If you want to define away sending hundreds of thousands of troops to defend Saudi Arabia, using those troops to free Kuwait from foreign invasion, and then keeping those troops in both countries (where they've taken everything from car bombings to shooting attacks) as defending her own interests rather than those states, then you can define away any action taken on behalf of an ally that way. To take this to an extreme: by that definition, US defense of South Korea isn't "aid to an ally".
There is a legitimate argument that US aid to Israel isn't well thought out rationally, but the only reason that's plausible is that a few billion a year and low-cost diplomatic statements/votes aren't a big enough deal for the Serious National Security Considerations to come into play.
I think the hostility encountered by the US in the Middle East is entirely a function of protecting her own interests in a complicated and contested region. Maybe necessary, definitely inevitable.
The human suffering on all sides is a cost of doing business. This is deemed acceptable by the US govt and not contested by the hosting countries for various bad reasons. It is nothing more special than that. There is no grand righteous moral justification, but that is a useful fiction.
I apologize if this offends you, and I don't share it to be disrespectful -- just to explain my perspective.
I mean, sure. The moral question is important! But I was starting from a thread of people who didn't understand the real-life character of the Israeli-American relationship.
If you're trying to describe the actual actions of the parties involved, morality is not a useful analytical or predictive tool; that comes into play when you yourself try to act.
There is a legitimate argument that US aid to Israel isn't well thought out rationally, but the only reason that's plausible is that a few billion a year and low-cost diplomatic statements/votes aren't a big enough deal for the Serious National Security Considerations to come into play.