Smaug, I agree with you that Israel has an excellent air force and that Russian air force lack funds and training.
As for the military aid, ummmm yes, so? We protect Israel because if we didnt give them that funding, there would be a good chance they would dissapear off the face of the map. It would be quite literaly another holocaust(if you think the arabs wouldnt try to wipe out all the jews, you haven't read yer history).
I agree we have to help the jews so they won't "dissapear off the face of the map". But I think in recent years we've gone a little bit too far. There are many groups of people on this earth that face persecution, no offense to jews in anyway but what makes Jews so special to qualify for the massive amount of support from US? The current situation in the middle east is seriously messed up, and really, Israel is the heart of it all. All unrest and stuffs like Bin Laden and al queda resulted from our over-zealous support for Israel. Come on, look at Sharone. Yeah, I am sure his true intent is to peace talk.
On the other hand, Jews have had it pretty rough throughout history. There was an interesting point we discovered in a discussion about this topic in one of my college classes, and it was that the western nations (US, England, etc) established Israel partly because they didn't want that many Jews in their nations. It's a different perspective, a realistical way to see that the intent to establish Israel wasn't purely humanitarian.
But, if one really look at history, the Palenstianian had it pretty bad when Isreal was established. Mainly they lost their land, their houses, practically everything they had. And, under the UN edict, Israel was suppose to give the Palenstianians right to claim their land or be offered a financial "rebate" for their lost. None of that happened. Imagine if you have no nation to back you up... you show your passport and basically you're a nobody with no true nation and at the mercy of other nations to take you on a humanitarian basis. I don't know about you, but somehow I don't think i would be too happy about it. It's ironic that Israel did this to them, since Jews have been treated the same way before. I guess they just wanted to keep the hate cycle going...
One more note, I remember Sharone made an official statement in front of Israel's equivalent of our Congress saying that "we have the Americans by their noses" and that they can do practically anything they wanted to regarding attacks on Palenstianians. It caused an uproar in the US and Bush had to make an countering statement basically saying you better watch your mouth. Sharone retracted his statement later, but this just goes to show you that maybe, just maybe, we might be "helping" Israel too much to the point that we are indeed the sucker of the deal. Don't forget our liberal media, including CNN to abcnews news. They always favor Israel in some form or the other. And like somebody here in the thread said before about Jewish bankers, Jews have a huge influence on our governmental decisions. I had to do a research about media bias and that's pretty much a given fact that all US media tend to be on the liberal side and pro-Jewish. It's all about portraying image. Honestly, how many of us have actually been over to the middle east to assess the situation for ourselves? So, if most of America watch CNN or the other major news networks, and these networks keep portraying an image where Jews are the victim, we will inevitably have this view set in our mind resulting in "blind" support for Jews. I am not saying we shouldn't help Israel, but if you pay attention to the way the news media portray Jews and Palenstianians, the subtle points can be seen.
oops sorry for the essay