"Nope.  Israel was useful to the US when the USSR was the destabilizing presence in the Mideast.  Now that nuclear-tipped Israel itself is the destablizing presence there, its value to the US is zilch." There is no sense in which the USSR was a "destabilizing presence" except in the sense of Cold War new speak, where the term meant something like, "an option independent of the United States."  In the same sense China is now a "destabilizing" presence in the Middle East, Aljazeera is a destabilizing presence in the Middle East, and in fact. from the U.S. rulers point of view, the Middle Eastern People are a destabilizing presence in the Middle East.  To put it quite simply, whatever interferes with U.S. control is a destabilizing presence in the New Speak of U.S. planners.  Now I believe that the fact that Israel (and for that matter Pakistan, India, France, Britain, Russia, and the U.S.) have nuclear weapons destabilizes the human species.  But as far as the U.S. policy of control of Middle East oil is concerned Israel plays its appointed roll of an armed prescience.  You don't address Chomsky's main argument about Israel's service to the U.S. in helping to defeat so-called "radical nationalism".  And you don't address the argument that U.S. foreign policy goals and methods are essentially the same elsewhere in the world as they are in the Middle East. Jerry