I think a lot of U.S. politicians and legacy media outlets were genuinely caught off-guard by the backlash. Prior to the Netanyahu era, support for Israel in the U.S. was basically non-controversial. But he fucked that up just like he fucks up everything else.
Netanyahu has been an unmitigated disaster in every conceivable way, for a long time. The Israeli people really need to kick him to the curb.
I mean, at this point he's squandering good will and sympathy generated for Israel after a terrorist group specifically targeted civilians for rape, torture, and murder. It feels like something that should be impossible - I mean, it's not like anyone sane would side with freaking Hamas.
If you're opposed to Hamas, it should be trivially easy to maintain the moral and political high ground over them. Yet he's somehow failing even that.
Yeah, and the “vocal minority” gained strength when Netanyahu spoke before a joint session of Congress and insulted everyone to the left of Mussolini. And then the 2014 Gaza War was disproportionate and all over social media. And then Netanyahu named a fucking settlement after Trump, America’s worst president since Andrew Johnson. And now he’s razing Gaza and belongs at The Hague.
I didn’t even think about the whole, entire Levant much prior to that shit. I have no connection to the wider Mideast and frankly, still don’t think it’s interesting. I like nature more than religion so there’s nothing in Jerusalem for me. (Tel Aviv sounds nicer.) But now I’m like, “Please stop bombing civilians using the weapons I apparently have to pay for. For some reason? Is Israel strategically important? Why?”
And Likud-ass people are accusing me of hating Israel. I didn’t have an opinion but now I do. Fuck all religious nationalists with a broomstick no one has sanded down.
The CIA staged a coup in Iran in 1953 at the behest of Britain/British Petroleum when the newly elected PM decided to nationalize the oil fields. Iran remains Israel's greatest geopolitical foe, because of Israel's ties to the West.
The Suez Canal, an originally French/British colonial venture, which carries an absurd amount of cargo from former British colonies into the Mediterranean, was the cause of the Six Day War; not to mention there's a plan for a new canal through Israel to avoid all the nasty geopolitical issues the Suez Canal raises.
The US has a network of Middle Eastern allies and enemies and meddles in the affairs of every middle eastern nation because they've got all that sweet light crude we love so much.
Do you think, maybe, that the US's (and more broadly the West's) objectives in the region outweigh, possibly, whatever "influence" Israel has over our politics?
Try to run for office without the support of the Israel lobby... there goes your PAC money. Obama ran with Biden as a nod to the Israel lobby because Biden was their darling and Obama was known to attend pro-Palestine conferences.
Very true because money speaks volumes and people don't VOTE, and many of those who do have no understanding of how to recognize real balanced news so they just go with the loudest, most agenda driven sources.
The US is a global empire built on oil, which makes Israel (an ideologically similar nation in the middle of the largest oil producing region on earth) a natural partner. Influence doesn't really have anything to do with it.
Because it turns turns billions in public funds into billions in private profits.
The fact that those profits come at the expense of children's lives doesn't worry the oil and gas industries, so why would it worry weapons manufacturers?
This lobby group is extremely effective and any legislator that opposes them will see their primary or electoral opponents get millions of dollars in funding.
Look, AIPAC sucks but do you guys really think we wouldn't be dumping weapons into the middle east if it weren't for the Israel lobby? Like the US government doesn't have its own reasons for doing so?
You can credibldy argue that Israel has an outsized influence of US foreign policy, but to call the US an "Israeli puppet state" is such a hyperbolic exaggeration that it sounds less like a valid criticism and more like the old "Jews control the world" antisemitic hate speech.
The US has far more influence on Israel than vice versa
Its hard to tell sometimes whether somebody is using phrasing like that naively or as a dog whistle (which is why its an effective dog whistle). The reality is Israel plays a critical role in maintaining US empire and public image and Netanyahu is cashing in those in for a racist child-killing spree.
Like someone else said here, it funnels public money into private profits. What I do not get however is this system only furthers inequality which is going to snap the system at some point to the detriment of all, including the billionaires who will increasingly be in a hostile environment. Why shit on your own doorstep when you could make it better for all including yourself and your family. Really foolish thinking but oh well, as really, we seem absolutely committed to this dark path.
That's an easy answer. If you're rich enough, you have private security and a mansion with acres of land surrounded by razor wire. You won't feel a thing.
Obviously the US government is sending an endless supply of arms to Israel without conditions because doing so serves its purposes.
The question that you need to ask is how it serves its purposes - how is it that the US government benefits by enabling Israel's Palestinian genocide.
My theory, also supported by other US government actions in the Middle East (such as the Iraq war) is that the US government's overall goal in the Middle East is destabilization.
And that stands to reason, since the Middle East's wealth administered by stable and progressive governments rather than reactionary autocracies could he a threat to western hegemony.
Or more simply, a Middle East consumed by strife can't be stable, and thus can't invest sufficient time and resources into being a serious player on the world stage, since too much of its time and resources is diverted into dealing with internal strife, or pissed away by the dysfunctional governments that have come to power as a result of of the strife.
And Israel, and specifically the overt violence and oppression and now genocide failing to hide behind a shabby mask of "defense" and "security" in which Israel continues to engage, is key to that strife.
If you look at US foreign policy in the Middle East through that lens - asking yourself, at every turn, how does this accord with the presumption that the broad goal of the US government in the Middle East is destabilization, then a lot of things that don't make sense otherwise suddenly do.
My theory, also supported by other US government actions in the Middle East (such as the Iraq war) is that the US government’s overall goal in the Middle East is destabilization.
The exact opposite is the actual reason the US supports Israel.
This is correct. I was down with that post until this same sentence. Dude started off on the right path and then just went 180 in the wrong direction.
Israel is the sole democracy in the middle east, defined as a flawed democracy (same as America) by political science.
If we stopped supplying it with weapons and might, it would be overrun by Iran and the Israeli people would be killed to the last. Iran will never stop arming and funding terrorism against Israel. Any apparent respect Iran shows to Israel's borders or legitimacy is an act, a pretext of peace, an armistice really, until they wage total war against Israel. Iranians man, don't let the world have anything nice. It is not in America's national interest to let the only democracy in the region fall, and lose any hope for human rights in the middleeast.
Yep. You don't need a fancy graduate degree in IR to know this. US policy in the Middle East has always been a pretty open book. The fact that it's often been disastrous isn't evidence of some vast conspiracy to keep the Arab world down. To the contrary, it's evidence of deep stupidity, hubris, arrogance and wilful ignorance on the part of US leadership. Never attribute to malice that which can more easily be attributed to stupidity.
When the next Holocaust happens (we can see the world persecuting Jews in these very months...), and Israel will be the only one to save you, turn them down, because you obviously hate them so much.
There is an opportunity here to develop the gas fields in offshore Gaza, on behalf of the Palestinians," Hochstein told The National, adding “as soon as we get to the day after and this horrible war ends, there are companies willing to develop those fields.
You read "help" I read "colonialist looting". Guess only time will tell
Lol people on here talking about the US wanting to genocide Palestinians and in the meantime were actively working to build them an economy for after the war
But fossil fuels are a finite non-renewable resource. The more they extract the less they have left, and I doubt they are gonna wait untill it runs out to start looking for other sources.
There is a rare debate taking place in mainstream foreign policy circles, including among congressional Democrats, about whether the United States should condition its military support for Israel in light of the massive civilian casualties it has caused in Gaza.
According to a recent report in the Israeli media, however, the Biden administration has begun doing exactly that – putting conditions on continued US support for Israel’s war on Gaza.
“[It] would be too resource-intensive – and that’s fair to some extent – to essentially vet the entire Israeli security apparatus for gross violations of human rights,” Josh Paul, a former senior state department official responsible for foreign arms transfers, explained on The Lawfare Podcast last week.
“The department has never concluded that a gross violation of human rights occurred, despite what I would say is incredibly credible and convincing evidence to the contrary,” Paul added.
The Leahy Law is just one of many safeguards meant to stop foreign governments from using American weapons to commit human rights violations and war crimes.
Just two months before the Hamas attacks that led to this brutal round of fighting, the state department instructed embassies worldwide to monitor and report all incidents of harm to civilians involving American-made arms.
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Biden is fully owned and controlled by AIPAC. Netanyahu controls America. He boasted about it before he's proven it in a months time. Genocide Joe is as much of a foreign agent as Agent Orange
You can vote for Russia and israel.... Or actually vote third party and stop this madness.
I mean it would stop this particular madness... In a Monkey's Paw kind of way where we now instead have to deal with the madness of Trump trying to become a dictator and all the harm that entails.
Bit of an oversimplification. Arab states are powerful and have massive numbers on their side on paper, who tried to conquer Israel three times, came close to doing so, and yet failed. Because Arab states are bunch of incompetent fools that run on patronage than by meritocracy. I can't remember the name but there is a book that analysed why Arab armies are atrocious. Basically, it is because of corruption and patronage culture that value "who you know" than "what you know". Even to this day, the Saudi-led and funded coalition to eliminate the Houthi rebels of South Yemen could not be extinguished for nearly ten years because of said incompetence by Arab states.
How big is Israel? Why are Israelis desperate to stay in an area surrounded by "countries who want them dead?"
Do you think US aid to Israel could be better spent relocating Israelis to rural areas in the US where they can be safe and revitalize the local economies?
Should we relocate all Ukrainians? Also pretty much everyone has tried to wipe them out at one time or another. The number of Israelis fleeing genocide in the middle east is actually much more than the number that come from Europe. It's the ancestral home of the Jewish people. Where do you propose relocating the majority of Israel's population?
Making secretive arms deals in order to "jump over" the regulations, protocols and overall legislation meant to enforce transparency and accountability over this specific type of bussiness is not diplomacy, Its corruption
The story doesn't talk about arms deals. It only tells about support . I don't know what you consider secretive, but if you know about it my guess is it is not.