"Rather like bailing out Wall Street, America’s unconditional support for Israel creates “moral hazard”: Like investment bankers, Israeli politicians can adopt aggressive, high-risk strategies in the knowledge that Uncle Sam will come to the rescue if things go wrong. What does the United States get from Israel in return? Precious little.
On this very blog back in 2009, when I was a moderator, I posed the deliberately leading question, “Is Israel a strategic liability for the United States?” No less a figure than Dov Zakheim, a top Pentagon official under Donald Rumsfeld, acknowledged that, in cold strategic terms, it was. After laying out a long list of advantages of the alliance, Zakheim wrote that
None of the foregoing, however, can fully justify the vast aid that the United States provides to Israel on an annual basis. There is more than a little truth to the fact that America aids Israel for reasons that go beyond purely military and intelligence benefits….On the other hand, that support demonstrates American credibility, and commitment, and a sense that it does stand by the values it constantly trumpets: the primacy of democratic values and the right of small nations to exist in freedom and security.
There’s a lot I agree with here. For both moral and strategic reasons, the United States owes Israel the same support that it owes any other small democracy in a precarious strategic situation – for example, Taiwan. Let me emphasize, however: the same support, no more, no less," – Sydney J. Freedberg, Jr.
The Dish 