Threat Analyst Ken Abramowitz is author of “The Multifront War”
Editor: Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, President, American Center for Democracy (ACD)
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
A strong Israel is crucial to the United States’ national security. 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.
A terrible US and Israeli intelligence failure led to the Iranian-orchestrated murderous ISIS-like attack by Hamas on Israel’s civilian population. Hamas, the Palestinian jihadist branch of the radical Sunni-Muslim Brotherhood, was funded, trained, and directed by the terrorist Shiite Iran, which also calls for “Death to America.”
Israel now faces the greatest threat to its existence since 1973. And it turns to its greatest ally – America – for support. Save The West details below how Israel protects America’s national security interests and explains why the US must protect this gigantic asset and all of its needs:
1) Israel and the US share common values. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Federalist system were 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 US aircraft carrier, providing priceless support to American security. Indeed, it is the most powerful and least costly ‘carrier’ to support America’s defense in the Middle East.
3) Israel purchases close to $4 billion of US weapons and materiel annually.
4) Israel uses US-produced weapons daily and provides real-time feedback to the manufacturers, saving America billions of dollars in R&D.
5) The US $3.8 million annual investment in Israel, wrongly labeled as “aid”, consistently yields an annual return of many hundred percent.
6) Israel amplifies US power throughout the Middle East and around the world by developing and enhancing advanced technology.
7) Israel provides the US with a complementary realistic military option in the upcoming confrontation with Iran.
8) Israel projects democratic values to the world, with free elections, freedom of speech, and equal rights for minorities.
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.
So what should Israel do now to respond to the existential threat facing the Jewish state today? And what should Israel’s best ally, America, do to help?
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Having been caught off-guard and suddenly losing more than 1,300 of its citizens, mostly civilians, to the savagery of Hamas, Israel has no choice but to obliterate both terrorist groups, militarily and politically. Hamas also murdered at least 22 Americans and holds at least 17 US citizens as hostages. At the same time, Israel must do everything possible to free all hostages, even if it takes three to six months.
With an estimated 25,000-30,000 Hamas and affiliated terrorists in Gaza, most financed, trained, and armed by Iran, Israel must kill or capture all 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 sealed. 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, the Gaza civilians have had the opportunity to leave. Due to the ferocity and brutality of the Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians, Israel has changed its rules of engagement to enable its pilots to bomb Hamas targets without prior warning. Israel and the US should press Egypt to provide a safe haven for the civilian population of Gaza.
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.
With close to 200 hostages, including at least 27 Americans, held by Hamas in Gaza, and another 14 Americans unaccounted for, the US now has a direct responsibility to rescue them. It already moved its carrier strike group, led by the USS Gerald Ford, closer to Israel and sent the Israelis some needed ammunition. A second aircraft carrier must be immediately dispatched to the Persian Gulf.
The recent $6 billion that the US released to Qatar in escrow for Iran (in return for freeing five American hostages) must be permanently 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 is a unique asset to America’s national security, so Israel should now 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 purchase weapons from Israeli-operated 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. One high-level minister should be in charge of coordinating these activities.
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 leading democracies shouldn’t repeat the mistake of World War II, when our leaders failed to confront the evil of the German Nazis and their ally, the Japanese Imperial Army, early on. As a result, the evil persisted. Tragically, America and its allies were forced to confront this axis of evil later on, but with much higher costs.
The US shouldn’t wait. The time to fight the evil Iranian and Hamas Nazis is NOW!
