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If you're serious, your post makes very little sense, but that was explained by your reference to "Israel lobby" (aka "Jewish lobby"), which is usually a code phrase by an Arab / Muslim organizations in US (like CAIR) and many other countries, so you have probably been influenced by them and I'll address that first. The terms of "Israeli lobby" or "Jewish lobby" are used to get support for your own side by flaring an anti-Semitic sentiments unfortunately present in many for a long time, a technique that was developed by Hitler and later expanded by Goebbels as the basis for "Big Lie" technique - this will give you a quick start, but you can find more by yourself:

Give me a break. Every foreign country has a lobbying group in the US. Just as every foreign country has a lobbying group in China. Israel is successful in the US in a way it is not in China because Jews are perhaps 5% of the American population (some are secular and don't show up in the demographic polls, but that doesn't mean they don't support Jewish causes), and they vote at something like a 90% rate, which no other ethnic group does.

I don't have a problem with Jews supporting Israel - it isn't actually an enemy* of the US in the way that China, North Korea or Iran are. The issue is whether everything that is good for Israel is also good for the US. I don't think the $5B annual subsidy we hand out to Israel, Jordan and Egypt for Israel's sake is good for either the US or Israel. On our side, there is the cost to taxpayers. On Israel's side, it is the long-term cost to their economy of maintaining a cradle-to-grave welfare state system.

In the case of Egypt and Jordan, there is the perception that we are propping up tyrannical rulers. Since Jordan ought rightly be the Palestinian state - and it would be nice if Israel could just deport all the Gaza and West Bank Palestinians to Jordan - that is an especially big problem. The issue of a Palestinian state might just go away if the Hashemite ruler of Jordan gradually turned his state into a constitutional monarchy with free elections. Our subsidy to Jordan provides just another buffer to King Abdullah from popular pressures.

* Whether it's a friend in the way the UK, Australia and Canada are won't really be known until there is occasion for Israel to send troops to fight alongside our forces. At this moment, Israel's usefulness as an ally is more or less nugatory.

You keep exhibiting either serious misunderstanding of what Israel is (by itself or in relation to the US) or simple prejudice - I don't care which, but let me correct some of your misperceptions if former or falsehoods if latter:

Give me a break. Every foreign country has a lobbying group in the US.

That's not what "Israel lobby" term, the way you used it in your post, means, and you know it. Nobody would refer with the same connotation to, let's say, "Chinese lobby", "French lobby", "Mexican lobby", etc.

I don't have a problem with Jews supporting Israel

We aren't talking about Jews in US supporting Israel, but policy of support by US as a country of the only (so far) democratic state in the Middle East. By the way, substantial number of Jews in US (probably a majority) are secular, liberal, voting for Democrats, and are not very supportive of Israel, which was evident in spades recently during the war in Lebanon - their silence on supporting Israel was deafening (Lieberman being very notable exception), and support mostly came from Christian groups and conservatives / Republicans who don't get a lot of Jewish votes.

I don't think the $5B annual subsidy we hand out to Israel, Jordan and Egypt for Israel's sake is good for either the US or Israel. On our side, there is the cost to taxpayers. On Israel's side, it is the long-term cost to their economy of maintaining a cradle-to-grave welfare state system.

You keep getting hung up on the $5B in "subsidy", which, as I explained to you before, isn't, and which is the best money we allocate in our entire foreign aid program, with tangible results, unlike any other money we spend. You also keep trying to switch the arguments towards "cradle-to-grave" welfare programs, which is simply dishonest and shows an agenda which has already been refuted in previous answers to your posts.

Since Jordan ought rightly be the Palestinian state - and it would be nice if Israel could just deport all the Gaza and West Bank Palestinians to Jordan

Jordan and Egypt want nothing to do with "Palestinians" - Jordan had enough problems with them since before "Black September" days, they're happy to not having to deal with them and them being someone else's problem (UN, Israel). In Egypt, they would be supporting Muslim Brotherhood, a nasty enough problem on its own.

Regarding "perceptions" in the Arab and Muslim worlds, they are created by whoever is in control of government and media and "education" there (well, not unlike the US), so giving up the "subsidy" wouldn't change one bit of a "perception" among those who are responsible for creating it in the first place. Like I said, mullahs and chieftains need an overarching enemy to keep their people from fighting each other for scraps that they leave them. Getting rid of FINANCIAL relationship will only be taken as a sign of weakness, just like giving "land for peace". They still have (or at least convey) the "perception" that Gaza is "occupied" by Israel (same as "perception" of Iraq being "occupied" by US). Facts don't matter, where "perception" rules - see "Big Lie" in previous post. We can go round and round on this, but we will not change "perceptions" until we change the regimes, we will not change "perceptions" by doing something that weakens our partners to try and change perceptions. And if our partners can't get the equipment we sell them they will know where to find new "partners" to buy something similar. We lose partners, "perceptions" that we are weak in foreign policy and easily scared or influenced by "public opinion" get additional currency (and rightly so) - that was the real and right perception during Clinton years (Somalia, Haiti, Kosovo, "Land for Peace" etc...)

Your assertion that "friend" and her "usefulness as an ally" only qualifies as such by ability "to send troops to fight alongside our forces" is, to put it mildly, strange. Not even counting the intelligence that Israel provides us, and killing some of the most dangerous (not only to Israel) terrorists... I'd say Israel has been more helpful to us in GWOT than Canada and France and Germany who have troops in Afghanistan.

From your post #22: At the risk of repeating myself ... Israel is completely useless as a base. The bottom line is that our informal alliance with Israel isn't all that useful in a practical sense.

I have already argued above with that statement on its own, but even if that were true it would mean ... what? We should only have alliances with and help defend the countries where we can put bases? Again, strange, to put it mildly, but also not "practical", e.g. Turkey was not all that helpful as you remember in Operation Iraqi Freedom, and she is our "formal" ally in NATO, and relied on and had our strongest support to enter EU. Israel also offered her support during the Gulf War which we (correctly) not only refused, but expressly prohibited, even while Israel was besieged by Saddam's Scuds. Israel is also the most likely of all our "allies" to help us with Iran, if need be.

As I discussed previously on FR, "informal" COW (Coalition of the willing) is far more flexible and sensible than "formal" coalitions of the past like NATO or SEATO.

In addition, where European countries have threatened trade embargoes against Israel for its targeted assassinations of terrorists (what leftists like to call death squad activity), Uncle Sam hasn't.

You make it sound like we should have.

From your post #20, to dennisw:

Israel is socialist in the sense that it feeds and houses lazy people who don't want to work.

This is simply, bizarre. Israel, without oil or other valuable natural resources, is, while youngest and war-torn, the most prosperous country in the ME, and more prosperous than most old European countries - with the unemployment rate of 8.3% and average GDP per capita of $27,500 PPP (and Israel has a substantial Arab and Muslim population, which brings unemployment higher and GDP/cap lower).

Compare to France - Unemployment 8.7%, GDP/cap $30,000
Greece - 9.2%, $24,000
Germany - 10.8%, $31,000
Spain - 8.1%, 27,000
Sweden - 5.6%, $31,000
Denmark - 3.8%, $37,000
Turkey - 14.2%, $9,000
European Union - 8.5%, $29,500

Saudi Arabia - >22%, $14,000 - the richest of oil producing states
Iran - >15%, $9,000

You could refer to Arab oil producing states as welfare and socialist states as they essentially live off and share in [some] oil profits. Certainly, SA, Iraq and Iran qualify for that description. So, as you can see, it would hardly qualify Israelis as a whole (and Swedes, for that matter) as "lazy". The degree of socialist programs varies everywhere, certainly it can be argued in Europe at this point it's higher than in US (probably wouldn't be if HillaryCare had been instituted in 1994), but certainly Muslim (and especially oil producing) states are far more socialist in nature.

And let's not forget what this article is about - Israel wants to remove the "aid" and the "strings" attached to it, to be more of a "partner" than a "dependent", while everybody else is saying "you've gotta help more, send more, and do more for us and our poor brothers and sisters".