Israel was hit by an unprecedented rocket attack from the Gaza Strip on October 7, with Hamas movement's troops infiltrating border areas. On October 8, the Israeli government announced that it had invoked Article 40 of the Basic Law, which means the country was officially in a state of war.

Arming Ukraine & Israel Could Result in US Undermining Its Own Military

14:57, 11 October 2023

Ekaterina Blinova

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After Hamas' unexpected attack on Sunday, Israel reached out to the US for military assistance, specifically for Iron Dome missile interceptors to reinforce air defenses. Does this mean the US will supply their rockets and shells to Israel instead of sending them to Ukraine?

Sputnik

The Pentagon has sent the Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group to the Eastern Mediterranean and moved to deploy additional US Air Force fighter aircraft squadrons in the region. Some military supplies have already been provided to Tel Aviv under the 2018 Memorandum of Understanding between the US and Israel for security assistance.

"It's already on," Michael Maloof, a former senior security policy analyst in the Office of the US Secretary of Defense, told Sputnik. "It's already going to be on. I'm sure [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky realizes that the US is much more favorable toward Israel because of the number of Jewish Americans in the United States and the Jewish lobby in Congress, it's quite extensive. Ukraine doesn't have that kind of a representation in the Congress. American people do not want a war with Russia. So that's basically what would occur if we continued unabated any assistance to Ukraine. So for the White House, it's at a very serious crossroads in geopolitical thinking on what direction we go. And I think we're going to be seeing a competition between the two for assistance. We have ironclad commitments with Israel in terms of Iron Dome. We help them develop it, in fact."

If Israel launches its ground operation in Gaza and the war with Hamas spirals into a wider regional conflict, Israel would need not only ammunition but artillery, probably bombs that would be dropped from aircraft, according to the military expert. The problem is, however, not that either Israel or Ukraine would get more or less arms, but what would be left for the US own military forces, he stressed.

"So you're probably going to see more Iron Dome rockets going and launchers and they could easily get more aircraft. We have a surplus of those, but the US stockpile will be limited. Howitzers, bombs and artillery - It's all been going to Ukraine. And the question is what is our own standing with our own US military in terms of its preparedness? And nobody's talking about that. And I think that some of the reports I've heard are that they're wanting and they're having to delay shipments to the US military because it's all going at that point, when I heard the reports, going to Ukraine," Maloof said.

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Per the former Pentagon analyst, the US capabilities to supply its allies aren't limitless. So, in order to flood its allies with shells and bombs it would have to restructure its economy. The question is whether the American people want that, according to Maloof.

"The United States then will have to make some very serious decisions in terms of production at home on the scale that we saw during World War ll, where industries would have to switch from peacetime production to wartime. Is that what we want? The American people I know right now don't want that. They don't feel this urge to fight other people's wars all the time, simply because we've been at it since 2001."

Last Sunday, The Washington Post reported, citing sources, that Israel had requested to the United States to supply it with missile interceptors for its Iron Dome system and other ammunition, including machine guns.

On October 7, the Palestinian group Hamas initiated a large-scale attack on Israel, leading Tel Aviv to declare a state of war the next day. To date, hundreds of fatalities and thousands of injuries have been reported by both Israel and Palestine due to the escalation.