Well it's never a bad idea to gain a historical perspective, but how far one chooses to go back can significantly shape your understanding.

Regarding Americas involvement in the middle east since WW2, I have come to the general view that America exercised its post war position of strength to build a global dollar empire. As its internal economy and productivity have slowly gone into decline America has increasingly relied on its dollar empire to extract the wealth of other nations to maintain its dominant position.

Therefore I would say American military activity has primarily been in the service of America, not Israel, although for sure, Israel has considerable influence in American politics.

Post Kennedy, I would probably subscribe to the view of America as a military industrial complex, especially with regard to its external world affairs. It seems to me that for large sections of the American people world affairs are largely divorced from their domestic concerns and are of little consequence. Hence why this is relatively minimal opposition to the current foreign wars. Now America can fight these foreign wars simply by supplying weapons to foreign armies I suspect will only exacerbate this problem.

This is all quite high level and overly simplistic but as soon as one attempts to focus on the specifics I find the complexity multiplies beyond comprehensive.

Therefore read and learn by all means but don’t do it as a means of figuring it all out.