351–360 of 651 posts
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Can you explain why that is for us who aren’t well versed in geopolitical issues.
Israel is an ally of the United States.
https://zeldin.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/standin...
https://www.toomey.senate.gov/about/issues/israel-and-the-mi...
If this was a Russian/Iranian/Chinese company, we'd already have a news conference by the US DoS, declaring sanctions, freezing assets, and calling for an international coalition to contain the rogue state that's threatening world peace. But this is a Israeli company, so it's just another "scandal" that scrolls trough the news feed, it will be forgotten by next week, to be completely memory holed by next year.
Can you explain why that is for us who aren’t well versed in geopolitical issues.
1, the most powerful political organization in the US is AIPAC. More powerful than any other lobbyist and can tip the scales in almost any election.
2, the services provided by Israel to support US-backed dictatorships in the Middle East (eg the NSO group)
3, the military industrial complex loves the Israeli customer because they are dependable, repeating customers (Israel has been bombing the Palestinians and its regional neighbors for decades now)
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5) many high ranking government officials do nothing about this because they're being blackmailed by the spooks. Tinfoil hat territory? Sure. Plausible and possible? Sure.
I think it is more likely that 5) many high ranking government officials have sympathetic views with said forces and don’t mind the “occasional incident” as long as said forces are working towards their common goal (whatever that goal might be; but it is probably Islamophobia, settler colonialism and exploitative capitalism).
So you can be #5 and I'll be #6 :-)
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Can you explain why that is for us who aren’t well versed in geopolitical issues.
Israel is a third rail in US politics. One significant faction of the GOP is millenarian evangelical Christians who (a) believe the Israeli state is a necessary precursor to armageddon and (b) have spent the past 2 decades trying to conflate “Muslim” with “terrorist”. The Democratic party includes as part of its coalition many American Jews who, despite frustration with the human rights abuses of the Israeli governme…
If this was a Russian/Iranian/Chinese company, we'd already have a news conference by the US DoS, declaring sanctions, freezing assets, and calling for an international coalition to contain the rogue state that's threatening world peace. But this is a Israeli company, so it's just another "scandal" that scrolls trough the news feed, it will be forgotten by next week, to be completely memory holed by next year.
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Can you explain why that is for us who aren’t well versed in geopolitical issues.
Israel is an ally of the United States.
Israel is like the Taiwan of the Middle East, meaning it's a useful partner to us in terms of maintaining a separation between the West and some perceived enemy (Muslims in this case, the Chinese in the case of Taiwan). But they also cause us to have more enemies than we otherwise would. In an open letter, Bin Laden specifically called out our support for Israel as one of their justifications behind 9/11.
Spying between allies is a relatively normal thing, but when someone screws up and lets the public see it happen, usually there is at least some mild chiding. Israel doesn't even get that tsk tsk because of how much influence they have.
Also, Israel has a very effective propaganda machine that purposely tries to paint any criticism of Israeli policy as anti-semitism. It's hard for our politicians to openly discuss them without risking their ire, and that of many influential Jewish Americans, and the powerful AIPAC lobby.
Frankly, Israel has us by the balls. Less an ally and more a dominatrix.
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>I don't think we want to live in a world where absolute moral purity (as determined by the most vocal, biased critics of a given person) is required to hold public office. Don't worry, you live in a world where a man with a well documented decades-long laundry list of scandals and faux-pas can brag on tape about how he can get away with molesting young women because of how rich he is and still get elected President.…
I don't think "eponymous" is the word you meant there.
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Can you explain why that is for us who aren’t well versed in geopolitical issues.
It’s not purely geopolitical but I think the top 3 factors for this: 1, the most powerful political organization in the US is AIPAC. More powerful than any other lobbyist and can tip the scales in almost any election. 2, the services provided by Israel to support US-backed dictatorships in the Middle East (eg the NSO group) 3, the military industrial complex loves the Israeli customer because they are dependable, rep…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Israel is a third rail in US politics. One significant faction of the GOP is millenarian evangelical Christians who (a) believe the Israeli state is a necessary precursor to armageddon and (b) have spent the past 2 decades trying to conflate “Muslim” with “terrorist”. The Democratic party includes as part of its coalition many American Jews who, despite frustration with the human rights abuses of the Israeli governme…
this angle seems really out dated. the us alliance with israel is not about religious reasons. israel is the one democratic state in a region that mostly has our enemies. israel is a military power. we have strategic interests in maintaining the middle east political bloc imagine if this headline read france instead. we would react similarly
This is simply not true. The base of the US Republican Party is evangelical Christians. This being so, religious reasons are close to the surface. There are surely other interested parties, but Republicans can't get crosswise with any of their conservative Christian constituencies -- evangelicals, Catholics, and Mormons. These constituencies have particular beliefs about Israel and the End Times. Likud and other right wing allies of the evangelicals certainly knows this and don't particularly care, not themselves caring about Christian End Times. I'm sure the leadership of the Republican Party also doesn't care. But they need their foot soldiers, and these soldiers do care.
It is also true that while there are a lot of liberal Jews who criticize Israel, like Noam Chomsky, there is a large block with a lot of sway in Democratic politics that are very leery of criticism of Israel veering into antisemitism.
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Israel is an ally of the United States.
"Ally" is probably too weak a word for the relationship we have with Israel. Probably no other country has this much influence on our politics. Not even the UK or Canada, who we share close cultural and linguistic bonds with. Israel is like the Taiwan of the Middle East, meaning it's a useful partner to us in terms of maintaining a separation between the West and some perceived enemy (Muslims in this case, the Chines…
The word is "client"; it's just people are used to using it with applying to the other side of a relation with the US, not the US side.