“That said, the way Israel has been treated by us on many occasions, I’m always surprised that they can view us as an ally”
Yeah, and they shot up the USS Liberty on purpose, and have always ran spies against us, and fell all over themselves to be the first to congratulate Biden when the Big Lie of his win was only 2 hours old.
They are not an enemy, but they deserve no better treatment than the average nation should get.
I am old enough to remember the incident of the USS Liberty, and I have read of some of the accounts and explanations to have a better understanding of the incident than most.
But Israelis are the victims of those same things against them as a result of our actions. While we may not have directly fired on one of their vessels as they did the Liberty, our actions and pressures have been responsible for the deaths of many more Israelis than were killed on the Liberty.
We run spies agains them the same way they run spies against us, and entities in our government and media popped champagne corks when their douchebag leftist candidates won.
We have plenty of things in our history to be ashamed of that rival the attack on the USS Liberty. History has shown that being an ally of the United States has dangers all its own, and you might even end up like Diem in 1963. So we aren’t saints in these matters either.
That said, in military matters, the Israelis were very close and helpful to us good allies would be. Their work on the hardware we gave them (such as the changes we made in our own military hardware to the A-4 Skyhawk based on their sharing of anti-missile defensive systems, as one example) proved that, and undoubtedly saved the lives of many of our pilots in Southeast Asia.
I am open to suggestion that the Israel today is not deserving of our fair treatment, but the historical analysis, in my opinion, differs.