Seriously, why is the USA supporting Israel?
Seriously, why is the USA supporting Israel?
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.
The US supports plenty of fucked up countries because we gain something from them. In the same way Saudi Arabia supplies us oil, Israel provides an American stronghold in the middle east to operate out of. With the political importance and violent instability of the middle east the US finds Israel a necessity to its ambitions.
They have historic ties and Israel is an important strategic ally in the middle east for the US.
The answer is simple and almost no one gets it: The U.S. will NEVER give up a military foothold in the middle east. They will ignore every atrocity Israel commits if it means we have a place to sortie from.
That's it.
It's not a religious conspiracy, it's not about back room money deals.
It's about military power and our ability to strike anywhere in the world with 2 hours notice.
Roughly 4 out of 5 companies I've seen that have received investments in my industry in the past 5 years have been Israel R&D startup companies.
Not my wheel house, but if I had to guess, the ruling class in the states has a lot of investments tied up in Israel.
Take with a grain of salt, as this is just an anecdotal observation.
They want an ally in the middle east? A bunch of countries in that area don't like them.
I think this issue is also more nuanced than you'll see it given credit for in the media.
I think there's some strong "War in Iraq" parallels that can be drawn that might help reflect why the US is reacting the way they are.
To summarize, small group of terrorists commit an attack that is one of the worst in the nations history. This country that was attacked has a much better funded military, and they roll in to exact retribution, notionally under the banner of "stopping the people who did this and not letting it happen again." The war of revenge is hugely detrimental to the civilian population therein, and human rights violations occur.
Most establishment politicians were/are fully on board with the War in Iraq. Why wouldn't they be on board with Israel right now? It's basically the same situation again.
I think that a lot of what you see online forgets that this wasn't some random thing where Israel just decided to commit a genocide out of nowhere. But just like how 9/11 didn't justify the War in Iraq, 10/7 doesn't justify what's happening now. But it's somewhat understandable why it's happening, and why people support it.
I remember right after 9/11, the vast majority of people were on board with sending troops in. The dissenters were super few and far between. This is just that again, but Israel this time.
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.
Strategic military foothold in the Middle East.
Israel's an ally and America doesn't exactly have the moral high ground to stand on cutting off israel for terror bombing civlians in the middle east.
More practically, Biden seems to think he can negotiate more from israel by playing at being on their side in this conflict than by joining the international condemnation against them, and to his credit he has achieved concessions from israel in the hypothetical post war, and managed hostage swaps between israel and hamas.
Lastly there's the old saying about never letting a good crisis go to waste, the houthis have gone and made absolute asses of themselves with their red sea blockade over this war, and the US and KSA MICs are both explosively orgasmic at the campaign against them going from being labelled a humanitarian disaster to suddenly being a borderline service to the international community.
The longer Israel keeps it up, the longer the Houthis keep making everyone hate them, the longer MBS has to wipe what he sees as one of his biggest security threats off the map without catching flak from most of the international community. You could almost argue that Israel and KSA are passing the "everyone hates us!" ball back and forth to cover for each other's designs on complete subjugation of their immediate neighbors.
Money.
https://www.aipac.org/ is an influential lobbying organization. Your elected leaders listen to influential lobbying organizations.
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.
The military industrial complex needed some new juice after the US left Afghanistan. Those businesses can't scale back and the defense budget can't be reduced, no, never.
Biden may not be a genocidal maniac, but he is a warmonger. I'm hoping his presidency will get people to realize that the Democratic party desires war just as much as Republicans, but that doesn't look like it's happening
Because while "what we can mostly all agree" to that, Biden does not think that Israel is engaged in genocide.
Just because a group of people perceive something to be the absolute truth, doesn't mean everyone interpret reality the same way.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned is how the Jewish were treated by all countries in WWII. Going against Israel gives the opposing party ammunition that only works due to most people not understanding the politics at play
The same reason Russia and North Korea are supporting Palestine.
Because history is never the result of good or bad intentions, as much as propaganda would try and convince you otherwise
To fund the military industrial complex.
Politics baby
It’s really complicated.
Imagine if after 9/11, Bin Laden and al-Qaeda were held up in New Jersey, and had been launching small attacks to New York for years prior. They are intertwined into New Jersey and don’t operate like a nation state. Now imagine the US is the size of New York, and they are bordered by several other countries that basically want to wipe them off the face of the earth so they fund Al-Qaeda to do their dirty work.
Israel is in an extremely vulnerable position, and there’s no great answer. Remember the conflict in this area is practically older than recorded history. Hamas isn’t going to surrender, and obviously aren’t centralized to be taken out.
War sucks.
Money.
The history of the conflict is pretty complicated. As far as US support goes, the US can utilize Israel and wars as a destabilizing force in middle east which is beneficial to the Military Industrial Complex, and influence in the region with Hard/Soft Power. Reductively, because of Money and Power.
Following Israel’s stunning victory and occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Washington concluded that Arab nations had moved into the Soviet camp and so increased weapons sales to the Jewish state, including Phantom jet fighters.
Initially as an anti Soviet position under LBJ
Military support for Israel solidified under the Reagan administration which also began a more vigorous diplomatic defence of Israel – particularly shielding it from criticism at the United Nations.
And especially to sell weapons under Reagan
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/16/why-israel-allies-explainer
The US has been supporting the ethnic cleansing of Palestine since the 1967 war and the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, and that position has led to the US supporting the ongoing genocide in Gaza today.
Biden is also a strong Zionist, so... There's that too
Biden isn’t a genocidal maniacBack during the Iraq War, Biden and Blinken came up with the idea of partitioning Iraq into 3 different ethnostates. "We should take [ethnic group] and PUSH it somewhere else!!" is the kind of thing Biden thinks makes sense.
"It is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly. We would be able to influence the reaction in America if whatever happens happens after we return."
Israel is doing a lot of the dirty military R&D that the USA can not do locally, stuff like using AI to make killing machines.
Plus, the Israeli political lobby pumps massive funding into US politics. You can easily see who is getting the influencer money based on their stance. No sane person would stand behind a kill to death ratio like Gaza unless they were compromised. Killing more than 20:1 and calling it some kind of retaliation is psychotic. If you simply step back from the news cycle and give yourself the space needed to think for yourself, the truth is obvious.
For the far right in the USA, Israel is indistinguishable from another crusade, and those kinds of people can not distinguish between terrorists and all Muslims, mostly because they can't see how their own extremist jihad-like ideology is nearly as toxic.
The vast majority of people in the USA now are under educated and completely lack fundamental logic skills. Like, we generally can't afford the good schools. Look at any of the top schools and you will find the majority of students are foreign nationals. The general population of the USA has had nearly 50 years of complete neglect and exploitation. All of the growth is at the top by those that do the exploiting. This is why things like school shootings happen so much. I'm all for reasonable gun control, but the real issue is that the majority of people have no future and no way to escape the constant pressure of simply surviving. These are the people who see a headline about some politician, do no research, and become emotionally attached to the brand without doing any research or follow up observations about accountability. Half or more of people that actually vote follow this pattern.
We don't, our government it's
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).
What should we do? Hamas kidnapped a bunch of people and is still holding them hostage. Hamas has been launching missiles at civilians for decades now.
Israel is not without guilt, but the everyone else [with any power] is at least as bad.
There are no good answers. All options are bad. The only question is what is the least bad, and that seems to be supporting Israel while putting pressure on them to stop settlements and be careful about non-Hamas civilians. Not a good option, but the is nothing else that is better. (including walking away from the whole region)
Israel wants to kill everyone in
Gazathe Middle East and take their land a la Lebensraum. (They want to take Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt too (and even Turkey))America wants to control the middle east so they can control the oil.
Our entire modern society revolves around oil.
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 jews are very influential in the US. Dollar. Jeffrey Epstein. Medias. On the other hand a lot of crazy Christians, who want to believe their story of the "holy land". Useful idiots. A monotheistic tragedy with a such called loving god and a lot of blood and gore. Perhaps they love it subconsciously?
