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I don't fully understand the Israel conundrum.
The ideological stake over the issue hasn't been divided merely between the left and right, but within each aisle too. In recent years, it seems as though liberals have fallen out of love with them and many of them believe that (on principle) Israel shouldn't exist. While others believe in the two state solution. The mainstream media has been louder about the IDF's excesses in occupied territories (like this one, a cursory search). Tankies over at GrayZone and related websites are convinced that western mainstream media is still defending Israel. I don't get this position, are they arguing that western media isn't criticising Israel enough or that the media is silent altogether? The right seems to be divided too, many of them enthusiastically support them while others don't like that billions of dollars of taxpayer money is sent to Israel every year and they're convinced that their lobby in the US is most supportive of liberalism and progressivism and the war machine.
My questions are what drove the evolution of these views into what they are, exactly how influential is the Israel lobby in the US, why do tankies believe that Israel doesn't get criticised in the media, are the liberals starting to decouple from Israel, are there any other reasons besides the treatment of Palestinians that the Israel question takes up so much oxygen in the foreign policy room?
I dunno what's up with the right, but I can dig in to left takes on Israel, and I can explain the bit both sides miss.
Basically, lefties have become more and more decoupled from Israel as they've become generally opposed to the War On Terror and as anti-colonial narratives have taken up more of the party's headspace.
Or, out another way, Millennials have always thought this way, and now they're getting centered in the party as they make up a bigger and bigger voting block.
The whole 'palestinian question' has become more and more prominent as race relations has become the most prominent culture war item, especially as it replaced the religion one (secular/jewish Israel good, religious/Muslim Palestine bad.)
And the police brutality narrative matches up nicely with images of IDF soldiers beating up rock-thrower kids at settlements.
What I think people don't understand about Israel is that they're dead fucking serious. They aren't playing.
Israel has the capacity and willingness to do almost anything. They're nuclear armed and in a perpetual state of existential fear. They understand the value of terrorism, genocide, and every other nasty thing people have cooked up.
My contention is that, explicitly or not, Israel will regard a withdrawal of support by the US as a hostile act, and Israel only has one way it responds to hostile acts: overwhelming force.
So really, supporting Israel makes policy sense. If you have to choose between pissed off Palestinians and pissed off Israel, pick pissed off Palestinians every time. Try as they cannot be as scary a bugbear as the prospect of a hostile Israel.
How much of that "almost anything" is really facilitated by US support? Perhaps I'm having a crisis of imagination here. North Korea is also nuclear armed and in a perpetual state of existential fear.
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