IS THE FUTURE OF ISRAEL IN DANGER?

Israel serves as a military extension of the U.S. in the Middle East. Its population and military speak, read, and understand, high-level English. It stores huge amounts of munitions and tests weapons and weapons systems; it's scientists and engineers work closely with the American military. It is a major source of top-quality intelligence for the U.S. And, if push comes to shove, it is a U.S. fighting force of huge capacity and fire power. And the cost of all this, relative to the U.S. military budget, is miniscule. U.S. presidents did not maintain the relationship with Israel out of love but rather out of benefit and need.

(As an example, Israel intelligence and battle plans, if used appropriately, would have prevented or minimized the Iraq fiasco. Bush and Cheney learned this belatedly primarily because they did not understand what Israel was providing to the U.S. when they entered office.)

Obama will learn the lesson quickly. The people he has chosen to serve as advisers and cabinet members are not "Yes men and Yes women." They also have substantial knowledge of and experience with Israel.

Look at a map. Israel, Eqypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, are lined up against Iran - the future enemy. Syria and Lebanon are cannon fodder in any future confrontation. Iraq has always hated Iran, so even with independence?? from the U.S., they are part of the anti-Iran coalition. Of all of these countries, Israel is militarily the strongest.

The money-driven European nations know the drill. They either keep out of the way or join forces or send forces in the event of a confrontation with Iran. Barack's real problem is to get those countries to join the anti-nuclear stance of the U.S. Israel knows Iran's nuclear sites should have been attacked and set back in their nuclear programs. Bush left the US decision to support such a strike to Obama. Let's see what happens.

The Islamic world's attack capacity - a factor of at least 5 greater than defensive capacity - is no where near what's needed to endanger Israel, with the single exception of Iran's nuclear capability. And that is a worry for the Western world no less than for Israel.

The Gaza War is a training ground for future conflict between the Islamic world and the Western world. Israel is paying the price for that Western-world training. It will be repaid many times over when this type of war is again initiated by the Arabs. The goal of such a future war, as is true of all wars, is economic.

Finally,"Oil Money" and oil itself from the Arab world is not enough of an incentive for consumer nations to destroy trade relations with the U.S. The future of energy supply lies in non-carbon-based fuels. Perhaps the major question that remains unanswered is the position of China in the relationships that would be called into question in the event of a confrontation between the developing world and the more advanced nations. China is getting a taste of the huge amount of wealth at stake in a future confrontation. At this point, it is difficult to determine with any security if China will weigh in as an ally of the Muslim world and the more backward nations to position itself for the real economic/market confrontation with the Western world that has to come. This requires a whole different analysis.

Though the Moslem world, in its religious dependency and primitive educational and economic systems, has convinced itself that Israel is the root cause of its misery and is therefore only worthy of extermination, it is unlikely that despite its numerical superiority, it can prevail in a war of any magnitude against that country. The Gaza war being waged at this time is providing clear evidence that if they attack Israel, they are doomed to defeat notwithstanding Iranian support.