“[Arab] morale following Jewish [military] successes low with thousands Arabs fleeing the country. Last remaining HOPE is in entry of regular Arab armies, spearheaded by Arab Legion.” Cable from the US consul in Palestine to Secretary of State George Marshall (cited Migdal, Kummerling, The Making of a People, p.146)
In 1948, the US revoked its UN vote in favor of creating the Jewish state. Truman slapped Israel with an arms embargo during the war of survival, three years after Auschwitz. When the Jews won, the Americans pushed us to an unprofitable armistice—and did so again in 1956, 1967, 1973, and after various intermediate confrontations.
Why the demand for restraint? I don’t know. It seems totally irrational to me. I don’t think the American politicians consciously subscribed to the balance-of-power game and so prevented Israel from achieving total victory. I imagine the US actions stemmed from moral idealism of the same kind that led the US to tacitly support German re-occupation of the Rhineland before WWII. Sort of the idea that nations shouldn’t be pressed too far, a watered-down version of the balance of power.
In 1973, the Americans prevented Israel from annihilating the Egyptian Third Army. Was it because of the Soviet nuclear threat? Hardly so. The USSR did not threaten the US in 1973. It wasn’t even clear if the Soviets had really shipped nuclear warheads to Egypt. Such a transfer would have run contrary to the Soviet doctrine: Russians never exported nuclear weapons into other conflicts, and removed missiles from Cuba when conflict loomed.
The Russians also kept decidedly low profile in the war, even staging the expulsion of Soviet military personnel by Sadat. Soviet reinforcements for Egypt were a response to the American help to Israel. It seems that America and Russia escalated their support for their clients based on their perceptions of the other side’s intentions.
Besides, a detrimental armistice was imposed on Israel after the immediate nuclear threat had dissipated.
America cared very little about the possibility of nuclear confrontation between Pakistan and Soviet-backed India. It is easy to twist the arms of subservient Israeli politicians, but not of Pakistanis.
Does Israel depend on the US for military resupply? Today, yes, after decades of increases in American aid. Such backing did not exist before the final days of the 1973 war. Israel won all her wars without the US, and the resupply in 1973 came too late and went almost unused. Egypt took the resupply as a convenient excuse to concede defeat, and made it a point of propaganda that it stopped the war not because the Israelis had crossed Suez and were roaming at will at the Egyptian army’s rear, but because of American involvement. Iran similarly rationalized its armistice with Iraq: it was not due to exhaustion, but because of the United States’ downing of an Iranian civilian aircraft.
Israel needs no one’s military help if she resorts to first-use of nuclear weapons. Just make it a law that any invasion will be answered by a nuclear strike. That’s it. No need for American guarantees. And just how many times has America reneged on its promises?
About the importance of American weapons for Israel, that’s another misconception perpetuated by those who want Israel to continue begging for US aid and so submit to the whims of US administrations, or rather to the Jewish establishment which claims to manipulate those whims. The first airlift arrived after Israel had crossed the Suez Channel and won the war, and many days after Israel had stopped the Egyptian advance. Actually, Egypt stopped by itself because they weren’t prepared for a mobile war in Sinai, nor apparently did they plan to strike at Tel Aviv. I believe the Egyptian version, that Sadat only intended to upset the status quo and push Israel to the negotiating table—recall that both Israel and America ignored Sadat’s peace offer in 1972. Back to the point, the airlifted weapons were left unused. And Israel won the Six Day War without asking America for resupply of weapons. Preemption always pays.
The US provided aid to Israel for a single reason: to offset the growing Soviet influence. Egypt, a Soviet client, could not be allowed to win a major war and thereby tremendously increase Soviet influence in the Middle East. America similarly supported anti-communist struggles everywhere, from Korea on, and the aid they gave to Israel was very small compared to American expenses in other conflicts. If America was so concerned with Israel’s survival and the justice of her wars, why did the US impose an embargo on arms shipments to Palestine during the ideally just War of Independence? Also, the US announcement that it would supply weapons to Israel came immediately after the Soviets announced their aid to Egypt. After the Soviets declared a nuclear alert, the US did likewise. It was an incremental spiraling of the conflict between superpowers, with Jews being only pawns.
Perhaps Kissinger wasn’t bluffing when he said that Israel wouldn’t receive a nail if it preemptively attacked Egypt. That only testifies to how weak the purported American bond to Israel is. Charles de Gaulle famously put away the photos of Soviet missile installations in Cuba presented to him by Kissinger, saying that France would support America no matter the proof. America’s standard of support for Israel is much, much lower. The US would apparently have let Egypt destroy Israel with Russian support if Israel had attacked first. The US position is still more bizarre because Egypt had actually launched the war formally a few days earlier by closing the Tiran Straits, an international waterway, for Israeli shipping—a legally accepted casus belli. The Kissinger anecdote also condemns Israeli generals who spend tremendously on an army which depends on ongoing resupply from foreigners for even a short preventive war. Among the cowardly Israeli generals, even the “hawks” advocated attacking the Syrians rather than the main Egyptian force—even after Israel had received incontrovertible intelligence of an impending Egyptian attack. Israeli preemption wouldn’t have succeeded anyway, because of the secret deployment of Soviet SAM batteries near the Suez Canal. It is a miracle that we did not preempt and lose all our aircraft.
The American support for Israel in the UN is meaningful only compared to the entirely anti-Semitic Russian and European voting. Unlike those anti-Semites, America simply acts with minimal decency. Condemning Israel for genocide, apartheid, human-rights violations, and aggression is a libel so obvious that it just won’t fly with American public opinion. American cooperation in the UN buys Israel just a little time. Thus, during the 2006 Lebanon War, the US Administration quickly backed down from its original position that Israel is entitled to destroy Hezbollah, and accepted the European position on immediate cease-fire.