Threat Analyst Ken Abramowitz is author of “The Multifront War”
Editor: Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, President, American Center for Democracy (ACD)
See the sources for this article and more research in the Additional Reading section
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
Israel’s Strategic Importance to the US – Ken’s Thought of the Week
A strong Israel is crucial to the United States’ national security. And at trying times like this – as Israel fights for its very existence – Americans need more clarification about the inter-relationship between a strong Israel and America’s national security interests. Conservatives are generally clear about maintaining close military, financial, and cultural relationships. Liberals, progressives, Islamists, Socialists, and Communists increasingly believe that there should be distance between US national security interests, and more recently, some on the progressive Left oppose the Jewish State’s sovereign rights and even its existence.
Save The West therefore details how Israel contributes to and protects American national security interests:
1) Israel and the US share common values. “The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Federalist system” have been influenced by the Torah (Old Testament) , as former Israeli Ambassador Yoram Ettinger explains.
2) Israel, America’s best ally, serves as the equivalent of the 12th aircraft carrier in the Middle East, in addition to the eleven ocean-worthy aircraft carriers worldwide. Indeed, it is the most powerful and least costly ‘carrier’, with hundreds of additional aircraft.
3) Israel purchases close to $4 billion of US weapons annually.
4) Israel uses US-produced weapons daily and provides real-time feedback to the manufacturers, saving billions of dollars in R&D.
5) The US $3.8 million annual investment (wrongly labeled as “aid”) in Israel consistently yields a yearly return of many hundred percent.
6) Israel amplifies US power throughout the Middle East and around the world.
7) Israel provides the US with its only realistic military option versus Iran.
8) Israel projects democratic values to the world.
9) Israel helps the US compete with China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
10) Israel’s highly innovative economy offers and shares with the US vast amounts of high technology: cyber, weapons, computer chips, agriculture, and medicine, among others.
11) Israel demonstrates to the world how Jews get along with minority Muslims and Christians better than in any country in the world.
12) Israel’s national intelligence agency (Mossad) provides more critical information to the US than all NATO countries combined. Unfortunately, just this time, they failed miserably to stop or even alert the Israeli government of the Iranian-orchestrated murderous attack by Hamas on Israel’s civilian population on October 7.
Israel is a unique asset to America’s national security. Just recently, ISIS-like Hamas (a Sunni-Muslim Brotherhood terror group) attacked Israel under the directive and strategic support of Iran, a Shiite-Muslim Brotherhood terror-supporting country, together with Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). What should Israel do to respond? And what should Israel’s best ally, America, do to help?
Having been caught off-guard and suddenly losing more than 1,200 citizens, mostly civilians, Israel has no choice but to obliterate both terrorists groups, militarily and politically. At the same time, Israel must do everything possible to free all hostages, even if it takes three to six months. With an estimated 20-30,000 Hamas and affiliated terrorists in Gaza, most financed, trained, and armed by Iran, Israel must kill or capture 100% of them, destroy their military headquarters, arms manufacturing, and arsenals, as well as their mosques, and the UNRWA run schools used to incite and indoctrinate the next generations of Jihadists.
Hamas, like ISIS, must be eradicated from the world, like the biblical Amalekites. The main challenge is to do so with the minimal number of Israeli casualties. Therefore, Israeli planes and drones must hunt down Hamas terrorists unrelentingly, while all crossings are hermetically closed. All electricity, food, and water must be denied. A one mile buffer zone must be maintained in front of the Gaza border fence and the Lebanese border fence as well, and all human traffic must be denied entry.
Since Israel has already warned Gaza residents of its coming air raids, they have had the opportunity to leave. Domestically, Israel must train and arm its Jewish citizens. All able-bodied citizens should now carry guns. Also, a long-discussed national guard must be set up and funded immediately.
The U.S. moved its largest battle group, the USS Gerald Ford, closer to Israel and Iran. With some 150 hostages of Hamas in Gaza, many of whom are Americans, the US now has a direct responsibility to rescue them. The recent $6 billion that the US released to Qatar in escrow for Iran (in return for freeing five American hostages), must be immediately re-frozen. And international arrest warrants should be issued for all Hamas leaders, who have been sheltered by Qatar.
The Biden Administration just announced full, unconditional support for Israel in the face of this attack. Israel should ask for $5-10 billion in emergency aid, 25% of which could be used to buy US weapons and 75% of which could be used to buy weapons from Israeli operated weapons factories, thereby strengthening Israel’s indigenous production capabilities. Similarly, the Israeli government should seek a supplemental allocation of $5-10 billion from its own treasury to strengthen all the capabilities needed to fight modern hybrid warfare: kinetic, chemical/biological/arson, cultural, economic, legal, demographic, and cyberspace/AI. During the next year, the US government will realize that it has no choice but to destroy Iran’s illegal nuclear program, its terrorist proxies in Yemen (the Houthis), Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Iran’s regionally-destabilizing Navy.
This mess is all part of World War III, and the Biden administration and the leaders of the main democracies shouldn’t repeat the mistake of World War II, when our leaders failed to confront the evil of the German Nazis and their allies, the Japanese Imperial Army, early on. As a result, the evil persisted, so tragically, America and its allies were forced to confront this axis of evil, but with much higher costs later on.
The time to fight the evil Iranian and Hamas Nazis is NOW!
