Israel as a Security Asset – for Everyone

Here are two articles about Israel — and how many Americans know the facts surrounding Israel? Not enough due to the Republican Party and conservative movement’s failure in the information war.

Israel as a Security Asset – for Everyone
By Shoshana Bryen

The week of Israel’s 68th anniversary, NATO invited Israel – and three other countries – to “establish diplomatic missions to NATO headquarters.” This is not NATO membership, something to which Israel does not aspire, but recognition that Israel has something to offer the Atlantic Alliance. Prime Minister Netanyahu said, “The countries of the world want to cooperate with us because of our determined struggle against terrorism, because of our technological knowledge, our intelligence deployment and other reasons.”

It may have something to do with the revelation that Israel had warned Brussels of lax airport security before the terror attack at Zavantem Airport in March. Or the discovery that Israel had offered France a tracking system for terror suspects after the Charlie Hebdo/kosher supermarket attacks and nearly a year before the September bombings that killed 130 people in Paris. France had declined. An Israeli source said, “French authorities liked it, but (an official) came back and said there was a higher-level instruction not to buy Israeli technology… the discussion just stopped.”

It may have something to do with NATO member Turkey’s increasingly perilous position in the Middle East. Facing increased Kurdish restiveness, spillover from the Syrian war, ISIS imposed genocide, and increasingly strained relations with Russia over Syria and Ngorno-Karabakh, restoring security cooperation with Israel might be a lifeline for Ankara. This would account for Turkey dropping its opposition to Israel’s NATO mission.

Read more: American Thinker

Mazel tov, Israel
By Michael Curtis

All countries have imperfect records, both historically and in contemporary times. All at some point have been engaged in internal and external conflict and encountered enmity and violence. The State of Israel is no different in this respect, and has been the subject of continual hostility by some countries and hostile groups that refuse to recognize its existence and legitimacy.

It is therefore all the more important, at this moment commemorating the 68th anniversary of the creation of Israel, to acknowledge the extraordinary story and achievements of the miracle in the desert. In a Middle East all too replete with failed states, dictatorships, authoritarian regimes, civil wars, terrorist groups, and intra-Muslim religious conflicts, Israel is the only democratic nation and the only economically developed and modernized one.

This often comes as a surprise since Israel is a small country, 8,500 square miles, almost the exact size of the great state of New Jersey, and in which 60 per cent of the land mass is the Negev desert. The width of the country can be crossed, if there is no traffic jam, in 90 minutes.

Equally surprising, Israel is one of the relatively small number of counties in the world with a flourishing multiparty parliamentary system expressing almost all political points of view, universal suffrage, a free press and media, an independent judiciary often critical of the government, autonomous independent great universities and research centers, and numerous human rights groups.

Read more: American Thinker