The conventional wisdom for the past few decades has been that Saudi Arabia needs direct U.S. military protection while Israel just needs American assistance to do the job itself. In 1991, it took a direct intervention by U.S. Marines to protect Saudi Arabia from an Iraqi invasion. And in 2015, the Saudi intervention in Yemen required serious American hand-holding: U.S. planes refueled Saudi fighter jets while American advisers sat in the room for target selection.
Although Israel has received more military aid from American taxpayers than any other country since World War II, its supporters have been able to brag that Israel has fought almost all of its battles with Israeli troops alone. "I know of American troops fighting and dying on behalf of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iraq's Kurds and Shia (and so on), but not on behalf of Israel. No American soldier has ever died in the defense of Tel Aviv," The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg wrote in 2011. "Nor would Israelis want American soldiers to die on Israel's behalf—self-sufficiency being a governing idea of Zionism."
