The Israel-Arab conflict became a proxy for the US-Soviet conflict and while the Russians were aiding the Arab countries surrounding Israel the US was aiding Israel. As mentioned a lot of the US aid to Israel is a form of subsidy to the US defense industry and comes with many strings tied. A good example of the trade-offs there is that Israel was effectively forced to cancel it's Lavi fighter aircraft program and buy "expensive" F16s instead. Another good example is President's Obama decision to stop providing Israel with missiles for its Apache helicopters at some point during one of the last conflicts.
Saudi Arabia's hypothetical alignment with Israel is a fairly recent phenomena as some sort of my enemy's enemy is my friend. But for the longest time Saudi's money and political influence was invested in working against Israel (and those sums dwarf US aid to Israel).
See http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/the-lavi-a-dream-aborted-in-m...
"There is a myth that it was American pressure that led to the cancellation of the Lavi program. Nothing is further from the truth. It was a self-inflicted wound, a shot in the foot."
The reason the program was cancelled was because it was very expensive and there weren't enough potential international buyers of the plane. The unit costs of F16:s were unsurprisingly much lower because they have been mass-produced for decades.
WikiPedia says this: "On 30 August 1987, Israel's cabinet conducted a decisive vote on whether to continue the development of the Lavi; this development was influenced by considerable lobbying by the U.S., who made several compensatory proposals in exchange for the cancellation" and provides 3 references as support which I didn't pursue in detail though the ynet article is fairly recent and has some interesting tidbids: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4695739,00.html
How can there be doubt that the US aid and influence was a factor? Would the same decision have been made otherwise? Who knows.
The article you link is interesting, and it mentions a special tax that would be levied on the populace to continue funding the project. Which gives you a hint about how expensive it was! It also mentions that the US didn't like the project. But if US pressure was factor, then why was the project started in the first place? Recall that in 1987 the project was over 10 years old.
Fact is that Israel does a lot of things that the US does not like, like building settlements, but it has never used the military aid as a means to put pressure on Israel. So sure, the US could theoretically exert influence by threatening to stop the aid, but it hasn't done so and probably won't. It would be too much like slaughtering a holy cow for them.
The Lavi story isn't unique. Half a dozen countries have tried to build fighter planes but then cancelled the programs because they were too expensive. I believe the only countries currently producing modern fighter jets are USA, Russia, France, EU, China and Sweden. And I can tell you that the Swedish fighter jet program has been incredibly close to being cancelled numerous times over the last decades.
Israel had previously designed and manufactured the Kfir ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAI_Kfir ) though that design was based on the French Mirage. The Kfir wasn't really that successful though...
One should also note that most of that money isn't actually given as cash, only a few 100's of million of the 3 bln are direct cash allocations intended to fund defense projects within Israel, the rest has to be spent on buying toys from US defense contractors.
So for the most part US aid to Israel is a US job program.
It is true that Israel is supposed to not export sensitive technology to China, but that is more a factor of being a US ally than strings attached to the aid. Canada also shares a lot of stuff with the US, but does not align themselves with China despite not getting any military aid.
And weapons are fungible. The $3.8 billion in weapons the US provides the state with means that it saves exactly $3.8 billion to spend elsewhere. Giving away free weapons is a very poor job program in comparison to funding jobs that would help the US economy (such as building and repairing infrastructure) rather than hurt it.
I was was stupefied that Belgium made a foreign aid donation to Saudi Arabia. I found the reason : it was contingent on the Saudis spending about 30x the amount of the donation on weapons made by a plant south of Brussels, with (I'm sure coincidentally) several (then) cabinet members on the board. They bought "weapons for crowd control" with it, because apparently that's what fully automatic machine guns are used for.
I think the issue is that weapons production is an industry that is entirely controlled by government action, both in the positive and negative direction.
Governments forbid certain parts of the market on one hand, and they cheat and lie and deceive everyone so their own weapons manufacturers would see more customers on the other hand. US, Israel, France, even tiny little Belgium all engage in this.
If Israel could get drones from the US it would've eventually killed the Isreaeli drone industry.
Overall what Israel gets on aid they don't make and can't sell.
US aid also comes with a leash Israeli arm sales have congressional oversight ever since the Phalcon deal with China.
Without US aid the Lavi would not have been canned and Israeli Mirage clones like the Nesher and the Kfir are considered one of the best airframes of the time even today.
Israel government spending is $64B/yr. US Aid of $3.8B/yr is 6%.
For comparison, if the US got relative aid like that it would be: $170B/yr. US military expenditures is only 598.5, so this would cover about 1/3rd of it.
Israel hasn't used the Loan guarantees since 1988.
I'm pretty sure that Israel does sends military equipment to AQ from time to time, tho the equipment undergoes rapid unscheduled disassembly upon delivery.
It's not a secret that Israel are supporting Jabhat Fateh al-Sham in Syria.
Not certain about military equipment, but they do meet with them regularly[0] and treat their soldiers in Israeli hospitals[1].
[0] http://www.mintpressnews.com/israel-accepts-billions-from-th...
Israel is not supporting Jabhat Fateh al-Sham it treats people on the border including fighters in exchange for leaving the syrian druze alone.
>Don't Helen Thomas your career, dont you know mentioning that is a thought crime? Obama promised another 38 billion over ten years, and the real cost including all military and other aid has been estimated at 15 billion per year. Never mind their wall, occupied territory and treatment of Palestinians in their war for a racially pure nation state. The UN actually ruled Zionism a racist institution but now we know you can only be racist if you're a white European. Jews occupying, displacing and killing Palestinians and Arabs is fine.
Creating accounts that only post politically is not good community behavior, nor is reposting comments that have been flagged, nor is making deliberately inflammatory (troll) statements as you have. These behaviors are against the goals of this site and they just don't belong.
Yeah that was some deep bullshit by the UN.
They later acknowledged this and took it back