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.

Masterblaster,

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.

NoIWontPickaName,

What’s the endgame?

Masterblaster,

for the US to have a vassal state in the middle east.

NoIWontPickaName,

OK never mind we are in agreement

Masterblaster,

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.

NoIWontPickaName,

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

derphurr,

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.

Marin_Rider,

I am more curious as to why these completely legal (non rule breaking or trolling comments) are being deleted by lemmy moderation. My app shows removed comments.

If you think you are seeing what people really think of the conflict on this site, you are not. Agendas are being pushed

https://aussie.zone/pictrs/image/eb3fb590-653b-43dd-b9a0-47734a2a1a89.jpeg

bartolomeo,

Sorry I’m really bad at reading between the lines, what’s the agenda being pushed?

kava,

We need more transparency and community engagement. I think instead of someone being banned or their comment being removed, it should go up for a vote between a random selection of users.

Sort of like the criminal justice system. Be judged by a jury of your peers. Not just some arbitrary official who decides your fate and you have zero recourse.

Linkerbaan,
@Linkerbaan@lemmy.world avatar

It was getting a bit too based. People are stating to realize that there is very little difference between israel and the Nazi’s expanding their Lebensraum.

After that, you ask the question if fighting back against Nazi’s is justified, but answering that is not allowed yet.

bartolomeo,

Fighting back against Nazis is the only correct response.

Postreader2814,

Israel is an ally in the middle east, the only one who does what the US says whenever they say it.

eestileib,

spits out coffee

Israel does what they want.

Their interests align with ours more often than, say, Syria, but they are not a puppet state. Israel tells US foreign policy to go fuck itself sideways on a regular basis.

Postreader2814, (edited )

We’ve not told them explicitly to stop steam rolling Palestine, we’ve don’t the opposite by emboldening them with a few billion dollars in aid money. If we did and stopped giving them aid, they would stop yesterday. They’re dependent on US aid to keep existing. The second we stop aiding Israel; Jordan, Iran, and Iraq move right on in.

Rongbipper,

Interesting, What are some examples of this?

mods_are_assholes,

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.

ICastFist,
@ICastFist@programming.dev avatar

The U.S. will NEVER give up a military foothold in the middle east.

They will, only once all the oil’s been extracted, which will take some decades yet.

While it’s not a religious conspiracy, there is plenty of religious support from certain christian denominations, on the USA and other countries, because of some weird interpretation of the bible about Israelis getting their “promised land” back.

mods_are_assholes,

It’s not only about oil. I mean sure, some of it is but even without oil they’d want military access simply because of how much a hotspot it is.

I already told you this has nothing to do with religion and the fact you believe this means your sources aren’t trustworthy.

ICastFist,
@ICastFist@programming.dev avatar

Oh, you mean that people who use religion to preach support for isreal aren’t real? The pastors in my country that do that during the cults and on TV must be a figment of my imagination, then!

mods_are_assholes,

And exactly what kind of impact do you think those religious nuts have on our top military brass’s positions?

I find it funny that you moved the goalposts so readily. I don’t have time for intellectually dishonest people.

ICastFist,
@ICastFist@programming.dev avatar

I never implied said religious support happened at or was directed at the top of the hierarchy, political or military. Why you came to that conclusion eludes me. Let me quote myself:

there is plenty of religious support from certain christian denominations, on the USA and other countries, because of some weird interpretation of the bible about Israelis getting their “promised land” back.

My intent was pointing out that this is to generate public support. But I guess I’m the one “moving the goalposts” and being “intellectually dishonest” because I’m not replying to what you thought I was saying implicitly. Next thing you’ll tell me I’m trying to squirrel out of what you’re wrongfully accusing me of.

JIMMERZ,

This is the most simple answer and the truth. Not only that, but our hands are generally tied to a fault when it comes to these allies. This is why Biden has had some words to say, but there’s no actual teeth to them. He literally can’t do shit. Any other administration would be the same.

NoIWontPickaName,

No he CAN do something, he can say fuck you, and let someone else run while he does the right thing regardless of the cost to his career

mods_are_assholes,

It wouldn’t be the cost to his career, it would be the loss of military access to the most volatile place on the planet.

Do you even bother understanding the concepts you comment on?

NoIWontPickaName,

We have other bases in the Middle East, we don’t need them for a foothold.

We can walk in, whip our dick out and ask who wants to be our new friend and under our protection.

Israel is ignoring us anyway so I see no harm.

Fall in line or fuck around and find out when we allow them to be outlaws and retract our protection.

Sends a message while we are at it.

mods_are_assholes,

… there is literally no military strategist in our armed forces that agree with your assessment.

Please don’t mistake your wikipedia education for a nuanced and in-depth understanding.

NoIWontPickaName,

Because they have no intention of changing anything why would they look for another way?

They all keep getting rich off backroom deals with weapon companies

mods_are_assholes,

Yeah but that won’t prevent every fuckdamn armchair admiral from weighing in with their wikipedia based knowledge.

The problem is that those trolls are significantly out-shouting the truth.

Dark_Arc,
@Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg avatar

Well, Trump might do something because he’s willing to break any and all precedents … but the something he does would likely be much worse, impulsive, and generally lacking much forethought.

bluGill,
bluGill avatar

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)

NoIWontPickaName,

So give them everything they want, while their government continues to admit they have no intention of listening to the us?

Fuck that, bring all of our ships back and let Israel get what they paid for.

bouh,

Hamas didn’t flatten an Israeli city with bombs. They didn’t starved population, killed journalists and bombed hospitals.

Israel is on the verge of genocide here. War crimes are obvious.

Even 1000 hostages don’t warrant 10000 deaths. And Israel is far, far beyond 10k kills in Gaza now.

What should you do? Maybe start to consider the people in Gaza like human being for a start.

Scrof,

HAMAS continues to strike civilians in Israel every day, Hamas did 7th of October, a terror attack equivalent to 17 whole 9/11s, Hamas still holds hundreds of hostages. Genocide of the Jews is still their main agenda.

NoIWontPickaName,

Oh shit they killed 14000 people on 10/7? I missed that

bouh,

How many killed? I’m not defending the hamas BTW. But supporting Israel is exactly like supporting Russia in Ukraine.

daddyjones,
@daddyjones@lemmy.world avatar

How are they in any way the same? Russia attacked Ukraine with no provocation, Hamas committed terrorist atrocities and Israel are responding. Yes, they aren’t taking nearly enough care to prevent civilian deaths, but there is some attempt to do so - Hamas deliberately targeted civilians including beheading and oven cooking babies.

This is not the same at all. Also Hamas deliberately base themselves in schools, hospitals and residential buildings using Palestinians as a human shield.

How many killed?

By turning this into a numbers game (as if one human life lost isn’t too many) you are defending Hamas.

bouh,

I’d defend hamas every day of the weak if it’s what it takes to fight fascism and genocide. But I’m not. You are defending fascism and genocide though. Israel killed 10 times more civilians than hamas, and numbers are still counting.

You are the one defending terrorism here. Not me. Get your logic straight.

NoIWontPickaName,

Oh shit!

Here we go with those 40 decapitated babies again.

Y’know I hear Israelis fill their menorahs with Palestinian infant’s blood on Hanukkah

daddyjones,
@daddyjones@lemmy.world avatar

You don’t believe that Hamas killed babies? Or targeted civilians? Or raped women?

NoIWontPickaName,

I can believe all of that, what I don’t believe is them deliberately decapitating babies or baking them.

It’s really easy to throw extra vicious complaints about someone and then back way off and say “Oh, you don’t believe they were doing these other lesser things either.”

It’s very disingenuous and shows that they don’t actually believe their claims, but that they are trying to conflate the two to confuse people.

That isn’t what you’re doing is it?

daddyjones,
@daddyjones@lemmy.world avatar

I don’t think I’m doing that. I do believe the cousins about the babies. Whatever one thinks about Israel and the whole situation there - from full throated supporter right through to anti semitic holocaust denier - I and convinced Hamas are utterly evil and in no way a friend is the Palestinian people. If Israel are committing genocide (and I don’t believe they are, though I’d like to see them put much more effort into not hitting civilians) then those poor people are being destroyed by two groups either side of them with no where to go to escape.

LemonLord,
@LemonLord@endlesstalk.org avatar

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?

blazeknave,

Hey u/souredgelord which Jews?

blazeknave,

Which Jews?

rammer,
@rammer@sopuli.xyz avatar

The ones with money. The ordinary people can just be brushed aside.

sadreality,

Peasants and plebs ain't people, just NPCs to serve the ruling class.

blazeknave,

Which Jews?

AtmaJnana,

I assume we are to read it as (((the Jews))).

blazeknave,

Trying to give homey benefit of the doubt (with enough rope). Thanks for reminding me to send my daily ping.

blazeknave,

How does this piece of shit’s comments stick and you delete everything I post. Fuck Lemmy and fuck you mods you racist dicks for leaving this crap up all the time.

blazeknave,

Hi mods! Do your fucking job please! 😀

randon31415,

Money

madcaesar,

We also like to support the only democracy in the middle East. But yeah, mostly money / self interest.

randon31415,

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.

whoisearth,
@whoisearth@lemmy.ca avatar

The simplest and most concise answer.

Microplasticbrain,

Biden said it himself back in the day, its a foothold in the Middle East, “if israel did not exist we would need to create an israel” im paraphrasing but the clip is on YouTube

xkforce,

Everyone that understands military doctrine would understand that one of the main purposes of Israel was to act as a staging ground to extend power throughout the middle east. There is also a sizeable voting block of christians that place special emphasis on the formation and continued support of Israel.

MeanEYE,
@MeanEYE@lemmy.world avatar

This is the only correct answer here. Everything else is just uneducated and emotional ramblings.

NoIWontPickaName,

Why do we need a foothold there?

There are oceans between us and our enemies.

Let’s just fucking leave and let them come to us

MeanEYE,
@MeanEYE@lemmy.world avatar

Same reason why Pearl Harbor was a thing. Reaction time, faster reach, strategic location, etc.

NoIWontPickaName,

Or we can use one of the many many other bases we have around there, like the one in jordan

PhlubbaDubba,

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.

NoIWontPickaName,

Hypothetical concessions.

Pray I don’t alter it any farther

PhlubbaDubba,

The reason I say hypothetical is because they’re conditioned on Fatah taking over

So basically Israel agreed to it under the pretense that they’d still get to wipe out Hamas

NoIWontPickaName,

And my point was that they will do it either way regardless of what they say now.

That is what I meant by hypothetical, that they are lying

Dead_or_Alive,

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.

NoIWontPickaName,

God forbid we stop calling someone an ally when they kill 20,000 people in less than 6 months

Jolteon,

Morality doesn’t exist on the scale of nations.

LaLuzDelSol,

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?

NoIWontPickaName,

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

TheCoralReefsAreDying69,

War always has civilian deaths. It’s an unfortunate consequence.

This is different. Gaza is being flattened by the indiscriminate bombing. Its ridiculous.

Clarke311,

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.

Blackmist,

Because Israel helped the US a ton during the cold war. Mossad are pretty good at what they do, and what they did a lot of was spying on Moscow.

k110111,

Except when it comes to defending their own country from their technologically inferior neighbor.

CerealKiller01,

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.

Resol,
@Resol@lemmy.world avatar

The US had no essential friends in the Middle East. So the UK made one for them.

Shyfer,

That’s not super true. We’ve been friends with various Middle Eastern countries over the decades, including Iran (especially during the reign of the Shah), Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. We’ve worked with all of them.

dutchkimble,

That’s the friend circle your mom tells you not to hang out with

Resol,
@Resol@lemmy.world avatar

You are no longer friends with Iran.

Saudi Arabia is probably the only one who you guys are still kinda friends with, but I think even they are starting to get tired of you.

You invaded Afghanistan. They now have a government that despises you.

Same with Iraq.

Pakistan is also friends with China, nay, especially with China.

Linkerbaan,
@Linkerbaan@lemmy.world avatar

Israel wants to kill everyone in Gaza the 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.

TheAlbatross,

This alliance allows the US to maintain a stronger foothold in the Middle East and exert hegemonic power via proxy.

This isn’t the only reason, of course, but it’s part of it.

fastandcurious,
@fastandcurious@lemmy.world avatar

+Palestinians are not as white and a religious minority on top of it

Nudding,

And the US wants a foothold in the middle east because oil.

solidgrue,
@solidgrue@lemmy.world avatar

Well, that and keeping the USSR Russia and China out

TheAlbatross,

I don’t think the US isn’t interested in the oil opportunities in the Middle East, but I think the US wants a foothold everywhere and anywhere across the globe to maintain its position as a global superpower.

Nudding,

Also oil.

shalafi,

Yes, the US wants that foothold because of oil. It’s not because we wish to become rich off it, it’s because oil is essential to keeping our economy stable. Keeping the region stable, or at least “stable” in America’s best interests, is paramount.

Doesn’t matter what anyone’s opinion on our oil consumption is, even in the face of global warming. At this point in time, we need it.

Without oil our economy plummets and that affects the whole world. And we can’t fix it anytime soon. I’m seeing hope, but it’s painfully slow. FFS, trying to fix this mess bucks the richest interests on the planet. And if we guillotined every one of them, we’d still be in the same place.

I see a lot of talk around here calling talk of the “economy” bullshit, like those numbers only affect the rich, and fuck 'em. Like it or not, we all participate in the economy.

In turn, we’re all hurt if it crashes. And that includes the rest of the world. Anyone here old enough to remember the gas station lines after the Iranian revolution?

And spare me talk of coulda/shoula/woulda. America could have done a dozen things better to avoid all this. We didn’t. And here we are.

msage,

In case you didn’t notice, many people are in the middle of the crash right now. So yeah, it’s going to suck for everyone, but what are the alternatives?

ghostdoggtv,

It also allows Israel and other relugional institutions to influence US politics.

Who is the hegemon, the vassal or the collector?

shalafi,

Read a lot of answers and yours is succinct.

Israel is the largest American aircraft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk, does not carry even one American soldier, and is located in a critical region for American national security.

~ Alexander Haig

Linkerbaan,
@Linkerbaan@lemmy.world avatar

critical region for American national security.

The rest was true but this one is complete BS

Cornelius_Wangenheim,

That and Israel wouldn’t hesitate a second before switching sides and allying with Russia and/or China.

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