The Israeli Arms Connection

national | miscellaneous | news report Sunday March 30, 2003 14:06 by newshound

Jerusalem - Early in the American invasion of Iraq, amid one of the air assaults, an unmanned aircraft meant to confuse enemy radar fell to the ground in Baghdad. In the wreckage, Iraqis discovered a fragment marked with the manufacturer's signature and origin - "Taas Jerusalem" - a taunting declaration, as if fired from the Jewish state itself.

Jerusalem - Early in the American invasion of Iraq, amid one of the air assaults, an unmanned aircraft meant to confuse enemy radar fell to the ground in Baghdad.

In the wreckage, Iraqis discovered a fragment marked with the manufacturer's signature and origin - "Taas Jerusalem" - a taunting declaration, as if fired from the Jewish state itself.

"We found a missile that had fallen in southern Baghdad," Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri announced. "The missile did not explode and God be praised, it exposed Zionism's part in the aggression."

Despite vigorous U.S. attempts to keep Israel on the sidelines of the war, at turn after turn, it seems the country is cropping up in the unfolding campaign.

From the renewed peace process supposed to arrive after the war to U.S. protection from Scud attacks to battlefield technology it supplies to America, Israel is in fact much closer to the action than the official Western line suggests.

As one of the world's top arms exporters, the country has sold the United States an array of equipment that is either being used or could be employed in Iraq. It has supplied the American military with sophisticated decoys, such as the one found Saturday, as well as precision air-to-surface missiles on B-52 bombers, high-tech targeting systems, and onboard computers and armor for the Bradley fighting vehicles rolling across the Iraqi desert, according to military experts and analyses of Israeli arms sales. It also has designed and manufactured a host of other components that permeate the U.S. arsenal.

And while Israel is not at the spearhead, its military contribution provides yet more fuel for Arab convictions that the Jewish state is behind the aggression.

"The perception is that there is no difference between the U.S. and Israel," said Mustafa Al-Sayyid, a political scientist at American University in Cairo.

He said that while most people in the region don't believe the United States depends on Israel for its military machinery, they regard the two countries as in lockstep. "And the more this war continues, hostility to the U.S. and Israel will increase," he said.

Israeli arms specialists point out that, overall, the U.S. use of the country's technology is minimal, mostly confined to niche items. They say the relationship is being manipulated and exaggerated, but acknowledge that any use of Israeli equipment against an Arab adversary is incendiary.

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