US supports Israel out of self-interest not love
Re: “Israel would never have survived without Uncle Sam”, Have Your Say, March 18
Paul’s letters to this column are familiar to us and the message could not be any clearer: bash Israel, dislike Jews. But his latest contribution lacks coherence and is sadly short on logic.
American administrations, both Democrat and Republican, have indeed been funding Israel’s military build-up ever since its creation in 1948. The US “right wing”, as Paul calls them, might support Israel on religious grounds but are in no position to provide the roughly $3 billion a year needed to ensure Israeli military superiority. Paul conveniently ignores the fact that as the only democracy in the Middle East, Israel’s security is in America’s interest. The funding is not the result of US love for Israel. It is a cold, calculated policy. A tiny nation of almost 9 million, Israel is surrounded by the whole of the Arab and Islamic world, which if given the chance would certainly annihilate the Jewish state.
The sentence that confuses me most in Paul’s letter is his claim that Israel “severely lags behind its competitors” in certain area. What are those areas? We will probably never know.
Tikfetzu Lee
