D. C.

CHARLIE WILSON LOVED ISRAEL ALMOST as much as he loved the United States Marines.

It was early February 1982, and I was the legislative director of ALPAC when Charlie called me about a headline-making incident at the Beirut airport that upset him.

A contingent of Marines had been sent there as part of a multinational peacekeeping force after the Israeli army drove the PLO leadership out of Lebanon. The Marines felt the IDF was testing their authority by encroaching on their lines, and on February 2, 1983, a Marine officer drew his pistol and banged it on an IDF tank to tell it to stop trying to penetrate U.S. lines.

"Tell your friends to back off," Charlie told me. "I …