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Israel gets about $3 billion in aid from the USA per year. Their defence budget is $23 billion.
It's an exaggeration to say they can't exist without western support.
This is such a strange take. The US set up client states in Jordan and Egypt to stop them from attacking Israel. It finances half the Lebanese political factions for this purpose (and even Hezbollah!). The entire Iraq war (2-3 TRILLION dollars depending on calculation methods) realistically had no other purpose than to eliminate a regime Israel wanted gone. It still stations around 30.000 soldiers around Middle East, with realistically no other purpose than to deter anyone who might want to mess with Israel. Almost any random deal US sponsors around the world will include some small ridiculous clauses to give Israel a bit more diplomatic legitimacy. US is unable to normalize relations with Iran, even though this would make a great amount of geopolitical sense, because Israel doesn't want it.
The list can go on and on. And I am not getting into items like the French giving Israel nuclear arms technology or massive sums of blood money West Germany paid for Israel's industrialization.
The 3 billion direct military aid is absolutely nothing compared to what America and Europe actually provides to Israel.
The Iraq War was because American intelligence thought there really were WMDs and because Saddam had previously lied about them and aroused America's displeasure.
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That 3 billion is far from the only support that Israel gets from the west. They benefit from the military activities of the USA, the countless remittances to Israel and Israeli support initiatives run by Israeli partisans in other societies around the world. Significant investments and factories were built there not because it made good economic sense for the companies involved, but because the people in those companies wanted to support Israel. Even in my country, I can't go shopping at a major shopping mall without having some portion of the money I spend go to Israel, because the owner of the company is (or was, I haven't checked in a while) a zealous supporter of Israel and the IDF.
I don't believe you're thinking seriously about the issue at all if you think that $3 billion figure is the be-all and end-all of Western support for Israel.
0.28% of Israeli GDP.
"Countless" is a fun word, you can use it to make a number sound like it's really big when actually you just haven't bothered counting.
Yes, you've pointed out that one of the sources of western contribution to Israeli welfare isn't that large a portion of their GDP. I didn't really expect remittances to be much more than that - I said countless because those remittances would usually consist of large numbers of smaller payments. Furthermore, look at the definition that your source is using - this only counts money being sent back by Israelis who migrate to other countries. A jewish individual raised in France who sent money to pro-Jewish charity organisations would not show up on this chart according to the methodology listed there - but even if not, that doesn't really hurt my argument. 0.28% of GDP might not sound like much, but that stuff adds up over the years, and consistent financial support like that can make a big difference over time... to say nothing of all the other factors I named and which weren't refuted.
If that's the extent of your argument against my position I must confess that my mind has not been changed.
Oh, I'm not trying to change your mind. You didn't come to your opinion by data, so data won't dissuade you from it. I'm just helpfully pointing out that you're wrong, for the benefit of other readers.
And yes, 0.28% of GDP is not nothing, and if you add that to the aid and other benefits it adds up to something real... but it's not the difference between existence and nonexistence.
Actually, I came to my opinion through reading an essay discussing the historical parallels between Israel and Outremer. Data played a part in that but not exclusively so - and I'll provide a quote from the essay that had the single greatest impact on my opinion on this topic.
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2012-11-21/in-the-twilight-of-empires/
I haven't seen you post anything which comes remotely close to dealing with the issues laid out here. How, exactly, will Israel pay for their military AND support the vast communities of Orthodox jews who do no real work without the help of the jewish diaspora and the American MIC? Where will the shortfall in resources come from when Israel is cut off from the US teat? You can just post that data for the sake of others, but you haven't even bothered dealing with the objections I posted! What sort of impression are you going to give to others when your response to a difficult question is to just ignore it and assume the reader will be on your side anyway?
Israel has a GDP of about half a trillion dollars. So if we're talking US aid of 3 billion, remittances of another billion, maybe another billion from other sources, that's getting us to around 1% of GDP. Let's be generous and double that.
Their GDP growth last year was 6.5%, and it averages around 4%. So entirely losing that international support theoretically might halve their growth rate. That's a kick in the teeth, but not an existential threat.
Of course if things get really dire, they can insist that the Orthodox actually work for a living. The politics don't support that outcome currently, but politics can change in response to circumstance.
Given that we're currently talking about a hypothetical situation where Israel pisses off the entire Arab world and simultaneously loses western support, how much of that remaining economic activity would be unaffected by the war and combat? I think that there's a significant portion of the Israeli economy that's dependent on foreign companies - Nvidia, Intel, etc. The software industry would be badly hurt by all this as well. This means that beyond the immediate hit of losing western support, a lot of the Israeli companies dependent upon the west and international trade would be secondary victims. Followed by the even bigger economic hit associated with having to fight a massive war with all the arab nations around them that hate them, I just don't see any realistic way for Israel to survive without western security guarantees or assistance. It isn't like they could turn to other big powers for help either - though I haven't been able to really confirm it, I've seen reports that Hamas planned this attack with Huawei phones, and if true that doesn't paint a very good picture for future Sino-Israeli relations! Throw in the civil unrest caused by conscripting the orthodox or forcing them into labour (and exactly how skilled are they going to be anyway?) and I don't think you have a recipe for a long-lasting nation. Maybe we'll just have to agree to disagree on this front, but I think that the reluctance of the Israeli government to just go and holocaust the Palestinians is a sign that at least some of the people actually in charge there agree with me.
There's a big gap between a survivable situation and a desirable situation. It is good for Israel to maintain western support, and they clearly tailor their actions at least somewhat to reduce international backlash.
As to whether they can fight a war against all their neighbours simultaneously without American assistance, well, it was a while ago but they did exactly that in 1948.
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