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Source: https://unherd.com/2026/07/israel-doesnt-need-friends/
Foreign Threats Breed Self-Sufficiency
(Unherd) Edward Luttwak - There are people who imagine that cutting American aid would irreparably damage the Jewish state. Yet Israel defeated the Arabs in June 1967, again, as it did in 1948, without any U.S.-supplied weapons. Precisely because of Israel's long history of denials and embargoes by the British and U.S. governments, its nine million people are enough to support disproportionately large and diverse military industries. This state of nine million is one that can research, develop and manufacture the world's heaviest battle tank, a full range of tactical and strategic missiles, and the interceptors that inaugurated humanity's first instance of space warfare two years ago. Israelis reacted to the start of U.S. military aid after the Six-Day War with deep, genuine gratitude, eagerly pursuing any opportunity to reciprocate. Israel's Mossad was inside the Soviet Union, which the CIA could only watch from afar, and offered up all it uncovered. After its October 1973 tank-warfare victories, Israel supplied the U.S. Army's tacticians with every bit of data for their, and NATO's, revolutionary "fight outnumbered and win" manuals, explicitly based on the desperate Golan Heights fight in which 200 Israeli tanks destroyed four times as many Soviet-built Syrian tanks. In my many encounters in Israel over the years, I have heard a great eagerness to contribute Israel's research and development talents, whose fruits are now built into some of the most capable U.S. weapons, most conspicuously in the F-35 fighter jet, whose innovative helmet-mounted piloting system was entirely developed in Israel. Israel's pilots sat in their cockpits for hours to reach and bomb Iran's distant missile launchers, which were attacking U.S. bases and U.S. allies, as well as Israel itself. Israel would never refuse any military help it could provide, as countless U.S. officers have known for decades. The writer is a contractual strategic consultant for the U.S. government.