via DefenseTech.
Secret U.S. missile and electro-optics technology was transferred to China recently by Israel, prompting anger from the U.S. and causing a senior Israeli defense official to resign.Read it all here.
The head of defense exports for the Israeli Defense Ministry resigned after a U.S. investigation concluded that technology, including a miniature refrigeration system manufactured by Ricor and used for missiles and in electro-optic equipment, was sent to China, according to the Israeli newspaper Maariv.
Another Israeli news site, Aretz Sheva, reports the U.S. is concerned the technology could ultimately find its way to Iran, which last year sought to buy military equipment from China for its nuclear program.
This is a continuing problem. Quite frankly, after the LAVI issue I thought that the Israelis would get a better handle on things. They haven't though. Additionally Chinese Special Ops personnel train in Israel and they have a famed international security academy that is pumping out Chinese security pros like a pez dispenser.
I'm a friend of Israel but this is disturbing, makes me wonder if our interests actually align and make selling them any high tech gear questionable.
i have been of the view our alliance is a one way street. we keep defending them before the security council yet they dont seem to be giving anything that makes it seem like they are moving towards international norm standards or repaying with actions their allies. I know they need forces in west bank but they also keep expanding their settlements which is illegal under most peoples views but they dont even think about pulling out their settlements from all Palestinian lands, i know they did Gaza but they should pull them back from all Palestinian lands, not military forces pull back but start pulling back settlements, which would give us a bit of cover for our vetoes. also i fear some of our other allies decisions like France's deal with russia on the mistral and how much tech they gave to russia i dont know on the on board weapons and software systems.
ReplyDeleteHi Joe. A little perspective: Strengthening existing settlements without taking land occupied by Palestinians and displacing them should be OK, since it is usually barren ground. On the other hand this will strengthen the settlements demographically and strategically. Israel's narrow "waistline" and the overlooking hills on the major population centers in the plains invite rocket attacks not just by organised Palestinian resistance or jihadi groups, but also from single revenging individuals with a missile or manpad. This is what these settlements are intended to prevent. Otherwise we, in the plains, do not have a relaxed, safe and productive life. Take into account the prevalent culture of jihad and revenge in Arab society and you have an impossible situation. As an old grunt you KNOW that stopping aggression is only possible with boots on the ground on the hills overlooking your city; it will not be the sophisticated electronics and UPV and other clever solutions or strong walls or electronic fences. Boots on the ground!
DeleteYou also have to remember that this conflict is about a 150 years old and is abetted by outside influences with axes to gring: Europe with 25 million unproductive moslems slowly taking over their cities and welfare systems; recent faile Arab Spring countries with new corrupt and totterig regimes needing distracting the still boiling societies; Iran, Syria and Hizbollah wityh their agenda of Shia-Sunna conflict, with dying civilians in the tens of thousands that the world DOES NOT CARE ABOUT. Why is everybody focusing so falsely on this tiny piece of land in which the rights and freedom are more respected and defended than many, many places on Earth. Freedom to wave your flags of enemy politics - we stop only at the boarder of the ethical or bad taste - like calling out for rape or murder or symbols of the Holocaust (I am a survivor of that period, so I would find it most offensive). And as a final thought: America is a nation of immigrants that conquered the West and South from the Mexicans, the Spanish, the English, the Indians and others that don't come to mind. Is it Kosher to have these territories now, but not the few hundred dunams that would ensure future security and therefore contribute to final peace? Remember, that we are only 6 million Jewish Israelis with another 2 million Arab Israelis all of whom have full citizen's rights but not all the obligations (Army service, etc.). Around us there are 160 million hostile Arabs and further away another 80 million Iranians, with a declared intention of wiping us off the face of the Earth and working to produce Atomic weapons specifically for using it in a Jihad to conquer the whole region. How nice for you to sit so far away in a peaceful society, living the good life, and pass on your unresearched conclusions. Why don't you come for a visit and see for yourself how things are - in perfect safety. Which I could not promise you for the rest of the Middle East.....
@ttmedical.
Deletei'm not going to touch the land issue. i'm too removed, don't understand the politics, geopolitics and history of it. i do understand modern military weapon systems (well some of them). i do understand the need to protect state secrets. i do understand what is expected in an alliance.
why does Israel keep screwing us with the Chinese? i don't understand it and quite honestly its frustrating as hell. more and more in my circle are getting to the point of saying screw them, they keep fucking over us with the Chinese. explain this please.
Hi Solomon! I am a private citizen with an interest in defense matters and I read a lot of blogs and websites - yours included. I have no knowledge of what really happens in defense transactions and what is sold to the Chinese.
DeleteI do know that the USA is the number one friend of my country and it is sincerely honored and loved and respected here. There is cooperation between the defense establishments and I sincerely hope that nothing is done to undermine that.
I can tell you that when I was part of the Army and was privy to sensitive information and when I read the newspapers I knew that a lot of the information reported in them was false, wrong, inaccurate, or just plain disinformation.
Do not take anything printed in these pages as God's truth and check the veracity of that information before you come to conclusions.
However, I must admit, that sometimes acts are committed by individuals in the Army of Ministry of Defense that are reprehensible, but I sincerely hope that they are not the norm.
Israelis believe in friendship and I would not like to see that friendship abused. I can assure you that most of the serving soldiers and defense officials have a high level of morality and integrity, just like in your country.
So go easy...........
maybe theres a hidden agenda, and maybe Israel is doing it with our blessing. or maybe they cant stand Obama.
ReplyDeletethey wouldnt be doing it with our blessing, and i dont care what they think of our president, we have an embargo against china, my dad has a saying, "Dont piss of the banker" and isreal is in need of our financial and military assistance, without it they cease to exist. if theres some hidden agenda thats fine, just not with our money.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI imagine that until the Holocaust is a few more generations behind us, the US is going to give Israel a pass on a lot of things. Isn't that the worst case scenario, a weak Israel gets annhilated (i.e. a bullet for Jewish man, woman and child who can't escape) by the Muslims?
ReplyDeletewell i dont think we have any obligation to just because of the holocaust, this is not about preventing genocide, this is about a modern nation abiding by its committments, if we cant trust them we tell them to find a new banker, period.
DeleteJoe, that is rational thinking. I'm talking reality, where strong memories die hard. The memory of millions of Jews being destroyed, not something people can easily shrug off. Look at Turkey, still occasionally catching flak for the Armenian Genocide which was almost a hundred years ago.
DeleteWell I like seeing Jewish society prosper, but make no mistake they are not an extension of america. They don't see the world like we do and their deepest loyalties lie with themselves not us.
ReplyDeleteIts good that our relationship with them is good, but we are still gentiles to them. And if you really take a deep enough look at Jewish society you will be able to see that aside from trying to illicit our support for their occupation of Palestine that the amity they share for America is not any deeper than it is for any other nationality on earth.
I think they did this to elicit similar support for their state from the Asian Islamic demographic at the UN.
They have a history of sharing the weapons technology that we share with them for 20 years now. Its not a rumor....its a reality. We went to work everyday and paid good money for that research and development what they did didn't help us out at all.
OK. No more advanced joint weapons projects with Israel. They don't have anything to contribute to our technology without us continuously putting them back into the loop when they repeatedly fall behind anyway. The sharing we did was mighty nice and if they cant keep a secret then screw it. The frigging place isn't much bigger than Connecticut anyway.
How we conduct multinational projects in general should be under review.
NATO countries have been a lot better about information security and unlike Israel some of our best technologies have NATO origins. Composite armor, radar, AESA, SADARM artillery etc.
In the near term ongoing joint projects with NATO can go on without much of a hitch. They have made significant contributions and its currently a working relationship. They don't lose anymore information to the reds than we do and when it happens its just unfortunate.
But notably its not 1953 anymore. If you ask me how to make an invention that takes 14 steps to get toast to pop out of a toaster I can draw it for you on a dry erase board in about 5 minutes and mig weld it up for ya in a day or so. There is more ingenuity in America than there is money. So the potential gains at this point are relatively small, but in the long run the risks are pretty big.
Frankly our sales to other countries are a drop in the bucket compared to domestic sales anyway and the resulting financial loss in technological superiority far outweighs the monetary benefit for a few corporations anyway.
Global defense technological progression as a result of this sort of thing has already cost DOD trillions of dollars.
"I'm a friend of Israel but this is disturbing, makes me wonder if our interests actually align and make selling them any high tech gear questionable."
ReplyDeleteThe US is a VERY poor ally.
Unreliable in the extreme.
Ask yourself.
You are in charge of a small country.
You are surrounded on all sides by nations who explicitly, constitutionally, reject your right to exist and frequently announce to cheering crowds, "no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel".
Your main supplier of arms elects a government who's head flies to the nation where that declaration was announced, and says to cheering crowds that YOU. WILL. BE. FORCED. TO. COMPROMISE.
The people who have proclaimed you will be wiped off the map dont have to compromise, you, who have declared you wont be exterminated, must compromise.
Would you look for more friends?
I would.
Lets not dick about here.
Three men kick down your door to beat and rape your wife.
Do *You* compromise so only two of them are allowed to?
Or do you start shooting?
TrT.
Deletename a better friend of Israel than the US. just one. we're far from perfect but we stand by them. so your example of three men kicking down the door is nonsense. your talk about wanting to forge better relations with the Chinese because its in their best interests is also questionable.
hit me with real stuff instead of useless hyperbole and you might convince me. i understand the plight they're in. i understand the issue of being surrounded by enemies. and like i said, i'm a friend, but you can piss friends off and i'm reaching that point.
"name a better friend of Israel than the US"
DeleteYesterday, sure
Today, probably
Tomorrow? Maybe not
Israel was founded with Soviet support remember, not Western.
Alliances come and go (The US and UK spent the 20's and 30's wargaming AGAINST each other.
As I said, look at it from their point of view.
The US has lifted strategic interest in defending Israel, and that just leaves cultural.
Obama threw that out the window in his first week.
Why shouldnt Israel be looking for a partner it can exert a lot more control over?
China ticks a lot of boxes.
Predictable, rich, expansionist, in need of Israeli technological and training expertise, not reliant on middle eastern oil
another point. i'd have felt better if the Saudi's got caught selling the Chinese our F-15's or the European Typhoon. they didn't. it was our buddies the Israeli's that got caught selling our secrets.
ReplyDeleteEXPLAIN THAT!!!
Who we also helped obtain ~250 nuclear weapons....
DeleteWell, maybe if stupid Americans would stop selling advanced weaponry to Israel's enemies (Egypt, Saudi-Arabia, Iraq, and Jordan) in order to maintain Israel's qualitative edge AS REPEATEDLY AGREED TO by the US, or pressuring Israel to surrender strategic depth or allow Israeli civilians to be murdered for the sake of "Peace", maybe Israel would feel obliged to follow its commitments to a bankrupt, has-been Goliath like the US of A.
ReplyDeleteKeep your Chinese play-money, idiots, you'll need it to subsidize Jose and Paco's college education.
Not surprised to see the ignorance about the lie of "Palestine" and the out-and-out Jew-hate on a knuckle-dragger right-wing extremist site like this one. You should consider changing your name, SOLOMON, that's a JEWISH name, you know, nitwit?
let me be clear. FUCK YOU. eat shit. i hope you, your entire family get gang raped by a bunch of wild animals. i want you and your relatives to include those unborn to be sliced open from throat to belly and have to watch their entrails be torn out...and then after that i want you stupid bastards to die. and to repeat myself. FUCK YOU.
DeleteHaha, thank for the laugh while I am stuffing stockings! Christmas Cheer! Have a great one, and I love that you wrote that this morning.
DeleteWill! dude is killing my vibe. it was a simple response to an article by Defense Tech and as the title goes...i don't understand the Israelis. and check this out ....i'm a big supporter of the country and the companies. and when i say that i'm pissed that they're selling our secrets to our biggest enemy today i get this bullshit! amazing!
DeleteI would just like to say that Solomon was the wisest man on earth according to the old testament, perhaps OUR Sol thinks a little highly of himself ;)...Old Testament Solomon didn't have modern armor...neither does new Solomon so maybe there is more in common than preciously suspected..... Merry Christmas :)
DeleteI am right there brother, I wish you could text/email a punch to the nose. It is amazing the pair some people when visiting blog/site. Killer, love your site, I understand and appreciate the Christmas morning rage! Have a great day and keep it going!
Deletewhy are we required to keep isreal in a qualitative edge? no nation is going to go to war with isreal, they have the edge in training, tactics, doctrine, etc. We sell weapons to other nations to keep them in our sphere of influence and not so much china and russia. This is no longer the 1950s, 60s or 70s, and its time for Isreal to mature as a nation and uphold its commitments. not sure what you mean by the myth of Palestine, the original 1949 agreement was a good one and Israels neighbors have even allowed them to keep borders post 1967 war. we aren't allowing civilians to be slaughtered, we have contributed alot of money to helping the iron dome program, and they have military forces in west bank to protect its people, but it doesn't need to be selling OUR technology to the highest bidder.
DeleteSee this only reinforces what I said. Screw sharing technology with these people. I'm not saying be shouldn't continue to be allies and all that, but they can't be trusted with our advanced technology
ReplyDeleteAs a matter of fact in light of all the ignant ass comments I'm just going to copy and paste that shit right here again.
Keith Turk Jr.Tuesday, December 24, 2013 10:13:00 PM
Well I like seeing Jewish society prosper, but make no mistake they are not an extension of america. They don't see the world like we do and their deepest loyalties lie with themselves not us.
Its good that our relationship with them is good, but we are still gentiles to them. And if you really take a deep enough look at Jewish society you will be able to see that aside from trying to illicit our support for their occupation of Palestine that the amity they share for America is not any deeper than it is for any other nationality on earth.
I think they did this to elicit similar support for their state from the Asian Islamic demographic at the UN.
They have a history of sharing the weapons technology that we share with them for 20 years now. Its not a rumor....its a reality. We went to work everyday and paid good money for that research and development what they did didn't help us out at all.
OK. No more advanced joint weapons projects with Israel. They don't have anything to contribute to our technology without us continuously putting them back into the loop when they repeatedly fall behind anyway. The sharing we did was mighty nice and if they cant keep a secret then screw it. The frigging place isn't much bigger than Connecticut anyway.
How we conduct multinational projects in general should be under review.
NATO countries have been a lot better about information security and unlike Israel some of our best technologies have NATO origins. Composite armor, radar, AESA, SADARM artillery etc.
In the near term ongoing joint projects with NATO can go on without much of a hitch. They have made significant contributions and its currently a working relationship. They don't lose anymore information to the reds than we do and when it happens its just unfortunate.
But notably its not 1953 anymore. If you ask me how to make an invention that takes 14 steps to get toast to pop out of a toaster I can draw it for you on a dry erase board in about 5 minutes and mig weld it up for ya in a day or so. There is more ingenuity in America than there is money. So the potential gains at this point are relatively small, but in the long run the risks are pretty big.
Frankly our sales to other countries are a drop in the bucket compared to domestic sales anyway and the resulting financial loss in technological superiority far outweighs the monetary benefit for a few corporations anyway.
Global defense technological progression as a result of this sort of thing has already cost DOD trillions of dollars.
The Israelis want to peel the Chinese away from supporting countries such as Iran, with technology transfers. They have powerful allies in Washington, so they don't care if they screw us over to do it. With Obama making the decisions he has, they probably feel even more justified in their actions.
ReplyDeleteDrake, this isnt about Obama, all presidents have given unqualified and unfettered support to Isreal, the GOP are the strongest cheerleaders and while i am not the biggest fan of the president there isnt anything here another president would do
DeleteFollow you're own advice.
Deletethis isnt anything new by the way on the part of isreal, two decades ago you had this from the CIA to congress:
ReplyDeletesnippet of the first part of the article from '93
Israel has sold advanced military technology to China for more than a decade and is moving to expand its cooperation with Beijing, says R. James Woolsey, the Director of Central Intelligence.
The C.I.A. assessment was provided in written responses to questions by the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. The committee made the assessment public last week as part of a report on recent hearings it conducted on "proliferation threats of the 1990's," a committee aide said on Monday.
There have been many news reports about the sale of Israeli military technology to China, which did not establish diplomatic relations with Israel until 1992, and the Rand Corporation has made similar assessments. The C.I.A.'s response to the committee was reported on Monday by NBC News and confirmed by the aide. Jets, Missiles and Tanks
The C.I.A. says China has been acquiring advanced military technology from Israel for more than a decade on programs for jet fighters, air-to-air missiles and tanks. The agency said the sale of Israeli military technology to China "may be several billion dollars."
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/10/13/world/israel-sells-arms-to-china-us-says.html
This isn't anything new. Israel is first and foremost for Israel. They always have been, they always will be. They will seek advantage and favor where they can. The thing that pisses me off is the US's continued unqualified support (read $$$) in the face of being continuously used (and spied on) by the Israeli government.
ReplyDeleteI have operated with Israelis and they are, to a man, professional, competent, loyal, and genuinely appreciate the support given by the US. It is the politicians that continually bite the hand that feeds them. This goes all the way back to Dayan.
They are playing a dangerous game as a new generation is coming of age in this country. One that doesn't share a blind loyalty without reciprocation. Israel should be careful for what it wishes for. They might find the Chinese to be a bit more "demanding" than we have been.