Serious question for this board. A vet buddy (and lurker here) and I were discussing the current thing, and we were wondering if our "greatest ally" has ever helped us militarily. We've searched for IDF in Iraq, Afghanistan, and even Vietnam, and it would appear that Israel never sent troops or participated in combat operations in any of those theaters as our allies. I've tried a bunch of different search terms to come up with anything even tangential, and nothing.
We're both fully awake but this is a massive redpill for both of us at the moment. I don't want to be hasty in the conclusion that our "greatest ally" has never actually acted as an ally, so I wanted to see if anons knew of specific, meaningful examples of joint US/IDF operations in the conflicts concerning our interests and not just assassinations / targeted hits.
So, any anons aware of the IDF actually acting as allied forces in any conflict?
So we helped them defend themselves, but they didn't commit any troops to help us stop them getting attacked. Strange, isn't it?
Yes, in many cases it is exactly that.
For Desert Storm, which like all wars had its own set of cabal involvement problems, Israel joining that conflict at that time would have fractured the coalition (Syria and Turkey would have dropped out and not let us over fly for our air sorties, Saudi Arabia would have had a conniption fit with fearing invasion and likely make it difficult to keep bringing in troops or to build bases within their territory). Basically the winning move in that theatre was for Israel not to respond or counter attack Iraq while we were ramping up for invasion.
Saddam understood the political climate of the Middle East very well which is why he lobbed SCUD missiles over at Israel which didn't even have a border with him while the operation was building as Desert Shield. He hoped for a response that would break up the coalition.
However you look at it, Israel's motivation was not to be a good ally then, but to milk the international political capital from refraining from retaliating against Iraq. It was a strategic, politically advantageous action for Israel which also aligned with our interests and what we were doing at the time.. Heck their whole Iron Dome thing would not have been started if they had decided to respond.
Thank you for the comprehensive responses! So they had some (apparently) legitimate reasons to stay on the sidelines. Regardless, no help from the "greatest ally".