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So the US helped fund this in 2011. And now they won’t buy more because Israel refuses to supply the source code. As far as I know the US does not supply the so

So the US helped fund this in 2011. And now they won’t buy more because Israel refuses to supply the source code. As far as I know the US does not supply the source code of the Patriot batteries to foreign customers as well. So this should be no surprise even if it was partially funded by the Obama administration. Or maybe they are just bad at making deals.

phendrenad2 7y ago
Seems to me like that 1.5B was worth it to keep our ally secure, and trying to use it in the US was kinda an afterthought. Making our own parallel version is probably also worth it so that in the exchange of source code between the two countries it doesn't fall through the seam and get stolen or something, but that's just my armchair general opinion.
- Supermancho 7y ago
  > 1.5B was worth it to keep our ally secure, and trying to use it in the US was kinda an afterthought There are still people who believe congresscritters read (or even AUTHOR!) their own bills, because they say so and that these kinds of handshake agreements between countries are purely popaganda (re: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22507605 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22507605).
- animalnewbie 7y ago
  Serious question- how do you classify Israel as an ally? Israel didn't participate in the (bogus I must say) Iraq war, litmus test for US allies. Israel has actually never went to war for US. Israel has actually never done anything for the US. Israel actually sunk USS liberty and killed American soldiers in the hope of pulling america into a war (by pretending it was someone else). LB Johnson was also involved but that still doesn't make Israel an ally of US.
  - missosoup 7y ago
    Israel - US relationship is more of a parasite/host than ally/ally one.
    - mirimir 7y ago
      Maybe it's more like an informal colony.
  - YZF 7y ago
    Israel would have been happy to participate. It's the coalition of arab countries that the US formed that would not accept Israel. In fact the US pressured Israel to not retaliate to Iraqi missiles fired at them. So here's litmus test, what other country would accept a US request to not retaliate to ballistic missiles fired at them. So maybe Israel is US's only ally.
    - Udik 7y ago
      Why would have Israel retaliated if the US was already doing the job for them?
      - djwhsbxh 7y ago
        Because only Europeans are that lazy. Most countrys with the ability to do so prefer to handle their own defense since an ally might not handle it the same way you would or with the same priorities.
        Veen 7y ago
        What an ignorant comment. Hundreds of British soldiers died fighting alongside America in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia. (Plus hundreds more in Ireland killed by terrorist groups in part funded by donations from US citizens)
        dang 7y ago
        Please don't feed an egregious comment by replying. Flag it instead. This is in the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
      - YZF 7y ago
        It wasn't doing such a great job. It was telling Israel sit tight we're going after those launchers and every day missiles kept falling. There was fear and tremendous public pressure for action.
  - mirimir 7y ago
    That was during the Six Day War in '67. As I recall, the US had threatened to wipe out Israel's air forces if they attacked Cairo. And the US did that because the Soviets had threatened to nuke Tel Aviv if Israel did that, given their alliance with Egypt. So that was perhaps the context for the Liberty attack. And it could have triggered WWIII.
  - mschuster91 7y ago
    > Serious question- how do you classify Israel as an ally? Number of reasons: 1) History. Us Germans tried to exterminate all Jews (and thank God we failed), while the USA and Great Britain, the colonial power of Palestine, fought against Germany. It made sense that after WW2, Israel was founded as a "safe haven" for Jewish life, backed by USA/UK. 2) Israel is the only real democracy in the entire region. Yes, Netanyahu has attacked democratic institution and basic democratic decency, but still: Israel is and likely will remain a democracy, a democracy allied to the US right in the region where the biggest oil reserves are. 3) While Israel does have their own weapons program, they are a good customer of US arms. Some of their budget is actually paid by US Congress, but well, as long as the end result is that Israel uses US weapons and the people employed in the districts of the Congressmen approving these deals keep their jobs, there is no real problem. 4) Intelligence service cooperation. The Mossad is one of the best intelligence services there is, rivaled IMO only by NSA/CIA.
    - Udik 7y ago
      I think the GP asked which actions by Israel show that it is an ally of the US, so the first point seems absolutely irrelevant. Btw, the Soviet Union had an equal role fighting Germany in WW2, liberated Auschwitz and was the first country to recognise Israel. Is Israel a special ally of Russia? No. The second point is also totally irrelevant: the other best ally of the US in the region, Saudi Arabia, is an absolute monarchy. The US never had a problem overthrowing democratic governments to replace them with dictatorships or supporting ferocious dictators as long as they advanced its goals. This talk of democracy as a value to support is just spin to justify attacking some countries, when it suits. The third point is also irrelevant: Israel receives almost $4 billion is military aid from the US- this proves that the US is an ally of Israel, but again, is Israel an ally of the US? The fourth point is the only one that barely holds. Yes, the Israeli intelligence cooperates with the US (but also spies on the US at the highest levels: see for example [1]- something that should have been a huge scandal and received almost zero reporting). But one wonders how much of Israeli intelligence helps solving problems that Israel itself has created or that are relevant to the US only because Israel is in the area. 1 https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/12/israel-white-house-spying-devices-1491351 https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/12/israel-white-house...
  - myth_drannon 7y ago
    Israel did join the war, it just didn't advertise it. You can read plenty of accounts on it. Boots on the ground, mostly Scad launcher hunters.
  - stale2002 7y ago
    > how do you classify Israel as an ally? Because the US government classifies them as an ally. According to the official, military experts and generals, they treat Israel as a military ally.
  - fortran77 7y ago
    It's already new new week here in Tel Aviv, but I'd suspect that most of Hacker News readers are in the United States. And it's telling that the people who hate Israel and support terrorism in the mid-east wait until the Jewish Sabbath, when Jews don't use computers or write, to further anti-Israel and anti-Jewish propaganda.
    - cma 7y ago
      I only see the comment mention Israel, not Judaism. There’s a day of the week where a country can’t be criticized, and it extends to two days because of time zones?
      - fortran77 7y ago
        When they mention conspiracy theories that people who support Israel have undue "control" over the Congress (or bribe them, as someone here said), they're using old anti-Semitic tropes, as you are well aware.
        cma 7y ago
        His post doesn't say any of that, as you are well aware.
notavalleyman 7y ago
You may be wrong on a few fronts here. Firstly, Congress funded the 1.5bn, not Obama, and these things are never cash - the funding is in the form of vouchers to spend with US defense contractors. The vouchers are not made available to US allies on the understanding of "our companies will help you develop something, and then you'll share it with us". That was never the deal. The deal is: "the United States Congress would like Raytheon to upskill in missile defense, why don't you work with them and we'll cover your costs".
- sixQuarks 7y ago
  Are these “gifts” on top of the billions of dollars in aid the US gives Israel each year?
  - bpodgursky 7y ago
    No, these kind of transactions are exactly what the "aid" in question consists of. There aren't buckets of cash being airlifted, no-questions-asked.
    - adventured 7y ago
      That's not an entirely accurate picture. There used to be buckets of economic cash. Total aid to Israel is around $230 billion for the post WW2 era (primarily in the 1970-2020 time frame). Of that, $34 billion was economic aid. In the 1970s and 1980s the US was funding the equivalent of 3-5% percent of Israel's economy directly with economic aid (their economy only crossed over $100b in GDP as of 1995; if you go back to the 1970s and 1980s, they had a relatively tiny economy, so that $34b in economic aid was outsized in relation at the time it was being dispursed). Israel no longer needs the economic aid they used to, so that component has declined to being routinely zero.
  - golergka 7y ago
    All the "aid" to Israel (as well as to many other countries around the world, including many Israeli rivals in the region) consists of this vouchers. It "helps" Israel much less than it helps congressmen keep military jobs in their districts.
alexandercrohde 7y ago
Right. I can't blame Israel, given America's track-record of weaponizing all vulnerabilities. I also can't blame America. Without secure computing nobody can know whom to trust.
- rapsey 7y ago
  > I can't blame Israel, given America's track-record of weaponizing all vulnerabilities Israel is right behind them in this regard.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 7y ago
    Shhhhhh ;]
- azinman2 7y ago
  Sounds like this should have been agreed upon in the beginning during the contract negotiations.
- petra 7y ago
  This isn't about protecting their technology from copying ?

phendrenad2 7y ago

Seems to me like that 1.5B was worth it to keep our ally secure, and trying to use it in the US was kinda an afterthought. Making our own parallel version is probably also worth it so that in the exchange of source code between the two countries it doesn't fall through the seam and get stolen or something, but that's just my armchair general opinion.

Supermancho 7y ago
> 1.5B was worth it to keep our ally secure, and trying to use it in the US was kinda an afterthought There are still people who believe congresscritters read (or even AUTHOR!) their own bills, because they say so and that these kinds of handshake agreements between countries are purely popaganda (re: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22507605 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22507605).
animalnewbie 7y ago
Serious question- how do you classify Israel as an ally? Israel didn't participate in the (bogus I must say) Iraq war, litmus test for US allies. Israel has actually never went to war for US. Israel has actually never done anything for the US. Israel actually sunk USS liberty and killed American soldiers in the hope of pulling america into a war (by pretending it was someone else). LB Johnson was also involved but that still doesn't make Israel an ally of US.
- missosoup 7y ago
  Israel - US relationship is more of a parasite/host than ally/ally one.
  - mirimir 7y ago
    Maybe it's more like an informal colony.
- YZF 7y ago
  Israel would have been happy to participate. It's the coalition of arab countries that the US formed that would not accept Israel. In fact the US pressured Israel to not retaliate to Iraqi missiles fired at them. So here's litmus test, what other country would accept a US request to not retaliate to ballistic missiles fired at them. So maybe Israel is US's only ally.
  - Udik 7y ago
    Why would have Israel retaliated if the US was already doing the job for them?
    - djwhsbxh 7y ago
      Because only Europeans are that lazy. Most countrys with the ability to do so prefer to handle their own defense since an ally might not handle it the same way you would or with the same priorities.
      - Veen 7y ago
        What an ignorant comment. Hundreds of British soldiers died fighting alongside America in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia. (Plus hundreds more in Ireland killed by terrorist groups in part funded by donations from US citizens)
        dang 7y ago
        Please don't feed an egregious comment by replying. Flag it instead. This is in the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
    - YZF 7y ago
      It wasn't doing such a great job. It was telling Israel sit tight we're going after those launchers and every day missiles kept falling. There was fear and tremendous public pressure for action.
- mirimir 7y ago
  That was during the Six Day War in '67. As I recall, the US had threatened to wipe out Israel's air forces if they attacked Cairo. And the US did that because the Soviets had threatened to nuke Tel Aviv if Israel did that, given their alliance with Egypt. So that was perhaps the context for the Liberty attack. And it could have triggered WWIII.
- mschuster91 7y ago
  > Serious question- how do you classify Israel as an ally? Number of reasons: 1) History. Us Germans tried to exterminate all Jews (and thank God we failed), while the USA and Great Britain, the colonial power of Palestine, fought against Germany. It made sense that after WW2, Israel was founded as a "safe haven" for Jewish life, backed by USA/UK. 2) Israel is the only real democracy in the entire region. Yes, Netanyahu has attacked democratic institution and basic democratic decency, but still: Israel is and likely will remain a democracy, a democracy allied to the US right in the region where the biggest oil reserves are. 3) While Israel does have their own weapons program, they are a good customer of US arms. Some of their budget is actually paid by US Congress, but well, as long as the end result is that Israel uses US weapons and the people employed in the districts of the Congressmen approving these deals keep their jobs, there is no real problem. 4) Intelligence service cooperation. The Mossad is one of the best intelligence services there is, rivaled IMO only by NSA/CIA.
  - Udik 7y ago
    I think the GP asked which actions by Israel show that it is an ally of the US, so the first point seems absolutely irrelevant. Btw, the Soviet Union had an equal role fighting Germany in WW2, liberated Auschwitz and was the first country to recognise Israel. Is Israel a special ally of Russia? No. The second point is also totally irrelevant: the other best ally of the US in the region, Saudi Arabia, is an absolute monarchy. The US never had a problem overthrowing democratic governments to replace them with dictatorships or supporting ferocious dictators as long as they advanced its goals. This talk of democracy as a value to support is just spin to justify attacking some countries, when it suits. The third point is also irrelevant: Israel receives almost $4 billion is military aid from the US- this proves that the US is an ally of Israel, but again, is Israel an ally of the US? The fourth point is the only one that barely holds. Yes, the Israeli intelligence cooperates with the US (but also spies on the US at the highest levels: see for example [1]- something that should have been a huge scandal and received almost zero reporting). But one wonders how much of Israeli intelligence helps solving problems that Israel itself has created or that are relevant to the US only because Israel is in the area. 1 https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/12/israel-white-house-spying-devices-1491351 https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/12/israel-white-house...
- myth_drannon 7y ago
  Israel did join the war, it just didn't advertise it. You can read plenty of accounts on it. Boots on the ground, mostly Scad launcher hunters.
- stale2002 7y ago
  > how do you classify Israel as an ally? Because the US government classifies them as an ally. According to the official, military experts and generals, they treat Israel as a military ally.
- fortran77 7y ago
  It's already new new week here in Tel Aviv, but I'd suspect that most of Hacker News readers are in the United States. And it's telling that the people who hate Israel and support terrorism in the mid-east wait until the Jewish Sabbath, when Jews don't use computers or write, to further anti-Israel and anti-Jewish propaganda.
  - cma 7y ago
    I only see the comment mention Israel, not Judaism. There’s a day of the week where a country can’t be criticized, and it extends to two days because of time zones?
    - fortran77 7y ago
      When they mention conspiracy theories that people who support Israel have undue "control" over the Congress (or bribe them, as someone here said), they're using old anti-Semitic tropes, as you are well aware.
      - cma 7y ago
        His post doesn't say any of that, as you are well aware.

notavalleyman 7y ago

You may be wrong on a few fronts here. Firstly, Congress funded the 1.5bn, not Obama, and these things are never cash - the funding is in the form of vouchers to spend with US defense contractors. The vouchers are not made available to US allies on the understanding of "our companies will help you develop something, and then you'll share it with us". That was never the deal. The deal is: "the United States Congress would like Raytheon to upskill in missile defense, why don't you work with them and we'll cover your costs".

sixQuarks 7y ago
Are these “gifts” on top of the billions of dollars in aid the US gives Israel each year?
- bpodgursky 7y ago
  No, these kind of transactions are exactly what the "aid" in question consists of. There aren't buckets of cash being airlifted, no-questions-asked.
  - adventured 7y ago
    That's not an entirely accurate picture. There used to be buckets of economic cash. Total aid to Israel is around $230 billion for the post WW2 era (primarily in the 1970-2020 time frame). Of that, $34 billion was economic aid. In the 1970s and 1980s the US was funding the equivalent of 3-5% percent of Israel's economy directly with economic aid (their economy only crossed over $100b in GDP as of 1995; if you go back to the 1970s and 1980s, they had a relatively tiny economy, so that $34b in economic aid was outsized in relation at the time it was being dispursed). Israel no longer needs the economic aid they used to, so that component has declined to being routinely zero.
- golergka 7y ago
  All the "aid" to Israel (as well as to many other countries around the world, including many Israeli rivals in the region) consists of this vouchers. It "helps" Israel much less than it helps congressmen keep military jobs in their districts.

alexandercrohde 7y ago

Right. I can't blame Israel, given America's track-record of weaponizing all vulnerabilities. I also can't blame America. Without secure computing nobody can know whom to trust.

rapsey 7y ago
> I can't blame Israel, given America's track-record of weaponizing all vulnerabilities Israel is right behind them in this regard.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 7y ago
  Shhhhhh ;]
azinman2 7y ago
Sounds like this should have been agreed upon in the beginning during the contract negotiations.
petra 7y ago
This isn't about protecting their technology from copying ?