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

Ball, George W.; Ball, Douglas B.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393029336 ISBN 13: 9780393029338

Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc, 1992

Synopsis

An examination of America's four-decade entanglement in Middle Eastern politics traces the sequence of events that brought the United States to the point where its policies are manipulated by an ally.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Israel receives more than one-fourth of the U.S. foreign aid budget, but with its high level of militarization, it must sell weapons to survive, note the authors. Israel's dubious armaments customers include South Africa, Iran, Latin American and African dictatorships. George Ball, former undersecretary of State, and his son Douglas ( Financial Failure and Confederate Defeat ) argue that Israel is no longer an indispensable protective shield for America's Middle East interests. Sharply curtailing U.S. aid, they suggest, would force Israel to get its house in order. The Israeli economy, they point out, is smothered with state-owned, incompetent, unprofitable industries and stifling bureaucracy plus the staggering costs of its military and its colonization program in the Occupied Territories. From Eisenhower to Bush, the Balls trace a shift in U.S. policy toward an accommodation to what they see as Israel's obstruction of the peace process. They advocate Palestinian self-determination with limitations on the arms permitted in an independent Palestinian state. An important, powerful book.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

Writing with his son Douglas, the former undersecretary of state takes as his thesis George Washington's warning that America avoid becoming entangled with any single nation. Ball alludes to this reference, although never made specific, in discussing the "special relationship" the United States has with Israel. Ball provides a trenchant analysis of U.S. policy toward the Middle East and Israel especially, beginning with its creation in 1948 up through the Bush administration. He focuses heavily upon foreign aid and the failure of Israeli policy to live up to traditional American ideals. For the relationship to improve, Ball argues, Israel must move to a market economy, make peace with its neighbors, and give up any ideas of expanding its borders. Ball's solid and hard-hitting work fits neatly between Cheryl Rubenberg's Israel and the American National Interest ( LJ 11/15/86) and Seth Tillman's The United States in the Middle East ( LJ 6/1/82). Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 3/15/92.
-Sanford R. Silverburg, Catawba Coll., Salisbury, N.C.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0393029336
• ISBN 13: 9780393029338
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 382