Submitted 3 hours ago by Tiral@lemmy.world to [deleted]
As an American myself, I’ve asked several people this question. No one seems to know why either. Is it strategic position in the world? I don’t think they have anything the US can exploit besides that really. Am I missing something? Political arguing aside what exactly is the motivation? Thanks for any explanations.
AIPAC political donations to lawmakers and politicians. They’re the second largest lobby contributor and influence politicians for Israel.
Evangelicals look forward to the rapture. I’ve been to a lot of Evangelical churches, and, without exception, they want it to come.
Do you mean the rapture of -99, 2001, 2002, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011(sure this time), 2013 (I mean 13, right?!!), 2014, …
Well yeah, if that comes then they’re proven right and they get to go to heaven while all the “bad” people stay here.
My dad is in his 80’s and has been an atheist and hardcore liberal democrat for most of his life. The only political subject we’ve ever seriously butted heads on is Israel.
The last time we argued about it, his position was basically that, as a state, it had the right to defend itself from all the “hostile” countries around it. According to him, it even has the right to expand outward to protect itself by creating buffer zones. If Palestinians didn’t want their innocent children bombed to bits, all they needed to do was renounce Hezbollah and/or leave the area entirely.
I was pretty dumbfounded hearing him say this. He’s an avid reader and total history nerd, so to hear him hand-waving genocide was pretty shocking to me. I think it comes from growing up a boomer and a lifetime of deep-seated indoctrination that painted post-WW2 Jews as forever the good guy victims who are just struggling to recover from the atrocities of the past. A mindset that people born in the 70s, 80s, (and so on) just can’t relate to.
I know that doesn’t exactly answer your question, but I wrote this out as much for me as for you. I love my dad and he’s an extremely good person, so it’s pretty shocking for me to have this huge wedge issue between us. If he could learn to separate Jewish people from the state of Israel, he might understand, but frankly, at his age, I doubt he’ll ever come around.
I think it is the religious end of things; by that the Americans can tell themselves they are protecting god’s chosen people. So in a way they are doing god’s will.
Also money talks and the isreali lobby has lots of it.
As someone who grew up religious, this is it. The people primarily voting maga into power are christians and they fervently believe Israel is right because they are god’s chosen. Religion has absolutely no place in politics or we end up in situations like this.
ding ding ding, this is my exact thought, and I remember my ultra religious dad glazing israel while reading me the bible as a kid.
No thanks.
A wealthy elite from Wall Street to Hollywood with lots in between is a large attractor to support Israel. Every political campaign has to court the jewish vote regardless of stance to stay competitive in votes and campaign finance.
It’s a friendly nation in an area where those are scarce, so being able to base military operations out of there is seen as a key strategic asset.
Not defending, just explaining.
Any country can be friendly. If they have an advantage to be your friend
AIPAC gives money to politicians, Epstein gathers dirt on rich people and politicians- politicians now have to do whatever they are told by Israel. citizens United accelerated this by making it easier to just bribe (sorry “give donations”) politicians than using pedophile honeypots to gain influence
The politicians are into it for the campaign donations.
The average citizen supports it because they generally have a post-WWII mindset and are resistant to criticisms of Israel and conflate anti-Israel sentiment with antisemitism which Israel encourages.
USA has the largest Jewish population outside of Israeli. And Jewish people are over-represented in media, government, and other leadership/power positions.
All of the most successful/influential people I have known in my life were Jewish, and very pro-Israeli. The only person I have known who was critical of Israeli was Israelis who were born there. American Jews seems to idealize it, like you said. Because they only go there for birthright.
AIPAC has infiltrated all the way to the local level. Israel is our greatest enemy and it has fully infected every cell of our body
The region is still very important from a geopolitical standpoint. As last months oil prices have shown.
Israel don’t have (m)any friends in the region. They are a reasonably stable democracy. This makes them a dependable ally. What would happen if there was a revolution in Saudi Arabia for example? Probably something similar to Iran 1979.
So having Israel as an ally is a huge multiplier in power projection in the region.
Why do you need to project power when it’s so expensive? It’s sort of what superpowers do. Meddle in the affairs of smaller countries to further their own goals. If not the US then Russia or China.
It’s their attack dog in the SWANA region. As Biden said, if Israel did not exist the US would have to create an Israel.
There are a lot of reasons - one I haven’t seen mentioned here yet is that they’re our only real ally in the region and the best spies in the world; a combination that makes them incredibly attractive as “strategic partners” if the goal is to influence politics in a region you have very little other indirect methods of manipulating.
They were basically a hedge against USSR in the region for 50+ years. People forget that.
This is the answer as i understand it.
They’re a strategic partner.
I don’t think people get that that history of the US is what we’re seeing in Israel now. What’s happening to the people of the middle east happened first to the people of turtle island. It’s the continuation of the same project of domination and land grabs.
Imbuing governance with religion removes logic and reason from the answer to the equation. You’re looking for a logical reason where there is none.
Thank you so much for the thoughts, they all make sense.
Because Israel supplied the US with orange juice during the Korean War.
I think the christian religion plays a large role, as many christian americans, who dominate our political cycle, see it as their “holy land”.
No idea, actually. Maybe a percentage of Jews in the USA’s governmental institutions?
ODGreen@lemmy.ca 35 minutes ago
USA has a large population of Jews. Not all are zionists, in fact there have been many anti-zionist Jews protesting against Israel’s genocide of Palestinians. However, some are zionists. Some Jews see Israel as a backup plan - if shit goes south in the USA they can always flee there.
USA has a lot of evangelical Christians. Somehow (it’s not in the Bible) they have convinced themselves that a Jewish return to the Holy Land is necessary before the end of the world happens. Which they want to happen, because they believe they are the good guys and will go to heaven.
USA has a lot of racists. They see Israel as an ethnostate, they like that and support it. Their hatred of brown people is stronger than their hatred of Jews so they are happy to see Israel oppress Palestinians.
USA also has anti-semites who are glad to see a place exist where Jews “should” go to. And they are ecstatic that Israel’s genocide of Palestinians is igniting a new wave of anti-semitism.
Many Americans also see Israel as the only democracy in the middle east. It isn’t a democracy, of course, since it has de facto control over Palestine and therefore a huge population is disenfranchised. But wait - rights only for a certain group of people, oppression for the rest - that’s like America when it was “great” (ie pre-Civil Rights era) and they want America “great again”.