The US is supporting Israel through what we can mostly all agree is a genocide of the Gazans. Clearly, Biden isn’t a genocidal maniac, yet he’s all in with unwavering support. Why are we doing this? There has to be a logical reason that isn’t just “we want Israel to kill everyone in Gaza and take their land a la lebensraum.”
We know this is an emotional topic, so please be respectful of each other so that we can have open and clear authentic discussion on the matter.
Because Isreal is a leading military power in the Middle East. They are Western in most of their views and the US can deal with them. You can’t say the same about any of the other Middle Eastern nations.
Israel is coming down hard on Gaza and Hamas to make an example of them. They are going to send that strip back to the Stone Age. This operation is a statement, “this is what happens when you fuck with us. “
No other Middle Eastern powers give a shit about Gaza. They make noises to appease their populations. But no other Nation has offered direct military assistance or action.
In short it would be stupid to drop Israel as an ally over this.
God forbid we stop calling someone an ally when they kill 20,000 people in less than 6 months
Morality doesn’t exist on the scale of nations.
Look, I agree that Isreal needs to do more to protect Gazan citizens. And to deal with the present situation you need to ignore about 2000 years of history. With that said, when your neighbor is a terrorist group with the EXPLICIT AIM of eradicating the state of Israel, and they launch indiscriminate terrorist attacks on you, and deliberately hide among civilian populations to maximize casualties, what are your options except a land invasion to remove them from power, even though you know there will be civilian deaths?
I mean you could start by not shooting aid trucks, killing people with their hands up and shirts off, not blowing up ambulances on their way to save six year olds.
That’s just me though
War always has civilian deaths. It’s an unfortunate consequence.
This is different. Gaza is being flattened by the indiscriminate bombing. Its ridiculous.
It’s not ridiculous. It’s the point. Lives are the currency. Hamas has one value Israel has another. The exchange rate is far from even.
To fund the military industrial complex.
https://www.aipac.org/ is an influential lobbying organization. Your elected leaders listen to influential lobbying organizations.
Israel is a military toehold in the region. Israel desperately needs our help, so we help Israel because it allows us to have someone who desperately needs our help in the region.
Without US money there’d be no Iron Dome. There’d be no Israel of any kind. Israel needs the US, and that is why we chose Israel as our local ally.
From Machiavelli’s The Prince:
The Romans, in the countries which they annexed, observed closely these measures; they sent colonies and maintained friendly relations with[2] the minor powers, without increasing their strength; they kept down the greater, and did not allow any strong foreign powers to gain authority
Considering a selfish, manipulative, ahem Machiavellian worldview, the reason the US supports Israel is because Israel is the local minor power, which can only become the local major power with our help.
With US help, Israel is on top over there. Without it, Israel is a minor power. That is why Israel, specifically, gets our military investments.
Israel does not need our help, they could easily defend themselves against their neighbor and as a nuclear armed country they know the US will jump in to defend them.
A country of less than 9.5 million people cannot afford to fund the occupation and blockade of 5.5 million Palestinians alone, still less make all the weapons required.
They don’t need to, they just need to verify their Sampson defense and no one would dare attempt an invasion, it’s quite literally the only reason their country isn’t a smouldering crater.
You’re not wrong about the nukes. You’re wrong about Israel not needing support from the US to continue existing in its current form, which is the point I addressed.
In the early decades, they flirted with the USSR to keep the US onside. The nuclear threat now performs at least some of the same blackmail. But the blackmail is necessary because this is a tiny country keeping millions of people under brutal occupation. It is not physically possible for Israel to have the Occupation without bucketloads of funding from a superpower.
It’s absolutely possible, you seem to ignore the technological and firepower disparity and focusing solely on military size.
Iran is 14th Israel is 17th and that’s ignoring a nuclear arsenal.
And yet they are writing checks that the US has to cash
Racism.
You can see that by how American politicians go on and on about Israel being a “Jewish Nation”, a characteristic that is wholly unimportant unless ones is a racist.
Since WWII and what was done to millions of Jewish people because of their etnicity (and not only them: there is this “strange” forgetfulness that for example people were also being exterminated for having the Roma etnicity) by the German racists that, even though the racism itself never died, Jews became “one of us” for the racists in many countries with a predominant white majority (in other words, they’re considered just another kind of “white”).
Israel itself seems to have invested a lot into portraying itself as a “Western Nation” to further entrench and capitalize on that “one of us” perception in Western nations,
Palestinians, on the other hand are seen by the racists as “muslims” and as some call it “brown people”, with quite a lot of nasty prejudices associated with both characteristics.
For the racists this is an “people like us” vs “them” fight, hence why even very overt and extreme racist statement of the Israelis like calling Palestinians “human animals” don’t shock them (they’re pretty much aligned with the racists’ prejudices about “muslims” and “non-whites”) and hence too the vastly different reaction from how the invasion of Ukraine by Russia was seen, since that one from a racist point of view was “people like us” vs “people like us”.
This, by the way, also explains Germany’s behaviour on this: the Nazis might have been kicked out of power there but that very “special” way of looking at other human beings as primarily members of an etnicity and “like us” or “not like us” has never left, so Israel gets unwavering support no matter what and that’s very overtly stated as because “they’re the Jewish Nation” (notice how it’s people etnicity that determines if support is given).
you really need to go back and look at the history of post WWII. How that cookie crumbled has set the world stage for where it is today. Israel is part of a long term geopolitical chess game that hasn’t fully played out yet.
What’s the endgame?
You know how abused children grow up and often repeat their trauma on children, grandchildren, etc? That’s Israel. The never again mental mentality means the state of Israel is literally repeating everything that happened to 1930s and 40s Jews. I’m waiting for IDF to start building large incinerators in northern gaza. And it’s not hyperbole or exaggeration. Just look at the slow steady push of Gazans to the south and the destruction and deaths.
for the US to have a vassal state in the middle east.
OK never mind we are in agreement
that’s a weird statement. i never saw your question as an argument for or against anything, nor did i see my replies as such either.
“that’s just the way it is” is a complicated issue. it’s okay to talk about things without taking sides.
With the phrasing I used I can understand how it would come off that way.
It was meant as more of a “oh never mind I understand.” as well as the fact that I agree with you
It’ll all make a lot more sense in a few years, when the Lord Jesus Christ descends from the clouds to collect his chosen. Let’s just say you’ll be pretty glad we killed all those Palestinian kids then. It’s pretty basic foreign policy stuff, if you read your Bible.
Once that red heifer is born and sacrificed we’re gonna see some serious shit
Your wit was lost on someone, but I give you +1
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Revelations was written by John, his accounts of everything differ from the other big 3 in multiple places, he liked metaphors
Metaphors and healthy doses of mind-shattering hallucinogens.
Strategic military foothold in the Middle East.
Because they love their colonial overlords, the UK, and the UK gave part of palestina to the jews to create Israel?
Must be something like that, or just plain longing to influence a tiny part of the world that is close to the area that has a tad of oil in the ground.
At this point if anyone is the satellite state between the US and UK it’s the UK.
Try one of the largest supplies of Natural Gas in the world
As a US citizen, I really wish we wouldn’t. I know a lot of us are against it too.
Thank god you’re are in inconsequential but very vocal minority.
I really don’t think we are a minority.
Money
We also like to support the only democracy in the middle East. But yeah, mostly money / self interest.
1 trillion dollars and countless American lives to bring democracy to Iraq, and people still trotting out the “Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East” line.
The simplest and most concise answer.
Gazans themselves seem to agree with the US and Israel in that it’s all HAMAS’s fault. The 7th of October was 9/11 times 17, hostages are still in captivity, random rocket strikes on Israeli civilians are still continuing and the blind Islamic hatred against the Jews is here to stay. What are you proposing Israel does?
The killed 34000 people on 10/7!?!
The media has been hiding this!!!
Military Intelligence and small strike teams kill less civilians than bombing schools and hospitals.
We don’t, our government it’s
They want an ally in the middle east? A bunch of countries in that area don’t like them.
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