A Zionist Tour of Oklahoma City

Technicians, an Exchange, and Top Politicians

This is a companion article to my piece on Tulsa’s links to Israel. 

Again: Hamas’ terror attack, and Israel’s ensuing genocidal assault, feel impossibly distant from Oklahoma. They aren’t. People and organizations connect the capital to Israel’s occupation and onslaught. We visit some of them on this tour.

The Technicians

Our first stop is the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Complex (OC-ALC). This 64-building compound, with over 10,000 employees, is on Tinker Air Force Base.

OC-ALC technicians maintain and upgrade military aircraft produced by firms like Boeing, and repair aircraft engines produced by firms like Pratt & Whitney—a subsidiary of RTX Corporation (formerly Raytheon Technologies).

One of these engines is Pratt & Whitney’s F100, which powers the F-16 Fighting Falcon—“the workhorse of the Gaza bombing campaign,” according to Al Jazeera.

In 2006, the RAND Corporation published a study detailing Oklahoma City’s F100 upkeep. “OC-ALC is responsible for sustainment of the F100 engine,” it explained. “It purchases spare parts and repair services for reparable items and equipment modification services,” and replaces components beyond repair.

That study is nearly 20 years old, but recent developments suggest OC-ALC still services the F100. In June, Pratt & Whitney “held a groundbreaking ceremony for its new 845,000 square foot facility in Oklahoma City,” where the firm will invest $255 million. The site will support work on “military engines maintained at Tinker Air Force Base,” the press release elaborated, “including those for the…F-16.”

“The massive destruction in Gaza”—this is Al Jazeera again—“from bombs and missiles would be impossible without Israel’s enormous fleet of F-16 combat jets.” And the ruin these jets visit on Gaza would be impossible, we can infer, without OC-ALC’s work on the F100.

Reducing dwellings to dust is a kind of F-16 tradition. A few years after RAND highlighted Oklahoma City’s role in keeping these fighters airborne, Amnesty International surveyed the wreckage they wrought in the 2008-09 Gaza Massacre.

On January 6, for example, an “F-16 bombardment killed 23 members of the al-Daya family, most of them children and women, as they slept in their home in the Zaytoun district of Gaza City.” Two weeks later, Amnesty International representatives “visited the ruins of the house,” discovering that “several of the dead were still trapped under the huge pile of rubble.”

The same nightmare awaited some of the bomber’s latest victims. “We were sitting in peace,” Mohammed Abu Daqa, from Khan Younis, told Reuters last month, “when all of a sudden an F16 airstrike landed on a house and blew it up, the entire block, three houses next to each other.” He described the casualties: “Civilians, all of them civilians. An old woman, an old man and there are others still missing under the rubble.”

The Oklahoma-Israel Exchange

The Oklahoma-Israel Exchange (OKIE), our second destination, does its own burial work. The nonprofit, which lists a Nichols Hills-area mailing address—other information, about revenue and donations, is difficult to find; OKIE’s annual Form 990s do minimal reporting—has organized “missions to Israel” for the past three decades.

A 2018 travel itinerary shows what vanishes under OKIE’s pro-Israel avalanche. Palestine, Gaza, West Bank, occupation—these words never appear in the 12-page document. 

Day Six featured a “Geopolitical Tour,” led by Retired Colonel Miri Eisin, a former Israeli Defense Forces spokesperson. “I do not think that we do indiscriminate bombing,” she told the BBC on December 15; the day before, U.S. intelligence officials determined that roughly half of Israel’s bombs targeting Gaza are “dumb,” unguided, imprecise.

OKIE’s 30th anniversary gala, held in December 2022, “was certainly a who’s who of Oklahoma,” OKC Friday reported, naming attendees like Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt, and former State Superintendent of Public Instruction Joy Hofmeister. 

In its day-to-day work, the organization wins backing from politicians who otherwise find little common ground. Both Republican State Senator Shane Jett, who blasts diversity initiatives as “malignant idiotic ideology,” and Democratic U.S. House candidate Madison Horn—“someone,” she writes, “who is passionate about diversity”—list OKIE board service in their biographies.

The organization’s ties to top politicians date to 1992—to former Democratic Governor David Walters’ visit to Israel. During his eight-day tour, funded by private donations, he met with former Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin and other high-level officials. OKIE formed in the visit’s aftermath, to build on its precedent.

It organized visits for Walters’ successors in the following years. Former Republican Governor Frank Keating, former Democratic Governor Brad Henry, and former First Gentleman Wade Christensen all traveled to Israel under OKIE’s auspices.

Today, Oklahoma’s political leaders stand firm behind the Zionist cause. We visit them now, at our final stop.

The State Capitol

Two months after Oklahoma’s first COVID-19 case, Republican Governor Kevin Stitt identified a key problem plaguing the state: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), the Palestinian rights movement.

On May 21, 2020, Stitt signed a measure into law declaring, the Jerusalem Post reported, “that the state will not sign any contract with a company, unless the company submits a written certification that it’s not currently engaged in a boycott of goods or services from Israel.”

To reaffirm his solidarity, Stitt visited Israel in early November with Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott; they met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and toured Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital. “After witnessing the situation on the ground, I’ve never been more determined to stand with Israel and support their right to defend themself,” Stitt stated, as the Palestinian death toll surpassed 9,200.

Days after his return, Stitt announced that “Oklahoma is issuing new bonds to Israel as they fight against Hamas—bringing our total investment in Israel to over $62M.”

State Treasurer Todd Russ oversaw this $15 million increase. “Since purchasing a $5 million bond in mid-October,” his news release explained on November 2, “the Israeli government asked Oklahoma to consider issuing additional investment bonds.” The state complied, purchasing another $10 million.

“Israel bond capital,” the Development Corporation for Israel writes, “has helped strengthen every aspect of Israel’s economy, enabling national infrastructure development.”

This development has drawn opposition in recent years. In 2017, Jonathan M. Zenilman, who had “owned Israeli bonds continuously since the day [he] was born”—and who called himself “a lifelong [over 60 years] supporter of Israel”—elected not to renew his 5-year Israel Bond. “The continued development of the West Bank has occurred with almost a chutzpahdik [impertinent; audacious] quality,” he concluded, “and cannot have occurred without the continued infrastructure support provided in part by Israel bonds.”

Consider the signal the Israel Bonds conference, held in Washington last March, sent when it booked Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich as keynote speaker. Weeks earlier, Smotrich had insisted that Huwara—a Palestinian town, with some 7,000 residents, in the West Bank—“needs to be wiped out. I think the State of Israel should do it.”

There is “no such thing as Palestinians,” he added later that month.