Entretanto II

Via War and Piece:

(1) Selling arms to China, or not - Haaretz.com : "The Israeli-American crisis over the sale of an advanced technology weapons system to China has also turned into an Israeli-Chinese crisis in the wake of an American demand that Israel not return to the Chinese the Harpy assault drone that China recently acquired and which it sent back to Israel for an upgrade.

The problem is that Israel walked into the problem of a severe clash - and not for the first time - with many members of Congress who maintain an anti-China line. In recent weeks there were hysterical reports in the U.S. about Israeli advanced technology sales to China. It's been said, for example, that American soldiers defending Taiwan could be harmed by Israeli technologies, and American ships by the Harpy. A special congressional committee held hearings and heard some very tough remarks against Israel.

A key question that cannot be ignored is why such misunderstandings repeatedly come up between Israel and the U.S. regarding China. There's a series here: once it was about the sale of Lavie technologies to China, then about the supposed sale of the U.S.-made Patriot missile secrets to China. One time it was in the wake of the sale of advanced air-to-air missiles to China, and then came the Phalcon affair - and there are plenty of other examples."

(2) the Forward: "The latest crisis comes just one month after the release of the first major strategy paper issued by the so-called Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, a Jerusalem-based think tank chaired by former U.S. Middle East envoy Dennis Ross. The paper urges strongly that China, as the world's next superpower — and a major nation with no prior conceptions, positive or negative, about Judaism — be sought out by the Diaspora Jewish community for an institutionalized, free-standing relationship, independent of both American and Israeli policy interests.

The study, written by French academic Shalom Salomon Wald, notes that China appears receptive to such an initiative in part because it sees the American Jewish community as a significant player in Washington that could help China improve its standing in the United States."