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

Taking up the warning in George Washington's Farewell Address that Americans should avoid "a passionate attachment" to another nation which could create "the illusion of a common interest ...where no common interest exists", the authors examine America's 40-year involvement with the Middle East. They trace the sequence of events which brought the US into a relationship unique in its history, and consider the financial cost of American aid to Israel which, they claim, well exceeds the total US payments to reconstruct post-war Europe. Also considered is the political and moral cost of this attachment: the US denouncing arms sales as destabilizing the Middle East; championing national self-determination, and accepting Israeli arguments for expansion into the West bank.