Video Of The Week - Who Are Israelis, Really? - https://tinyurl.com/2tpzzt7d
From al-monitor by Ben Caspit. For the full article go to https://tinyurl.com/5xzp8fzd
Lt. Gen. Gregory Guillot,
head of the US Central Command’s Air Force, visited Israel at
the end of February. His host, Air Force Commander Maj. Gen. Amikam Norkin,
took him up personally on an F-15 Eagle for
a bird’s eye view of Israel’s borders.
Guillot’s late February visit
reflects the extent of cooperation between the various Israeli and American
defense and intelligence agencies, which has been experiencing a golden age in
recent years. Israel is the only country in the world other than the United
States in which a prototype of the F-35 Stealth
fighter is being upgraded with additional armaments and fuel
tanks. Israel is the only country permitted to install its own domestically
developed technology on the advanced aircraft, which will allow it to share the
F-35’s sophisticated command and
control system with older fighter planes in the Israeli fleet,
such as the F-15 and F-16.
These capabilities, as well
as being the only country in the world to dispatch the Stealth on real time
operational missions on a daily basis, have drawn the attention of many other
air forces. The extensive cooperation with the British, Italian, Greek, German,
Emirati and other air forces is breaking all records. Israel’s two main
defense assets — the absolute control of the skies over the Middle East
and the seemingly inexhaustible information collected by its intelligence
community — have turned Israel into a magnet for international
cooperation, ardent courting and joint drills.
However, the picture is bleak
for Israel’s diplomatic posture on the world stage. Israel is experiencing
“withdrawal symptoms” from the high it enjoyed for four years of the Donald
Trump presidency. Unlike the welcome presence in many countries of Israel
Defense Forces (IDF) Chief Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, Mossad director Yossi Cohen,
Norkin and other top brass, Israel’s foreign affairs arena is under threat of
international boycott from Washington and elsewhere.
The businesslike but chilly
tone adopted by US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on his visit to Israel on
April 11-12 is just the tip of the iceberg with which Israel risks
colliding in the coming months. Although this has not been completely verified,
Israel apparently did not convey to the Americans in full a detailed warning of
the operations and attacks it allegedly
planned to mount on Iranian targets over the past two weeks
— with suspicious timing proximity to the renewal of talks with Iran on
its nuclear program and Austin’s visit to Israel.
Israel has adopted a policy
of deliberate ambiguity regarding its low-intensity warfare with Iran, the
so-called war between the
wars. A long string of attacks on vessels smuggling Iranian oil
and/or weapons has been attributed to Israel over the last three years. In
recent weeks, however, Israel appears to have abandoned this clandestine
posture and displayed a seeming interest in being blamed for certain actions
against Iran.
Three such operations have
occurred in recent weeks: An airstrike on
weapons depots near Damascus, the sabotage at
Iran’s uranium enrichment facility in Natanz and the Red Sea attack on an
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps vessel used to stage operations and gather
intelligence. Iran, which usually ignores such attacks and focuses instead on
what it perceives as its primary mission — the lifting of the
international sanctions crippling its economy — seems to have had a change
of heart. On April 13, an Israeli-owned merchant ship — MV Hyperion
Ray — was attacked near
the Gulf of Oman in the third operation of its kind in two months. Shortly
after, The New York
Times reported that senior Israeli officials have conveyed
messages to the effect that Israel would not respond to this latest attack,
which caused minor damage, and is seeking instead to restore a measure of calm
in the arena.
One thing is certain: Israel
has been left more or less on its own to face the US alignment with its allies
in striving for a diplomatic resolution of the conflict with Iran rather than
escalating sanctions and clashes. Israel’s new allies in the Gulf are backing
it up, in silence, but on the real front vis-a-vis the world, Israel stands
glaringly alone.
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