There is no more emotional, controversial, enigmatic, or purely dramatic political and strategic alliance in the history of the United States than its relationship with the State of Israel. Americans look at Israel in the 1990s and wonder: Why does America send billions of dollars every year to a tiny country on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean? Why are the United States and Israel such good friends - at times even lovers? What are the secrets of their romance?

Friends in Deed explores the four decades of American/Israeli overt and covert cooperation and conflict - from the period before Israel's statehood to the dramatic Middle East peace accords - and examines the emotions and controversy stirred by this powerful alliance.

From the early Israelis' clever ability to take advantage of the sympathy felt by Eisenhower and other U.S. military officers who witnessed the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps - to their inability to move the unsympathetic George Bush, who insisted that Israel not strike back during the Gulf War - this is a relationship built not only on global cooperation and strategy but on fierce emotional and domestic political agendas.

Indeed, there is probably no more intense or complex a relationship between nations in the world.

This book explores the entire dramatic history of the alliance: from the United States' reluctant support for the newborn Jewish state to the secret cooperation between the CIA and the Mossad, to the aiding of Israel's nuclear program but then spying on it, to the connection between American mobsters and Israeli fundraising, to the American influence in the Middle East peace talks.

Authors Raviv and Melman have uncovered and documented many revelations about the secret side of the alliance, including new details of the intimacy between the intelligence networks, the surprising scope of military cooperation - and the truth about Israeli lobbying activity in Washington. Friends in Deed is a thorough and intricate work of investigation and research, giving us a new level of understanding of America's most intense international alliance.