“What does America gain from the US–Israel relationship?” It’s a question asked frequently by cultural elites, as well as by college students and young graduates. With the State of Israel celebrating its independence day—Yom Ha’Atzmaut—this past week against the backdrop of a still-raging war in Gaza and ever-escalating tensions with Iran, it’s worth addressing this concern head-on.
The reality is that America benefits in many ways from its close relationship with Israel. Perhaps the most obvious is in enhanced national security and deterrence on the world stage.
Simply put, Israel’s enemies are America’s enemies.
Time and again, we see Israel take military or covert action against opponents who have American blood on their hands.
Consider, as but one example, the American tragedy at the remote Tower 22 military outpost, located in the far northeastern corner of Jordan near the tripoint with Syria and Iraq.
On January 28, 2024, Iran-backed terrorist militias in Iraq launched a drone assault at Tower 22—one attack drone evaded the outpost’s aerial defenses, striking the base and killing three US soldiers while injuring 47 more.
The soldiers’ deaths were needless but all-too-predictable, coming as they did after the Biden administration refused, for months, to respond to more than 160 separate Iran-backed attacks on US military bases in the Middle East in the months following Hamas’ attack on Israel.
On April 1, 2024, the Israel Defense Forces eliminated a top Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander, Mohammad Reza Zahedi, in a targeted strike on an auxiliary building adjoining the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria.
Even if Zahedi was not the one who literally ordered that precise drone launch, the deterrent effect against Iran-backed Islamist thugs seeking to maim and kill American military assets overseas was the same.
Truthfully, this same dynamic holds every time Israel takes out an Iranian military or intelligence asset.
Iran is directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers and Marines via its infamous roadside improvised explosive devices deployed during the Iraq War. Via its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah, it was also unequivocally culpable for the April 1983 US embassy bombing in Beirut and the October 1983 Beirut barracks bombings that killed 63 innocent civilians and 241 US Marine Corps personnel, respectively.
Other than al-Qaeda and perhaps the Iranian regime itself, no terrorist organization has more American blood on its hands than Hezbollah.
On July 30, 2024, the Israel Defense Forces eliminated top-ranking Hezbollah military commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut. Shukr was not merely responsible for the mass murder of 12 Druze (Israeli-Arab) children playing soccer in the Golan Heights the weekend prior, he was also one of the top-ranking Hezbollah officials culpable for the Beirut barracks mass slaughter of US Marines. The State Department had long labeled Fuad Shukr a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” and put a $5 million bounty on his head after the Marine barracks bombing.
Decades of inaction followed, but the IDF delivered the goods on July 30, 2024, sending an arch-terrorist with American blood on his hands to the ash heap of history.
History repeated itself less than two months later when the IDF finally decided to escalate meaningfully its military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon after nearly a year of rocket fire that had systematically depopulated the Israeli north.
On September 20, 2024, another Israeli airstrike in Beirut eliminated senior Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil. Aqil, like Shukr, had long been classified by the State Department as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” due to his instrumental role in the lethal truck bombing at the US embassy in Beirut. Aqil’s bounty, in fact, was two million dollars higher than Shukr’s.
One week later, the IDF delivered the Hezbollah grand prize: Hassan Nasrallah, who had led the outfit for more than three decades as its secretary-general, was eliminated in a massive Beirut blast just minutes after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finished a fiery speech at the United Nations.
The Nasrallah strike, in turn, came on the heels of a daring, sophisticated, and brilliant Mossad operation carried out against Hezbollah commandos in Lebanon and Syria: mass Israeli-orchestrated explosions of Hezbollah-held personal pagers, walkie-talkies, and other handheld devices.
Overall, Israel decimated nearly the entirety of Hezbollah’s organizational leadership in a matter of weeks in September 2024.
In righteously eliminating so many high-ranking Hezbollah leaders in such a short span, the IDF performed a remarkable public service for the United States military and the American people—a just retribution for the terrible deeds of murderous arch-jihadists with tremendous American blood on their hands, decades in the making on all counts.
Nor was the IDF, during this crucial 2024 stretch, preoccupied with Hezbollah to the exclusion of other jihadist outfits. In a stunning but largely unrelated targeted assassination that followed the Fuad Shukr assassination in Beirut less than 12 hours later, Israel also eliminated Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh, one of the masterminds of the October 7, 2023, massacre, in Tehran.
Israel did it again on October 16, 2024, eliminating Yahya Sinwar—the chief architect of the Simchat Torah Massacre and the longtime organizational leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip—during a chance encounter in Rafah, Hamas’s southernmost stronghold in the Gaza Strip.
Notably, Israel would not have been able to hunt down Sinwar if Prime Minister Netanyahu had listened to weak-minded Western leaders, such as President Biden, who adamantly opposed an IDF incursion into Rafah.
The overall message sent by Israel from these high-profile 2024 strikes could not have been clearer: We can, and we will, come after you—no matter where you try to hide.
Pure, unadulterated power is the lingua franca of Middle East geopolitics—a point often lost on many Americans and other holier-than-thou Westerners, but rarely lost on hardheaded Israelis.
And if America adopts a similar sober approach to Islamism, that would be yet another tremendous gift of the US-Israel relationship.
Happy independence day, Israel. Keep on fighting the bad guys. By doing so, you’re actually helping all of us.
Josh Hammer is Newsweek senior editor-at-large and author of the new book, “Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West” (Radius Book Group), from which this is adapted.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
