Britain's influence and lobbying makes some sense, given how we still have hereditary and cultural ties with them. I admittedly still don't like it, because honestly the UK government can go fuck itself, but good luck trying to get even the public to go that hard against UK influence.

Japan is an interesting example to bring up. Aside from some economic perks and some extra security in the way of assurance of military support, I'm not sure there's any particularly costly things they'd be dragging us into. If anything, the US is dragging THEM down.

Not that I'm making any argument on your core point, but these are relatively weak supporting arguments you're tossing out there. At the very least, one can make a very clear and evident case that Israel has, through being in a very volatile region and being a clearly disliked target, has become a black hole of funding and military support from a wide number of nations, for reasonably little benefit to anyone but Israel.