Fighting to Exist
"The association representing Canadian defense firms says it is in the dark about the status of equipment exports to Israel after the House of Commons voted to end military sales to that nation."“For companies to be able to comply with changes to those rules, they need to know what the changes are,” Christyn Cianfarani, president of the Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries wrote in a March 19 email to Defense News. “The government has a responsibility to quickly publish the exact details of any changes to its policy surrounding exports, and that hasn’t happened yet.”"But later, on March 20, Reuters reported Joly’s office sent a statement acknowledging that companies with existing military export permits to Israel can continue with their deliveries."David Pugliese, Defense News
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| The US has supplied Israel's air force with F-35s, the most advanced fighter jets ever made AFP |
Israel is not in desperate need to be supplied with military arms, despite being forced into a defensive conflict by its Palestinian Hamas neighbours in Gaza. By 2025, Israel is predicted to a total of $67 billion expenditure in military and civilian costs enforced by a need to protect itself and its population from a never-ending stream of attacks, conflicts embroiling the Israel Defense Forces in its existential struggle to persuade Islamists that their continual assaults will never unseat the Jewish state from its ancestral geography. A stunning financial cost, and a sorrowful loss of human life in the effort.
Israel, forced by its constant need to protect itself from incoming rockets from Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, where proxy Iranian militias like Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis have violently assaulted the Jewish State, has collaborated with the United States in the development of self-protecting weaponry designed to destroy incoming missiles. At the same time with a need to supply its own military with weaponry, Israel has developed into a battle-tested technology showcase of military hardware.
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| Israel's Elbit Systems developed the Hermes 450 unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) AFP |
Israel's arms industry in 2023 realized $13 billion in export sales, ranking among the top ten of global arms exporters. Countries depending on Israel's advanced technologies are themselves involved in countering regional threats. Close to half of Israel's arms exports are sent to Asian countries that Chinese expansion plans threaten. Another 35 percent end up in Europe, mostly to those countries that have good reason to fear a belligerent Russia, now in Ukraine, but potentially moving on elsewhere in its near-abroad.
Germany has purchased Israel's Arrow-3 missile-defense system. Foreign militaries are dependent on Israel's technically superior military arms. Pressure from the anti-Israel lobby saw the Biden administration curtail arms sales to Israel, leading Israel's defense ministry to implement an "independence project", shifting toward domestic arms production to meet its essential needs in warding off the existential threat Iran and its proxies post.
The Jewish nation is forced by circumstances it has been unable to control, to allocate 5.3 percent of its GDP on its armed forces; over twice what most western nations spend. In Israel a necessity through a succession of wars by belligerent Arab nations, leading Israel to the course that has led it to become the mother of military inventions whose products other nations, also facing threats from warring neighbours look to for both offensive and dependably defensive weaponry.
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| Israel's Iron Dome batteries help protect cities and towns from rocket and missile fire Reuters |
Labels: Gaza Conflict, Global Outreach, Hamas Violence in Israel, Israeli Arms Industry
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, September 01, 2024
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