The Passionate Attachment: America's Involvement with Israel, 1947 to the Present

Israel receives more than one-fourth of the U.S. foreign aid budget, but with its high level of militarization, it must sell weapons to survive, note the authors. Israel's dubious armaments customers include South Africa, Iran, Latin American and African dictatorships. George Ball, former undersecretary of State, and his son Douglas ( Financial Failure and Confederate Defeat ) argue that Israel is no longer an indispensable protective shield for America's Middle East interests. Sharply curtailing U.S. aid, they suggest, would force Israel to get its house in order. The Israeli economy, they point out, is smothered with state-owned, incompetent, unprofitable industries and stifling bureaucracy plus the staggering costs of its military and its colonization program in the Occupied Territories. From Eisenhower to Bush, the Balls trace a shift in U.S. policy toward an accommodation to what they see as Israel's obstruction of the peace process. They advocate Palestinian self-determination with limitations on the arms permitted in an independent Palestinian state. An important, powerful book. (Nov.)