Why did the US pledge $38 billion to Israel for military purposes?

I want to elaborate on why Israel and Egypt get the most military aid.

Up until 1978, the Arab world and Israel waged war every few years. Not the wars we see on the news with Israel and its neighbors today with Israeli airstrikes on guys launching rockets, but full blown wars of the type involving tens of thousands of troops, tank formations, dogfights, etc.

Egypt has long been by far the most populous and militarily powerful Arab nation. It had long been a leader of the Arab world, both culturally and politically. It was also the main opposition to Israel and provided the bulk of forces to the Arab-Israeli wars.

In 1967, with Egyptian and Syrian forces massing, Israel launched a pre-emptive strike which decisively routed their Arab foes. In just six days (hence the name, the Six Day War), Israel doubled their land - they took the Sinai Peninsula, Golan Heights, and the West Bank.

This was extremely humiliating to the Arab world. And, extremely disrupting to the world economy - the Suez Canal was now closed off with the two sides entrenched across it, now that Israel controlled the eastern side.

In 1973, in a surprise attack, Egypt and Syria again fought Israel, catching them off guard. In the Yom Kippur War (named for the Israeli holiday it was launched on to catch them off guard), Egypt successfully stormed the eastern shore of the Suez Canal and bloodied Israel's nose. Israel, however, did recover and in the counter offensive drove to within 100km of both Cairo and Damascus.

So while early successes gave the Egyptians some pride back (many bridges and buildings in Cairo are named for the attack, like 6th October Bridge), it also dawned on Egyptian leadership that they could not militarily defeat Israel. Thus, they were drawn to the negotiating table.

Thus was born the Camp David Accords. In exchange for normalizing relationships and pledging peace, Israel would return the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt (in exchange for keeping it demilitarized) and the US would start becoming Egypt's benefactor.

It was a stroke of diplomatic genius. Not only did Egypt, the most militarily powerful nation in the Arab world suddenly become a friend of Israel's (and thus ended any chance of the weaker Arab nations from defeating Israel face to face), it also became an ally of the US instead of an ally of the Soviet Union. In addition, it stabilized relations there, including control of the Suez Canal, which ended the extremely disruptive wars (and its effects, like the oil embargoes which directly affected the average American).

Long story short, it has been cheaper to essentially pay off both nations from going to war with one another than to deal with the high economic costs from the major conflicts between them.

There's a lot to all of this, of course, but I thought this overview would be interesting

/r/AskReddit Thread