I doubt that Israel offered troops for the Korean War. That said, I would like to point out that the U.S.-Israeli alliance is hardly as old as Israel itself. The U.S. was on the side of Egypt in the 1956 Suez contretemps (opposing Britain and France as well as Israel), and successfully forced Israel and her allies out of Sinai. (In the succeeding decade Israel's number one ally was France.) The Israelis did not forget what they considered this betrayal, and the memory was still fresh in their minds at the time of the 1968 war. It is my theory that the Liberty incident was fallout from Suez -- the Israelis still deeply distrusted the Americans intentions and did not want them to know too much about their military operations. By the time of the 1973 war U.S. support to Israel was put to the test and thanks in part to clumsy Soviet maneuvering, came through with flying colors. U.S. support has been solid since then, although it has required considerable concessions from the Israelis. So I would date the U.S.-Israel alliance only from the early 1970s (Nixon era). Concerning the Korean War, I am still hoping that someone knows something about official post-mortems on the dual intelligence failures of the war, or on official or academic studies of PLA troops assigned to the KPA in 1949 and early 1950. Many thanks, Don
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