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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 18, 2023

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I think you've got this very wrong. US foreign policy towards Israel won't change at all. Not one bit. Anti-Israel sentiment periodically rises, the pro-Hamas/pr-Palestinian protest cycle is very old indeed - decades and decades old. Did the previous protest cycles change US foreign policy towards Israel? No.

This is like suggesting birth control won't change sex patterns, the genie is out baby. Re-check the affinity to Israel by age group

It doesn't matter, though. Young people don't vote. Who knows what their opinions will be when they're settled and married with kids and regularly voting.

Even if public opinion was vastly anti-Israel, that still wouldn't change anything - during the Iraq war the public was massively anti-war, that changed absolutely nothing. The Senate and the Executive are where foreign policy outcomes live, and those gears take a long, long time to turn. US foreign policy is remarkably stable from administration to administration, and this is partly by design. The people in charge know that in a few more months there'll be something else for young people to march around yelling about, perhaps a white cop will kill a black guy again or something...but something will take its place, and the youth will be bored of screaming about a country they can't point to on a map once The New Thing catches their eye. It just doesn't matter.

Well no, sometimes some things do matter.

Sure, I just don't see it in this case. Support for Palestinian terrorism has been a perennial hobby among young leftists - this most recent outpouring of support is nothing new. In the '60s and '70s many leftist groups had much stronger ties to Palestinian terrorism - Baader Meinhof gang even went down to train with them. In the end it all fizzled out, and I see no reason a lesser wave that doesn't involve the material commitment seen in prior decades won't also fizzle out.

Israel is an incredibly important ally of the US, they could glass Gaza and we'd still support them - perhaps with a wrap on the knuckles, but no more than that.

US Pro-Israel sentiment has usually been very strong. When has it been ever as weak as it currently is?

Plus the US is not currently reliant on foreign sources of oil. There isnt much reason for the US to support Israel

I could be convinced if you could show me 40 years of polling results on Israel WRT youth sentiment, it'd be better by far if you could dive into how those numbers changed during times of conflict.

The US has never been Israel's ally because of oil, Israel is important because it's part of our containment strategy towards Iran (among other things).