"And every Israeli I know is ashamed of the South Africa thing."
Well everyone who at any point did business with pre free South Africa should be ashamed of themselves (including Britain, France, America, Austria, Germany, Belguim and so forth),
"but the Israeli people see themselves as America's ally and a lot of them do get mad at their government when they do things like this."
Well the people may like us but the government/industial arms complex does really lets be honest spit in our face. Look at how the Lavi is even talked about over there like it is our fault it failed when it was our money in the 1st place. And the fact that to get a few bucks they would transfer data on our weapons to our known enemies.
"Right, but France would never sanction a fellow democracy, which is what I'm trying to say."
Well democracy is not always seen by some to be a good thing
. And by that I mean "enlightened" nations like the USA, England or France for example. America threw sanctions on Chile before their left wing government lost power in a bloody coup. Algeria is "fine" and in our camp even though the "Islamists" they are fighting won an election in a landslide and watched the results get over turned. Lon Nol was "great" as well as others. And of course we have the Shah...
"Yeah, I know although the US supports the Saudi regime. I know its not a valid argument to say that one country doing something makes it ok for another country to do it, but to single out Israel is not right. The fact that Israel receives so much aid from the US does mean they should listen to the US on this stuff, so if you are making that point, then you are right. "
Well the listening was the big point. And we have export laws on selling things which Israel often ignores. And the gall of the Phalcon to China and making us pay them in spite of export laws on the use and transfer of our tech got me mad.
I'm not singling out Israel (don't hate the people) and I have lots of bad things to say about lots of nations HR and arms policy issues