed to not export sensitive technology to China, but that is more a factor of being a US ally than strings attached to the aid. Canada also shares a lot of stuff with the US, but does not align themselves with China despite not getting any military aid.

And weapons are fungible. The $3.8 billion in weapons the US provides the state with means that it saves exactly $3.8 billion to spend elsewhere. Giving away free weapons is a very poor job program in comparison to funding jobs that would help the US economy (such as building and repairing infrastructure) rather than hurt it.

I once checked this out and as it turns out there's quite a lot of cases where foreign aid is spent on weapons, even sometimes as a condition of foreign aid.

I was was stupefied that Belgium made a foreign aid donation to Saudi Arabia. I found the reason : it was contingent on the Saudis spending about 30x the amount of the donation on weapons made by a plant south of Brussels, with (I'm sure coincidentally) several (then) cabinet members on the board. They bought "weapons for crowd control" with it, because apparently that's what fully automatic machine guns are used for.

I think the issue is that weapons production is an industry that is entirely controlled by government action, both in the positive and negative direction.

Governments forbid certain parts of the market on one hand, and they cheat and lie and deceive everyone so their own weapons manufacturers would see more customers on the other hand. US, Israel, France, even tiny little Belgium all engage in this.

US aid killed Israel's indigenous fighter jet program.

If Israel could get drones from the US it would've eventually killed the Isreaeli drone industry.

Overall what Israel gets on aid they don't make and can't sell.

US aid also comes with a leash Israeli arm sales have congressional oversight ever since the Phalcon deal with China.

Without US aid the Lavi would not have been canned and Israeli Mirage clones like the Nesher and the Kfir are considered one of the best airframes of the time even today.

Israel GDP is $290.6B/yr, US Aid is 3.8B/yr. That is 1.3%.

Israel government spending is $64B/yr. US Aid of $3.8B/yr is 6%.

For comparison, if the US got relative aid like that it would be: $170B/yr. US military expenditures is only 598.5, so this would cover about 1/3rd of it.

so does that 1% includes tens of billions in loans , subsidies, military equipment or tech transfers ?

Yes on average the aid is valued at around 3bln per year.

Israel hasn't used the Loan guarantees since 1988.

I'm pretty sure even if you canceled all the US foreign aid it will change nothing for homeless Americans. Giving foreign aid is the US investing they get a lot of it back too, for example most of the aid money to Israel is strictly for buying military equipment from US companies not to mention that it is part of the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. If you think Israel sends military equipment to Al qaeda your nuts.

>If you think Israel sends military equipment to Al qaeda your nuts.

I'm pretty sure that Israel does sends military equipment to AQ from time to time, tho the equipment undergoes rapid unscheduled disassembly upon delivery.

I'm pretty sure it very rapidly and violently disassembles itself precisely according to schedule.

> If you think Israel sends military equipment to Al qaeda your nuts.

It's not a secret that Israel are supporting Jabhat Fateh al-Sham in Syria.

Not certain about military equipment, but they do meet with them regularly[0] and treat their soldiers in Israeli hospitals[1].

[0] http://www.mintpressnews.com/israel-accepts-billions-from-th...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vweHtxqnh-Y

mintpress is trash news

Israel is not supporting Jabhat Fateh al-Sham it treats people on the border including fighters in exchange for leaving the syrian druze alone.

Trying to stay on topic ... the US also gives lots of aid to Egypt, but Egypt doesn't seem to have such good tech. Why?

US middle east policy has long called for maintaining a qualitative edge for Israel so that their neighbors (including Egypt) won't be tempted to attack again. Plus Israel has 10x GDP per capita, and a more educated workforce better able to maintain complex tech.

All of the below is factually true and can be verified but was censored from HN. Criticism of Israel != anti-semitism.

>Don't Helen Thomas your career, dont you know mentioning that is a thought crime? Obama promised another 38 billion over ten years, and the real cost including all military and other aid has been estimated at 15 billion per year. Never mind their wall, occupied territory and treatment of Palestinians in their war for a racially pure nation state. The UN actually ruled Zionism a racist institution but now we know you can only be racist if you're a white European. Jews occupying, displacing and killing Palestinians and Arabs is fine.

We ban accounts that were created just to violate the guidelines with, so please stop.

HN is entertaining a lot of political threads and commentary lately so please enforce this rule equally since you're bringing it up only here. It appears that's the only guideline I broke; my comment was relevant to the parent comment being downvoted for no reason. It's just ridiculous you cannot criticize that country anywhere without being slandered yourself. There's no perfect government or country in history and that's why it's great in America that we can criticize government.

Hacker News is not a site for engaging in political battle. Most politics are off-topic, but a blanket ban would deprive the community of topics that are indeed intellectually interesting, or representative of new phenomena. The political discussions that we do have, then, are for the community, and the expectation is that comments are thoughtful, patient, civil, and substantive.

Creating accounts that only post politically is not good community behavior, nor is reposting comments that have been flagged, nor is making deliberately inflammatory (troll) statements as you have. These behaviors are against the goals of this site and they just don't belong.

On the first two points I agree with you. Those are good community guidelines here. However, HN is allowing many political threads lately and it's out of order to single out someone for political comments you don't agree with. Nowhere did I make troll statements and that's not something you are capable of substantiating. No government is perfect and beyond criticism and you should not attack someone for having the bravery to be a political dissident no matter how scared or biased you are.

We ban accounts that abuse this site from any political angle. You're abusing HN by using it primarily for political battle, tossing Molotov cocktails ("now we know you can only be racist if you're a white European") and reposting flagged comments. That's indeed trolling, in effect if not intent.

That's not appropriate. My comment already accepts and agree with the guidelines about political posts, however, my point was that you can't entertain political posts in general (as HN has recently) while criticizing political posts you disagree with as off-topic, especially If they are relevant to a parent. You just ignore that double standard though and go right for slandering me and my comments, and claim all accounts are subject to this treatment, which just isn't true and anyone who reads HN lately knows that since the Trump Presidency. How many users banned for Trump Comments? Please tell me. Further, derision of political speech that you disagree with as 'throwing molotov cocktails' is nothing more than unsubstantiated slander, which was exactly the thing that I posted about in the first place in response to another user's criticism: you can't say anything without being slandered and having your words twisted (in this case into violent rioting or figurative violent trolling? Give me a break). You can write anything about Trump here, even opinions about his intelligence or character, but address a real double standard with this one country and you'll be labelled as a violent troll causing destruction, and you're proving that. It's Orwellian political correctness and censorship. You are better than this. By the way, the idea that Whites are the only racists is not something I invented, it's a common theme now. I.E. Mic recently ran a piece about "all whites are racist," and it's only possible for Whites to be racist because racism is "prejudice plus power." So calm down and do a reality check on what you're saying, please. I won't use this account primarily for political debate, or repost any comments, I can respect that, but also don't use your authority to project double standards on political speech you disagree with. That's why people would feel compelled to repost censored comments. Even if it is a breach of guidelines. At any rate I can respect that rule in the future. And I don't even disagree with Israel's existence or think they're even generally 'a bad country,' that's what's the most ridiculous about this. In fact, I think They have a lot to be admired for and have done a lot of good. I'll leave it at that.

Every commenter we chide (or ban) for abusing this site with political battle thinks we're siding with their political enemies. That's understandable but it's not based on data—it comes from the partisan passion that drives the political battle in the first place.

> The UN actually ruled Zionism a racist institution but now we know you can only be racist if you're a white European.

Yeah that was some deep bullshit by the UN.

They later acknowledged this and took it back

So is race supremacy racist or not? You dont think it is?

This seems to be lacking context. I would suspect that's why it got flagged in the first place.

I just wrote it in response to the person downvoted for a valid criticism. Showing how valid criticism in this context is usually a thought crime.