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But the Palestinians are far more dependent on US and EU aid than the Israelis are. We are much more funding the terror campaigns against Israel than the military operation in Gaza.
No you're not - Biden sent $14 billion in military aid to Israel for this conflict alone, plus the baseline $3 billion in military aid annually. Palestinians don't get any military aid from the West, only a few hundred million annually in humanitarian aid.
Over 6 years, the entire UN gave about 1.5 years of annual US military aid. The US sent about 1.7 years of Israeli military aid and tries hard to avoid it going to Palestinian war effort. If anything the aid serves more as a bribe to keep them from electing Hamas, they cut funding when that happened.
I propose complete non-interference, to cut aid to both sides.
That y'all are quibbling about 14 billion sent to Israel while glossing over the 90 billion Biden and Obama sent to Iran (none of which was spent arming the Houthi's we pinky promise) is why guys like me refuse to take the blue-tribe's positions on the middle east seriously.
Biden’s $90 Billion Bailout to Tehran
If I steal your money and then give you some back, I am sure you will be thankful for such generous handout.
It's kind of sad that you think that link helps your case. "U.S. President Joe Biden has inherited a relatively peaceful Middle East", How'd that work out? Maybe the reason the accounts were frozen in the first place is that they'd been using them to fund Hamas and the Houthi.
Maybe the US should've tried not reneging on the JCPOA if it wanted its adversaries to behave. Why would anyone trust an agreement with America when someone like Trump can get elected and tear the whole thing up? Obama gave the Iranians back their own money, Trump rendered years of patient diplomacy worthless and worked hard to start a major war, assassinating a top Iranian leader.
The solution here is to put it to a vote and make it a legally-binding treaty, not just the whim of whoever's in the executive branch at the time.
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America has a well-known process for making agreements binding on itself. Iran could see perfectly well that Obama didn't use it. America didn't renege; America was never bound.
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Without which the entire economy would collapse and they wouldn't be able to afford a single scrap of metal, let alone a bomb or weapon. Plus the international orgs that aid and abet Iranian resupplies. Its not magnitude alone that matters, its percentage. If we left Palestine 100% on a branch, they would have nothing.
Look, if you provide 14 billion in military aid to one side and a few hundreds of millions in civilian aid to the other side (openly talking about how you try to prevent it going to their military wing), you clearly support the former over the latter. This is absolutely basic logic. Every US politician will tell you that they love Israel and hate Hamas.
Who cares if Palestine has nothing? Who cares if the Israelis have to pay for their own bombs? Not my problem!
If you dont care for why the Israelis pay for their own bombs, why do you even care about imposing a solution? I understand not wnating to give military weapons, but the Israelis can likely just succeed without that.
The Arab states dont care enough about Palestine to intervene. They dont cut off trade, they dont oil embargo the West. Why care about what Israel does enough to impose a solution, like by embargoing trade?
The Arabs get angry with us when we provide aid to Israel, just like the Israelis get angry with Iran when Iran aids Hamas/Hezbollah. It makes it much harder to work with Arab governments and it angers Arabs, who can do us harm.
Why did Osama Bin Laden hate the West? In large part he resented that we were helping Israel dominate Palestine.
I have no interest in an Israel-Palestine solution, just like I don't know or care about who should govern South Sudan, Somalia or Myanmar. Let them handle their own affairs. What I want is for the West not to be attached to this dead weight that causes us problems in so many fields. Wouldn't it be great if we enjoyed the support of the Middle Eastern public, or at least got along with them like China does?
The Middle East is run by authoritarian governments. The Middle Eastern public barely matters. The Saudis, with most of the oil, are concerned about the Americans leaving the region because the Americans no longer care to be involved.
The Arab states are no longer hostile to Israel like they used to be. The Abraham Accords broke that assumption, when Arab states normalized with Israel for no gestures towards the Palestinians. They mostly dont care enough about them.
The Palestinians dont get in the way of dealings between the Middle East and America and Europe. Its largely just some past time that has no affect on international relations.
We spent 20 years fighting Islamic terrorism and spent trillions of dollars fighting much of the Middle Eastern public and you think their public opinion doesn't matter?
The Abraham Accords caught... Bahrain and the UAE. This great success was followed up with Sudan, of all countries. Not Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia: any of the relevant powers. UAE is vaguely relevant I suppose.
So that leaves just the UAE. Not a great success.
Did you miss the Yemen/Red Sea war we're now fighting? Iran and the US are fighting a proxy war in Iraq as we speak, shelling eachother.
We spent that because of Western decisions to. Not Israeli or Israeli concerns. Islamism and Islamic terrorism has declined. Isis was its heydey. Secularism is spreading in the Middle East.
First off, it got UAE, Morocco, Bahrain, and Sudan. Two...Egypt has had relations with Israel for over 40 years, ever since Israel gave back the Sinai. Do you even know anything about the Middle East, if you dont know this most basic geopolitical fact? It makes anything you say come into question.
Syria is a failed state that can barely keep itself together. Its not a relevant power. Iraq is a barely holding itself together, let alone relevant. Saudi Arabia and Iran are the only ones you have a point on, and even then not much. Why? Because Saudi Arabia is offering to normalize with Israel for "steps" towards a Palestinian state. Not making one come into fruition. Just recognition that eventually one will be created. Thats very little commitment.
Bahrain still has political relations and recognizes Israel. They still are apart of the Abraham Accords. Still a major success. Still 4 Arab states that normalized with Israel.
The Iranians and US are fighting a proxy war in Iraq because the US wants to contain Iran for its own geopolitical considerations. Its as much as protecting Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, which are US aligned, from Iran. And maintaining US power in the region. Not for Israel.
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War? I guess there aren't exactly any fixed and universal criteria to consult, but is it really a war, outright? That seems to me to imply higher stakes. I'm not saying you're wrong, mind you, but I'd expect to have heard more about it if it were more than some foreign-shores-coast-guarding with occasional naval gunfire exercises. In other words: Please inform me.
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I disagree. 14 billion looks like a bigger number because the spending is asymmetric. Iron dome is expensive suicide vests and rockets are cheap. Defense against this kind of aggression is easily 100x more expensive, probably closer to the 10000x multiplier. So its not clear that Israel is coming out ahead.
Israel. If they have nothing, Israel needs nothing. But we give them a lot, and they divert much of it to waging terror campaigns.
My interpretation of this sentence was that Israel needs nothing, but we give them (Israel) a lot and they use much of it to wage terror campaigns. I agree with this but I'm not sure that's what you were actually saying.
No. My statement is Israel needs nothing, but Palestine would be zero without aid. Every dollar provided to Palestine has a significant percentage eventually funneled to terror campaigns against Israel. Without international aid Palestine would cease to exist.
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Who cares?
Probably because the US has a need for Israel in the Middle East as basically the best army in the region. Perhaps not 100% capable of paying for their own bombs but extremely capable at using those bombs to modern military standards.
Also, America is a Democracy and I would like to remind you American Jews pay a hugely disproportionate amount of US taxes and are almost certainly net payers to the US treasury far above whatever aid we give to Israel.
This seems like a bit of circular reasoning. The US support Israel because it has the best army in the region. Why does US need to support Israel? Because the Arabs (generally) hate the US and the US need geopolitical support in the region. Why do the Arabs hate the US? Because the US supports Israel.
Additionally, the US actually gets very little from Israel. Israel fragrantly acts against US interests and ignores US calls all the time. Even the most milquetoast request from the US to Israel to maybe tone it down just a bit is just blatantly ignored. Israel demands the US intervene on its behalf all the time but rarely reciprocates. Prior to post-WW2, the Americans were actually seen very favorably by the Arabs.
The Arabs hate the US because the slogan "they hate our freedom", while laughed at by a lot of the left, is pretty much true. The Arabs don't like to have multi-ethnic, religiously tolerant states where the inhabitants get the freedoms that the West approves of. Even freedom of the press and separation of church and state would be alien to Arab countries, never mind something like gay rights.
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Israel ashkenazi Jew had an average IQ of 115. That’s why we need them. They have better soldiers. Not circular at all.
Whose desires are Israel violating? I’m not asking them to tone it down.
The charges he’s making are too vague to be interpretable (as currently stated), but you’re also not giving a substantive answer. What’s are the concrete benefits we derive from their clientage that justifies the consumption of money and influence on their behalf? I don’t have any relevant background and don’t actually have an opinion on whether they’re worthwhile clients. If there are solid realpolitik reasons to support them, I’d respect that more than the moral arguments.
The Saudis now view them as extremely important strategic partners in a post oil world. Their tech expertise seems to be important to a lot of our Arab allies who are now significantly thinking about what comes after oil.
They’ve always provided an ability to do some dirty work for us.
They have nukes. And it’s fairly clear they have a doctrine of just nuking everyone if their existence is questioned
Science. Jews 35-40% of Nobel prizes atleast to me just means their lives matter more to civilization. They are a people who push humanity forward.
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Israel may have the best army in the region - they're also enemies with the rest of the region and are so politically toxic they can't fight with any US force without causing more problems than they solve. That's why the US and Israel have never fought on the same side in a war, they're the worst ally anyone could have. All liability, no benefit.
The cost of US support for Israel is absolutely staggering. The Arab Oil Embargo in 1973 did immense harm to the US and world economy, a decade of high oil prices. Anti-Western terrorism - the first WTC bombing was solely motivated by anti-Israel sentiment. Osama Bin Laden was also heavily motivated by frustration regarding Palestinians. The Iraq half of the War on Terror was primarily about Israel, there are plenty of revealing quotes from generals and senators admitting that Iraq posed no threat to America (as a glance at a map would show) but that it might threaten Israel. Israel naturally sent some fake intel about Iraqi WMDs as well, so the US would deal with their rival.
And then there's the billions spent every year on direct military aid. American Jews would need to pay a hell of a lot of taxes to pay for all of this, if we take that tax-influence model. And it doesn't hold - whites are even bigger net taxpayers than Jews, yet this didn't stop US sanctions on apartheid South Africa. They didn't even recognize Rhodesia.
There are flagrant lies here. Israel has plenty of allies in the region including the Saudis who are also a huge U.S. ally.
Dude, Israel and Saudi Arabia don't even have normalized diplomatic relations. They're not allies. The Saudi public hates Israel.
Public polling is awful and highly dependent on how you asks a question.
Their leadership has created a desire for ties.
You easily find polling with complete different results
https://m.jpost.com/middle-east/article-760558
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