Flight of the Lavi: Inside a U.S.-Israeli Crisis

By Dov S. Zakheim. Brassey’s, 1996, 277 pp. List: $24.95 hardcover; AET: $17.95.

Reviewed by Shawn L. Twing

This insider’s view of U.S.-Israeli relations will stun even well-informed readers with its revelations about the inner workings and behind-the-scenes power politics of the pro-Israel lobby and its effects on U.S. policy in the Middle East. The author, who served as under secretary of defense for planning and resources during the Reagan administration, was one of the principal actors involved in the U.S. report that laid the groundwork for the cancellation of Israel’s Lavi (Hebrew for “lion” ) fighter aircraft in 1987, after it became clear that the aircraft was simply too expensive to design and build in Israel. The rear-guard action by Israel’s well-placed supporters both in the executive branch and in Congress delayed that cancellation, however, until the United States had provided a total of $1.5 billion taxpayer dollars for the Lavi project undertaken by Israel Aircraft Industries with support from some 730 U.S. defense firms.

Zakheim’s book recounts the troubling findings of U.S. officials who analyzed the Lavi fighter project, Israeli efforts to refute the U.S. conclusions, and how the Pentagon’s findings eventually resulted in the cancellation of the Lavi in favor of a more cost-effective American aircraft.

The drama began when the Pentagon conducted its own cost analysis of the Lavi’s research, development and production based on Israel’s stated goals for the aircraft. Months of U.S. number-crunching revealed an enormous gap between Israel’s decidedly low estimates of the Lavi’s cost, and Pentagon estimates for the project. The disparate cost analyses led Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-IN) to request the General Accounting Office to conduct its own review. The GAO came up with more conservative cost estimates than the Pentagon, but it maintained the same bottom line: Israel simply could not afford the Lavi without a massive increase in U.S. funds for the project.

The Lavi program originated in 1980. It began receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. foreign assistance in 1983. Although substantial amounts of American money were given for the program, Israel apparently never conducted a serious cost analysis for the Lavi prior to receiving U.S. funding. If it did, it certainly was never given to U.S. auditors for review and, as history has shown, Israel’s original and even its modified estimates for the Lavi’s costs were not even near the mark. It would seem that a potential multibillion-dollar investment by the U.S. government would have required much closer scrutiny before the money was invested, not after so much of it had been wasted.

There is a possible explanation for why the Israelis involved in the Lavi program were not as concerned initially about the costs of the aircraft, and it is a theme that appears repeatedly in Zakheim’s book. Many Israeli officials expected the money to come from the United States, and had extreme difficulty understanding that there was a limit to U.S. generosity. Zakheim describes predictions by some Israeli officials that no matter how much costs increased for the program, the U.S. could be counted on to pay the bill. One such official, American-raised Likud minister without portfolio Moshe Arens, even “argued that Israel had thus far not spent a dollar on the plane and, ‘if it managed wisely,’ would not have to spend a dollar on it in the future either.”

A corollary theme of Flight of the Lavi is the Israeli interpretation of U.S. aid not as a gift but as an Israeli entitlement. This entitlement mentality led to some seemingly outrageous requests, some of which, even more outrageously, were granted by the U.S. government. For example: after it became clear that the Lavi program could not survive financially, Israeli negotiators insisted that, in exchange for Israel’s agreement to cancel the project, the U.S. government pay in full all outstanding contracts for the Lavi, including contracts that had not been completed. According to Congressional Research Service reports, the United States eventually paid some $400 million to Israel for canceled contracts. What’s more, in an attempt to squeeze even more funding from the U.S., some IAI officials inflated the figures for canceled contracts to more than a billion dollars hoping to profit as much from the demise of the Lavi as they had from its birth.

Near-unconditional support for Israeli programs has been a hallmark of both Congress and successive American administrations. The power of lobbying organizations like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the influence they have in Congress are aptly described by Zakheim on numerous occasions. He offers several examples of how blanket congressional support for Israel, not the merits of the Lavi, shaped attitudes about the program. Zakheim also touches on the political weight of the pro-Israel lobby in the U.S. government, where U.S. officials often criticize Israeli demands only in hushed tones.

During Zakheim’s tenure at the Pentagon a critical event occurred for the American Jewish community and American-Israeli relations. In 1985, Jonathan J. Pollard, a Jewish-American civilian naval intelligence analyst, was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for passing an estimated 800,000 pages of highly classified documents to Israel. The Pollard affair sent a shock wave through the American Jewish community, and the role of the Israeli Embassy in spiriting Pollard’s Israeli government “handlers” out of the U.S., despite promises to the contrary, didn’t help. The status of Pentagon official Zakheim, an American Orthodox Jew ordained as a rabbi, obviously was affected by Pollard’s treasonous actions. He condemns, both eloquently and angrily, Pollard’s motives for placing his loyalty to Israel before his loyalty to the United States.

“Pollard was a spy whatever is said and done about his sentence or his treatment cannot alter that fact,” Zakheim writes. “If he was a true Zionist, he had the option of moving to Israel as so many other American Jews have done, who also have never hurt, and often assisted, America, the country of their birth, both before and since their aliyah. He chose not to go on aliyah. Instead he chose to betray his country. That there were not further anti-Semitic repercussions, as many American Jews feared, was due to the maturity and essential decency of all Americans, who could tell a rotten apple when they saw one.”

Zakheim’s professional involvement in the Pentagon’s efforts to re-evaluate the Lavi program also affected him personally. He and his family, including his young children, were subjected to vicious harassment by members of the American Jewish community, Israeli officials, and the Israeli media. He was called both a “self-hating Jew” and a “traitor” to Israel. The deep connection to Judaism embodied in his religious orthodoxy generally went unheeded, or in other cases was the subject of attack. One high-ranking Israeli official and Lavi supporter, Menachem Eini, went so far as to call Zakheim a “kipah [skullcap]-wearing religious Jew who claims to be motivated by love of Israel [but who] is in fact causing tremendous damage to Israel.” Eini later was forced by then-Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin to apologize both publicly and privately for the remarks.

In 1987 the Israeli cabinet voted 12-11 (with four abstentions) to terminate the Lavi program. Later Israel purchased, with American military assistance, U.S. and Israeli co-produced F-16 multi-role aircraft as a far less costly alternative to the Lavi.

The Lavi, nevertheless, was and to a certain extent still is a matter of national pride for Israelis. Many insist on believing that the U.S. wanted the Lavi canceled because it was far superior to American fighter aircraft (it is not) and that American defense firms wanted to sell their own planes to Israel. Zakheim makes it clear in Flight of the Lavi that he and his colleagues were motivated by the twin concerns of doing what was best for the United States and for Israel. Continuation of the Lavi clearly was not the best option available. Israel lacked the technological infrastructure, experience and market to produce the Lavi effectively and affordably. And, because of seemingly unending American aid, Israel also lacked fiscal discipline concerning its weapons purchases as long as it could count on the United States coming to its financial rescue as it had so many times before.

Flight of the Lavi is a revealing account of the inner workings of the U.S.-Israeli relationship. Although ostensibly about the development of a high-performance aircraft, the book is much more about American-Israeli politics and their sometimes corrosive effects on those who participate in them. Sadly, the Lavi remains a part of the American-Israeli political landscape. Unable to build the plane in Israel, and despite the many clear violations of U.S. law involved in the transaction, Israel has marketed the Lavi to China for use in its military aircraft modernization program. Should Sino-American relations ever again deteriorate into conflict, as they did both in Korea and in Vietnam, it is quite possible that American pilots will face Chinese pilots flying an advanced combat aircraft designed by American engineers and paid for by American taxpayers.