I only made the point because of your hypocrisy in criticizing Britain for selling weapons hardware to the Saudis when the US was and is doing more of the exact same thing, and when I pointed this out you are trying to justify your hypocrisy by boasting about how much your government is donating to Israel at the American taxpayer’s expense, as if I should care. Even if the US wasn’t selling to the Saudis and the British were, it doesn’t even matter,
because Israel has more to gain from selling its stuff to other nations, (including Britain) than it does by not doing.
At the end of the day, Britain isn’t a tiny country on a small strip of coastal land surrounded on all sides by hostile nations eager to see its destruction. Britain’s geographical location is pretty good compared to Israel’s. The worst we get from our immediate neighbours is that they sometimes say mean things about our cooking prowess and drinking habits when we irritate them at football matches and EU summits. In Israel, their neighbours invoke chilling blood libels and pray to their moon god for the wholesale genocide of their citizens.
Israel would benefit more from Britain’s goodwill and friendship than Britain would from Israel’s. If Israel adopted your pointless policy of boycotting Britain, it would be petty and self-defeating. Israel needs to fight against diplomatic isolation, not increase it further.
Israel would actually benefit and gain influence over Britain by providing it with some of its military hardware. Right now, influence over Britain rests predominantly with the Arabs today because our trading links with the Arabs are more significant than they are with the Israelis.
You don’t seem quite able to grasp the fact that Israel’s strategic position means that they need to be doing everything they can mitigate the strategic influence the Arab world has with Britain and other nations, because the way things are at the moment, Britain has more vested interests in supporting the Arabs politically than they do the Israelis.
Right now, it serves Britain’s interests to make the gesture of implementing half-arsed embargos on exports to Israel whenever the Arabs get butthurt with Israel over something. If Israel was responsible for supplying Britain with important military hardware, Britain might not be so quick to jump on the pro-arab bandwagon whenever things kick off in the Gaza Strip. In actual fact, a school of thought might suggest that it isn’t in Britain’s interests to create such a conflict of interest by buying this Israeli hardware. If it wasn’t for the fact that my sympathies tend to be pro-Israel and utterly contemptuous of most Arab nations (particularly Saudi Arabia) I would not be happy at all about the prospect of Britain buying Israeli military gear and building up a trade relationship of this nature with them...
So basically what you are saying is Israel should just swallow their pride, bend over and pick up whatever crumbs UK is throwing at them in the name of “trade” with the faint hope that it may help Britain turn away from vicious anti-semitism.
And why? Because Britain, in your opinion, is too important to ignore. I don't know if you realize this but Britain’s exaggerated sense of self importance makes it a laughing stock to the rest of the world. If you have forgotten, Nicolas Sarkozy recently described UK as a “country with no industry”. An he wasn't just taking a cheap shot. Britain is barely able to keep its economy, industry, military and navy afloat.
An even otherwise, I dont see any reason why Israel needs to suck up to a country that is already kinda hostile. That kind of appeasement and kowtowing is always naive and counter productive. UK is deeply entrenched in the Muslim world with a huge immigrant Muslim population and with their oil/arms trade with Saudi Arabia an other Muslim countries for this UCAV deal to to have any impact. Britain will always have vested interests in Arab middle east which will always weigh in more then whatever Israel has to offer.
And then, there is still that arms embargo against Israel. (On a side note..... UK goes out of its way to violate MTRC statutes to sell long range Storm Shadow missile to Saudi Arabia.) All said and done, if UK's oil supply were to stop or UK's muslims were pissed again.... UK’s “butthurt” would be a lot more then not receiving a few military UCAVs.