Making our own parallel version is probably also worth it so that in the exchange of source code between the two countries it doesn't fall through the seam and get stolen or something, but that's just my armchair general opinion.
Israel has actually never done anything for the US. Israel actually sunk USS liberty and killed American soldiers in the hope of pulling america into a war (by pretending it was someone else). LB Johnson was also involved but that still doesn't make Israel an ally of US.
So here's litmus test, what other country would accept a US request to not retaliate to ballistic missiles fired at them. So maybe Israel is US's only ally.
So that was perhaps the context for the Liberty attack. And it could have triggered WWIII.
Number of reasons:
1) History. Us Germans tried to exterminate all Jews (and thank God we failed), while the USA and Great Britain, the colonial power of Palestine, fought against Germany. It made sense that after WW2, Israel was founded as a "safe haven" for Jewish life, backed by USA/UK.
2) Israel is the only real democracy in the entire region. Yes, Netanyahu has attacked democratic institution and basic democratic decency, but still: Israel is and likely will remain a democracy, a democracy allied to the US right in the region where the biggest oil reserves are.
3) While Israel does have their own weapons program, they are a good customer of US arms. Some of their budget is actually paid by US Congress, but well, as long as the end result is that Israel uses US weapons and the people employed in the districts of the Congressmen approving these deals keep their jobs, there is no real problem.
4) Intelligence service cooperation. The Mossad is one of the best intelligence services there is, rivaled IMO only by NSA/CIA.
The second point is also totally irrelevant: the other best ally of the US in the region, Saudi Arabia, is an absolute monarchy. The US never had a problem overthrowing democratic governments to replace them with dictatorships or supporting ferocious dictators as long as they advanced its goals. This talk of democracy as a value to support is just spin to justify attacking some countries, when it suits.
The third point is also irrelevant: Israel receives almost $4 billion is military aid from the US- this proves that the US is an ally of Israel, but again, is Israel an ally of the US?
The fourth point is the only one that barely holds. Yes, the Israeli intelligence cooperates with the US (but also spies on the US at the highest levels: see for example [1]- something that should have been a huge scandal and received almost zero reporting). But one wonders how much of Israeli intelligence helps solving problems that Israel itself has created or that are relevant to the US only because Israel is in the area.
1 https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/12/israel-white-house...
Israel’s relationship with the US is central to all of the international problems and threats the US faces in 2020. Including threatening the US’ own democracy due to unchecked Israeli lobbying in the US and openly combatting anyone who tries to question Israeli actions.
This tired fallacy needs to perish. Israel is not a democracy. Even Israelis' can see this, and its why a third of them don't bother voting - the Israeli people know that they don't have the right to select their leaders in the Knesset. The parties do.
If Israel become a real democracy, its Israeli-Arab population would rapidly change the identity of the country. This is why the fallacy is perpetuated.
Because the US government classifies them as an ally.
According to the official, military experts and generals, they treat Israel as a military ally.
There are still people who believe congresscritters read (or even AUTHOR!) their own bills, because they say so and that these kinds of handshake agreements between countries are purely popaganda (re: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22507605).