Reply With QuoteInteresting read, thanks!
Quite a few miscalculations there, though.
The consequences of the partition of Palestine
Very interesting declassified CIA report from 1947
http://www.foia.cia.gov/docs/DOC_000...0000256628.pdf
Interesting read, thanks!
Quite a few miscalculations there, though.
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Lots of people in the US government were against recognizing Israel, including George Marshall.
It took a lot of guts for Truman to extend US support to Israel in 1948.
The CIA report strenghens my opinion that U.S recognition of Israel was a symbolic move that wasn't based on an actual intent of building a strong partnership.Originally Posted by [WDW]Megaraptor
Truman might have recognized Israel but as soon as he did that he decided to place an arms embargo on Israel (which makes sense if they were afraid of burning their bridges with the Arabs).
20 years later (1967) the policy makers in Washington finally realised that Israel was here to stay and its value as an ally in the Cold War.
Everything I read about Truman's decision states that he went against the advice of nearly all of his advisors, and did so because he didn't think America could morally acquiesce to the elimination of most of the rest of the Jewish people just after the Holocaust.
Lots of other factors in play though. Most of the Arab countries were pro-British at the time. First country to exchange ambassadors with Israel was...the Soviet Union. First country to supply Israel with weapons was Czechoslovakia. You can see where some people thought this was going. Britain flat out said that Israel was being run by "communist influence."
Of course Israel had no intention of becoming a USSR satellite state, but it made a good propaganda line for their enemies.
Last edited by [WDW]Megaraptor; 05-03-2012 at 11:56 AM.
The arms embargo was on both sides.
I'm aware of that (it was a general arms embargo sanctioned by the U.N).
However the USSR (for example) did sell weapons to Israel via Chekoslovakia.
Which had to be smuggled due to the arms embargo.
I am not arguing with any of these points as they actually reaffirm my first post.
People tend to believe that U.S - Israel relations have been strong from the very beginning and I think it's worth mentioning that this was not the case. Of course in no way am I implying that this historical fact has any bearing on the current relations between the two countries.
Last edited by EITAN88; 05-03-2012 at 12:40 PM.
Fact remains that the Soviets were willing to sell the weapons while even material support for Israel from private citizens in the U.S had to be kept a seceret from the government.
Last edited by EITAN88; 05-03-2012 at 12:27 PM.
Until '67 the most prominent arms suppliers to Israel were the French (Super Frelon, Super Mystere, Ouragon, AMX-13). Wonder if Dassault pays a royalty to the IAF for highlighting how effective the Mirage III was against Soviet MiGs?
Hmm...that raises an interesting question: What US weapons did Israel use before 1968? I know most of their Shermans came from abandoned WW2 stocks. They did buy M48 Pattons between '56 and '67. Not sure if they received any aircraft.
Really, Richard Nixon was the one who started the special relationship and began selling modern advanced weapons to Israel, which is odd since he was privately very anti-semitic.
Last edited by [WDW]Megaraptor; 05-04-2012 at 05:23 PM.
Kennedy allowed the sale of Hawk SAMs in 1962 (which were used to defend the Dimona reactor).
That pretty much marks the beginning of defense sales between Israel and the U.S.
Hawks in the early 1960s as Eitan said. As well as land based radars which were sold to Israel.
The radars supply was important because it gave the IAF a qualitative edge over the Arabs that were equipped with inferior Soviet equipment.
Anyway, the Hawks and the radars were not offensive weapons.
There were 2 other important weapon deals in the 1960s, prior to 1967 War.
1 / The acquisition of a limited quantity of M48s (some 125-150).
France had no appropriate MBT to sell to Israel that could face the modern T54/T55 supplied by the USSR to Egypt. On the other hand, the US did not want to provide Israel with modern M60s tanks. Therefore a covert deal was organized. It included: the US, Germany, Italy and the UK.
With US agreement, Germany supplied secretly Israel with second hand M48s that were retired from its inventory and replaced by new M60s. (Israeli tank and maintenance crews were secretly trained for this purpose in Germany.)
The tanks were sent from Germany to Italy where they had to be upgraded with a modern British 105mm gun and a modern US diesel engine, before being sent to Israel.
This complex transaction was not completed because the transfer of the tanks through Europe was observed and leaked to the media. Germany stopped then the supplies and the US agreed to sell Israel the remaining second hand M48 from their own inventory. These tanks had to be upgraded with the British gun and the US diesel engine in Israel. (The US sold also officially M48s and M-113 to Jordan.)
In the 6-Days War the IDF had only one company (or was it one battalion) of the upgraded M48s. Its remaining M48s were still equipped with their original gun and engine.
2 / The A-4 Skyhawk deal.
Israel made requests to every US president to sell it US made aircraft, but her requests were systematically rejected. Over time, the US started to replace the UK as the main weapons supplier to Jordan. Therefore it became increasingly difficult for US administration to defend its rejections of Israel's weapons requests. The administration started to have difficulties to justify before the Congress why US weapons could be sell to Jordan but not to Israel.
In 1966, Johnson agreed to sell Israel A-4s in parallel to another deal of F-104s with Jordan. The A-4 deal was signed before the 6-Days War (in the late 1966 or early 1967) and the deliveries to the IAF started in the early 1968.
EDIT:
Besides the administration wish to supply weapons to Jordan, the first US-Israel arm deals were also motivated by another factor.
The US administration was concerned by the Dimona nuclear reactor and she tried to extract from Israel different concessions: US inspections of the reactor and so on… In this context, the administration used the first arm deals as a "carrot" in order to get Israeli concessions.
Last edited by Camera; 05-12-2012 at 07:14 PM.
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