I always wondered why the US continues to give so much free aid to Israel.  I could understand it back in the days when they needed the stuff to survive against hordes of Syrian and Egyptian tanks and didn't have the industry yet to pay for it, but I think they're capable enough now that we can start doing regular buisness with them.  Unless of course they've been paying us back all this time with intell and/or other "under the table" methods.

There is public opinion. And there really is an "Israel lobby"(many here are it's "evil minions");there is an lobby for everything in America. However that does not explain it totally. Israel provides foreign policy benefits. It gives us intell etc. Israel is also our "plausibly deniable"-a handy thing to have sometimes. And even in more ordinary negotiations it is helpful to have competition with the Arabs for our glorious favor, etc. However America is to dependant on public opinion to think completly in "bottom line" sorts of things. Another reason is Israel is calculable. Israel's politics are simmilar enough to ours for there not to be embarrassments of the sort that so often happen in dealing with the Third World. And Israel's culture is fammiliar. Jews are influential enough in America to be fammiliar, even many gentiles who don't know much about Jews or Judaism as such have what they learned in Sunday School, and much of the Zionist movement started in America. And to this day there is much cross-polination including a number of Americans who served in the IDF. Even if the "second special-relationship" didn't exist as such, the advantages of consulting with a Middle Eastern government with simmilar culture to our own explain a lot. Also there is the matter of habit. Once we are seen to be supporting of Israel we cannot easily cease to do so without reminding people of the old chestnut "being America's enemy is dangerous, being America's friend is fatal." So there are a lot of reasons. Some can be calculated in realpolitic terms, some run to the idealistic. And probably most are somewhere in between as such things usually are. As for whether Israel can defend itself without our help-yes that is probably true by now(though once in awhile Israel will quickly need something we have and they don't). Israel probably does pay us back in intell or whatever-favor trading among allies is an old institution. Also sending aid is a way of "making a statement" and confirming that the Second Special Relationship still exists. Sometimes symbols are important.

1 example for you - american aid = f-16 to israel - how much would it cost the USA if 1 of it's carrier was nuked in Gulf war 1 ? not only the ship costs alot but the USA would loss it's position as #1 millitary power causing fanatics to believe they can attack now the USA and cause even more damage......

Actually both Gulf Wars were fought in our own interest. In the First Gulf War idealism(big Bad Saddam picking on little Kuwait)and realism(Big Bad Saddam got lots of oil, about to get lots more oil and Mecca too; most embarrassing if he gets away with it) combined in such a way as to make it practically certain that America would intervene. The real lesson of it is that if you are going to pluck the eagles tail-feathers make sure you can shield yourself with a bit of ambiguity. And never stand still and let your army become the Mother of All Scrapyards. As for Israel, Israel wasn't sad to see Saddam get a woping. But Gulf War I, wasn't fought for Israel as such. As for the carriers I sometimes wondered about that. While they were an absolute necessity early on, later they could have landed their planes in Saudi Arabia to join the land-based air. I suppose they got a shorter flight to target and that was some advantage. In any case we tend to use carriers as "patrol cops" because they can be first on the scene. I have often thought we need a more expendable class of carriers and when VTOL fighters that can actually take normal fighters on become more common maybe we can do that. In any case the chance of one of the carriers getting nuked then was virtually nil for the simple reason that no one who wanted to had any nukes or could obtain them. It is, fortunatly not that easy. We may have Osirk to thank for victory then, so I will give a polite bow to Shirush.