Older, I get the more upset I get at Israeli repression of the just aspirations of the Palestinians for a real State, and not a Bantustan. But, the pugster being a habitual devil's advocate, tired of alot of leftist cant and sloganizing against Zionism, recognizes the above as true, but, like say Brad deLong (gasp!) I see US foreign policy, like other aspects of Capitalist-Imperial State policy formation as being a terrain shaped by competing (bourgeois) class fractional interests. What, I'm trying to get at here in one of my run on sentences, is that any read of declassified docs like what I.F. Stone did or the Noamster, or what you can find at the website of the National Security Archive, (or Paul Joseph book from South End Press which tests various neo-marxist state theories, Miliband, Poulantzas, Mills, Offe, etc in the test case of the Vietnam War.) is that State policy makers, in State Dept., NSC, etc. are always cognizant of the totality of political-economic, geo-strategic, mediagenic and all the other factors, that in their relations with other States around the world and possible reactions by the subjects of those States that must be taken into acct. To return to the Israeli military aid. My impression, is that Egypt get loads of US aid too. The aid package to Egypt and Israel was dramatically increased after the Camp David Accords of 1978, no? So, to sum up this rant, look at the various actors in the whole area, and try to form a fuller picture of the whole set of considerations that motivate US policy. After all, is it totally an illusion of Neo-Cons that there are more and less friendly sectors of the US foreign policy elite planners. Granted, the tilt has always been, esp. after the 1967 war, pro-Israeli, but, James Baker saying, "Fuck the Jews, they didn't vote for us!, " doesn't emerge out of nothing. Michael Pugliese