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.
Man! That’s a can of worms!
Entire books have been written on the subject.
The U.S.and Israel have a tangled history going back most of a century at this point.
The short answer is that there are enough historical, religious, and cultural ties for the two countries to be allies long term. Since the us, and by extension NATO, needed a place of projected power in the region, and there was an opportunity to make that happen, Israel happened.
And, being real, Israel has mostly been a reliable ally since its creation as a country. It’s hard to point to a time when Israel didn’t fulfill its expected role in the relationship.
As such, it’s really no surprise that when both countries have leadership that are absolute fascist pricks, that the governments would go whole hog in supporting each other.
Again, that’s the disgustingly short, over simplified version. I don’t have enough interest to turn it into an essay, nor even a discussion, just wanted to drop my take on the matter in a simple way since I didn’t see anything in other comments to just upvote and support with a subsidiary comment as being super close to the way I would say it.
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”.
This paints an extremely bleak picture of the US population that really doesn’t match reality very well.
To start, there are about 10 million Jews in the US, if we consider the most liberal possible definition of being Jewish, which includes even people who don’t consider themselves Jewish but who live in a Jewish household. Source. With the current US population of 350 million, that means about 3% of the population is Jewish. That is not enough to sway any real policy decisions, unless the group formed an extremely organized voting bloc, which they do not.
Evangelical Christians make up a more significant chunk of the US population, but they tend to be more concerned with restricting women’s bodily autonomy. If you were to grab a random evangelical off the street, they might know about this rapture theory, but they would probably be like “why are you talking to me, I’m trying to buy milk”
It is difficult to measure how many people in the US are racist or antisemetic, since such topics are taboo and people tend not to advertise their stances. But I would guess that the population of racists or antisemites who are really in the weeds enough to support Israel would be lower than the population of Jews. Most of these people are not smart enough to pull off those mental gymnastics.
Instead, the important thing to know about the average American is that they are not keeping up with global geopolitics. They understand that part of the reason for the creation of Israel was so the Jews wouldn’t get genocided again, and they know that Nazis and genocide are bad, so they support it. They might have heard about Hamas, Gaza, or a two state solution, but they would fumble if you asked them to explain the difference between Hamas and Hezbollah, or asked them to point to Gaza on a map of Israel. And if you asked them to explain the two state solution, a lot of them would struggle to remember what the other state even is. Their main concerns if you start talking to them about the Isreal-Palestine conflict are (1) to make sure that you understand that they are not a nazi, and don’t want the Jews to be genocided again and (2) exiting the conversation as soon as possible so they can buy milk and watch Survivor.
You make good points - the reality is that most people whether in the USA or not are “apolitical” and have a surface-level understanding of things. Probably the thing to figure out is how that surface-level understanding is even formed. Those who DO have a strong opinion about things are more likely to be the ones trying to pull “common sense” or surface level understanding toward what they support.
Probably the thing to figure out is how that surface-level understanding is even formed.
I think probably the biggest factor is simply the fact that WW2 occupies such a large space in the American historical zeitgeist. WW2 is a story that makes us look good, and we like stories that make us look good, so we keep telling them. And in the WW2 story, the jews are the victims, and their happy ending is creating a homeland of their own. So the American view, by default, is that Israel has an ethical right to exist as a home state for the jewish people.
Many jews in the united states, especially older jews, are very sympathetic to this view. While they have never experienced systemic persecution themselves, the jewish community at large is bonded over their historic persecution and internally reinforces these norms. Meanwhile, jewish people are significantly overrepresented in the entertainment industry, in wealth, and in positions of political power. The meme of “jews run the world” is a conspiracy theory - but jews do have an outsized influence in society relative to their population. This is likely due to founders effects of immigrating with some level of wealth or expectation of wealth, compounded over time with the additional benefits of being part of a social network which advances its own. For example, a young jewish comedian will have another jewish comedian friend who has an aunt who has a friend who knows Seinfeld’s neice’s boyfriend, who can arrange for him to open at a moderately popular LA comedy club. Being part of the jewish diaspora will give you opportinities that you otherwise wouldn’t get. And so you have a lot of wealthy jews in positions of power in the government and the media, with a culturally imposed mandate to consistently remind the non-jews of the jewish history of persecution and the need to support and protect them from further persecution.
AIPAC, and Zionist supremacists pay the most for elections every cycle, and just demand that their clients say nice things about Israel, and mean things about its enemies. Relative to other US oligarchy, the bribes to cash back ratio is small in most years. Because all US media is controlled for Zionist supremacist goals, it is far easier for all politicians and oligarchy to go along with Zionist genocidal absolutism, than to be labelled an anti-semite extremist.
It presents a friendlier, strategic area to conduct attacks in the middle east for oil for the past century almost. As well as majority of them are white. In addition Israel lobbies the fuck out of our country to be friendly to them and their genocide.
profit, corruption, and the genuine belief that they need to protect Israel in order to go to heaven.
these are the same people that believe god has already determined exactly how they die so they can do anything - if they didn’t die, it was god’s plan.
they also believe god meant for the existence of poor people. blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth (while the rich and famous go to heaven)
they also believe god meant for the existence of poor people. blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth (while the rich and famous go to heaven)
Which is extra funny when you remember that Jesus explicitly stated that rich people don’t get into heaven.
what the bible actually says the rich can get:
The US is a global arms manufacturer with a democracy attached, if there wasn’t an Israel to prop up the US would find something similar and arm it to the hilt.
The
USMilitary Industrial Complex gets to remind everyone why it’s a superpower, it gets to make and sell it’s weapons, survialiance tech, etc, it keeps it’s opponents weak and desperate but armed such that there is always fear to keep selling the forever war (both to the US, but also ton Israelis (and to a lesser extent to Jewish people living elsewhere)), by political maneuvering it gets to police feespeach.liberals/conservatives get to feel like they are not racist because they support a minority led country, who many don’t consider white in that context.
If it wasn’t Israel it could be a different proxy state in the middle East or maybe Africa/Asia.
IMO it has very little to do with Jewishness and a lot more to do with geopolitics, yes they use the Holocaust for propoganda 🤢, but they don’t give a fuck about Holocaust survivors. Also and this is small compared to committing genocide, but they’ve redefined the Holocaust to exclude all of the non-jewish victims which were historically included as recently as a decade ago in common usage of the term (e.g what I learnt in school, what was on Wikipedia, etc)
Israel has its own military industrial complex. It’s an even bigger portion of their economy. They’re a very high tech nation. ICQ, the predecessor of AOL Instant Messenger, was invented in/by Israelis.
Without the US pumping all our tax dollars into it they wouldn’t have the money for universal healthcare, free college and unlimited war and genocide
Are you sure about that?
Looks like the US gives Israel about $3B per year.
https://usafacts.org/articles/how-much-military-aid-does-the-us-give-to-israel/
Versus Israel’s GDP of about $700B
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Israel
I think the main form of aid is the access to US weapons and technology and that’s largely about subsidizing the US defense industry. I think I read somewhere that US aid to Israel is literally sometimes in the form of vouchers/coupons they have to spend on weapons/defense tech.
That’s not to say we shouldn’t cut off that aid when it’s used to commit atrocities. Just saying get the facts straight.
We’ve given them over 30billion in cash and military equipment since January 1st. Trump literally bypassed congress to gift them a new fleet of fighter jets. We shouldn’t be paying them jack shit because they obviously are doing better according than us to you
True, I don’t like the term globalist as it’s too often abused, but the fuckers profiting from these arms companies can live anywhere and don’t give fuck about either country beyod their ability to capture the governments and sell them weapons & tech.
There are stronger bonds between arms manufacturers regardless of nationality than those arms manufacturers and the people of the country the company is “based in”.
The politicians are into it for the campaign donations.
The average citizen supports it because they generally still have a post-WWII mindset and are resistant to criticisms of Israel and conflate anti-Israeli sentiment with antisemitism which Israel encourages.
Evangelicals and the Left Behind theory.
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.
There is three groups that guarantee support for Israel the imperialist side who have Israel as an ally to keep control on resources and trade routes. There is the evangelical side who believe the rapture would happen once Israel have total dominance on the region and finally just people who get the money from the lobbies to get in position of power and express dominance .
American are copping when they only focus on the evangelic because they refuse to acknowledge that the USA was always imperialist . People have tendency of wanting to be proud of their countries
https://youtube.com/shorts/BST65vtg_lU
This is as relevant today as it was in 1987.
Profit.
It’s also the fear that someone else might take your profit. Honestly, I think this is the primary motivator for these obscenely wealthy types. No amount of more money will make a difference to their lifestyles, but they are utterly terrified of losing their hoards. A competitor might rise up and take it all away, or worse, the poors might gain class consciousness and demand it all back at the point of a gun.
Imperialism is an attack on two fronts. It puts more resources into the imperialists’ hands, but it also removes those resources from anyone who might oppose the imperialists.
The Middle East has always largely been oppositional to western imperialism, so Israel was created to make a beachhead from which they could destabilize the region.
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
There are obviously 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’ve worked damned hard to make sure they’re in that position, too. Being invaluable to maintaining US influence in the middle east is the reason the US backs them militarily, and without that backing they’d get absolutely flattened by their neighbors. Thus the toxic symbiotic relationship you see today, with massive campaign contributions and influence operations from both sides designed to ensure they don’t ever lose that mutual support.
the best spies in the world
that we know of, which really should be disqualifying
Thank you so much for the thoughts, they all make sense.
