The Israeli Military Is an Extension of the U.S. Military

Oct 14, 2024

On October 1, Iran fired about 180 ballistic missiles at Israel. While the missiles were in the air, Israeli air defenses coordinated with U.S. naval ships in the Mediterranean Sea to shoot down the vast majority of them.

This kind of coordination and information sharing on a very tight timeline illustrates that the two countries’ militaries are integrated with each other to an enormous degree.

While it hides the total numbers in many ways, the U.S. has spent at least 17.9 billion dollars on military aid to Israel over the last year. The U.S. has also spent about five billion dollars in stepped-up U.S. military operations in the region, including deploying aircraft carrier battle groups and additional troops.

But U.S. support for the Israeli state goes beyond simply giving money for military supplies or putting U.S. forces in the region.

The U.S. is committed to helping Israel maintain what it calls a “Qualitative Military Edge” over any other country in the region—including many U.S. allies like Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. To do this, the U.S. gives the Israeli state its most advanced weapons. For instance, while Ukraine had to beg to get F-16 fighters, developed in the 1980s, Israel was the second country to get the most advanced plane in the U.S. arsenal, the F-35, after only the U.S. itself—and it has even received more of these planes than Great Britain.

The U.S. military is also committed to developing what it calls “interoperability” with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). This means that their people, equipment, computer systems, and intelligence are organized to work in conjunction with each other. This is what allowed the U.S. and Israeli forces to decide who would shoot down which missile on October 1, in the few minutes those missiles were in the air. To do this, U.S. and Israeli forces regularly carry out joint training exercises.

The U.S. and Israel also have integrated military-industrial complexes. For instance, the IDF developed their own variant of the F-35, for which Israeli companies produce the outer wings and head-mounted displays. According to the U.S. State Department, U.S. assistance “has helped transform the Israel Defense Forces into one of the world’s most capable, effective militaries and turned the Israeli military industry and technology sector into one of the largest exporters of military capabilities worldwide.” Of course, the Israeli state sells no weapons without the permission of the U.S.

The U.S. and Israeli militaries are so integrated because at the most fundamental level, the interests of their ruling classes align. Israel relies on the support of the U.S. for its very existence as a state for Jewish people and not the other people who live in Palestine. To maintain a state for some of the people who live there but not all, the Israeli state has turned the country into an armed camp, and it needs the most advanced arms it can get.

On the other hand, the U.S. needs this totally reliable ally in a region from which U.S. corporations extract enormous wealth, while leaving most people in abject poverty. As the Iranian revolution of 1979, the Arab Spring movement of 2011, and countless other upheavals have shown, none of its other allies in the region can be totally counted on to the extent that Israel can. Of course, the Israeli state occasionally acts in ways the U.S. leaders might wish it didn’t. But fundamentally, the interests of that state and of U.S. imperialism align.

Today, the Israeli state apparatus is essentially an extension of the U.S. state apparatus. The wars in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon—and who knows where next—are not just Israeli wars. They are U.S. wars, from beginning to end, fought by a military that is integrated and interoperable with the U.S. military itself.