Chas Freeman was defeated by the Zionist lobby last year after the Obama administration tried to install him as chair of the National Intelligence Council. He wasn’t sufficiently pro-Israel, so they said.
He’s given a speech this week at the Nixon Centre that continues the ongoing public debate about what Israel really offers Washington:
It’s useful to recall what we generally expect allies and strategic partners to do for us.… In Europe, Asia, and elsewhere in the Middle East, they provide bases and support the projection of American power beyond their borders.… They join us on the battlefield in places like Kuwait and Afghanistan or underwrite the costs of our military operations.… They help recruit others to our coalitions.… They coordinate their foreign aid with ours.… … Many defray the costs of our use of their facilities with “host nation support” that reduces the costs of our military operations from and through their territory.… They store weapons for our troops’, rather than their own troops’ use.… They pay cash for the weapons we transfer to them.
Israel does none of these things and shows no interest in doing them.… Perhaps it can’t.… It is so estranged from everyone else in the Middle East that no neighboring country will accept flight plans that originate in or transit it.… Israel is therefore useless in terms of support for American power projection.… It has no allies other than us.… It has developed no friends.… Israeli participation in our military operations would preclude the cooperation of many others.… Meanwhile, Israel has become accustomed to living on the American military dole.… The notion that Israeli taxpayers might help defray the expense of U.S. military or foreign assistance operations, even those undertaken at Israel’s behest, would be greeted with astonishment in Israel and incredulity on Capitol Hill.