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MIDDLE EAST MESS
 Recently, following the row with Israel over the Peace Process with the Palestinians, the influential New York Times claimed in several articles, in late 03/2010, as if the American General David Petraeus, the head of the American Central Command, which supervises the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, said in a hearing in the US Senate, on 03/16/2010, that the unsolved conflict between Israel, backed by USA, and the Palestinians, is one of the causes to anti American sentiments in the Muslim World. Some concluded that Israel is, therefore, indirectly responsible for the loss of American lives in those wars. General David Petraeus himself repeatedly denied the interpretations of his words.
The anti American sentiments toward USA in the Middle East and the Muslim World are made up of verity of many reasons in which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is just a negligible part. In Al Qaeda's manifesto, published on 02/23/1998, under the title "The World Islamic Front for Jihad against the Jews and Crusaders" - the first reason was the presence of American forces in the land of the two holy shrines – Saudi Arabia. Indeed Osama Bin Laden began his Al Qaeda project following the first war in the Gulf in early 1991. The other reasons where: the corrupted Arab regimes supported by USA, the exploitation of Arab sources (oil) by American companies, a worldwide Jewish conspiracy to rule and manipulate the world (see also -Ali Gumaa) and etc'. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict was mentioned as the last reason of 11 mentioned in the declaration. In that war against Jews and Crusaders well over 150,000 Muslims were killed by fellow Muslims directly.
Nowadays the main reasons for American casualties are the wars themselves, the American invasion to two Muslim countries in order to transform the society and the political infrastructure. The idea that 2000 Suicide bombers went to Iraq to kill themselves was primarily motivated by the unsolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict is completely bizarre.
When America invaded Afghanistan and Iraq the most experienced army in the world in that kind of warfare was Israel. Israeli technology, experience and tactics were soon used by USA forces to reduce the number of American casualties. Special ceramic armor invented and manufactured in Israel were put together on many hundreds of American vehicles and American admitted in many letters to their Israeli counterparts of saving hundreds of American lives. So was the case with the Israeli experience of bombs disposal and the usage of tactical UAV by the Marines.
Hundreds of American personnel went through a special training program in Israel to consolidate a real time precise intelligence capacity with the accurate fire power of USA UAV predators in order to kill the Al Qaeda and Taliban leadership.
That program helped to upgrade the American system from the initial failures (see -Damadola Fiasco), in which most of the casualties where civilians that angered so many Pakistanis, to the recent successes to decapitate the Taliban and Al Qaeda's leadership, mainly in NWFP – Pakistan.
Indeed the relationship between USA and Israel is very complicated and, of course, in some aspects, a burden for USA. But the bottom line is that Israel helped to save many hundreds, if not thousands, of American lives, most of them well documented.
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16/04/2010 06:17:31
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