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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 22, 2024

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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.

According to the poll conducted by The Washington Institute for Near East Policy between 14 November and 6 December 2023, 96% of Saudi participants believed that Arab nations should cut all ties with 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

Article from September 26th, polling from August

Come on. A minority of Saudis might have wanted business relations with Israel (which is a completely different thing to a political/military alliance) but even that's gone out the window now.

You are the man of one poll.

Dated but most Saudis want peace https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/middle-east/1602764897-poll-79-of-saudis-see-pathway-to-peace-with-israel

And it’s still the official policy.

You're being extremely dishonest here by using polls from before the most recent attempt at wiping out the Gazans.

One may as well talk about how islamic terrorism isn't a problem in the US by taking a poll from September 10th 2001, and a bar chart showing deaths from terrorism that starts at September 12th.

Better one poll that reflects present conditions than 1000 obsolete polls.

You're the one who said that Israel and Saudi Arabia were allied, which isn't true. Moving the goal posts from 'alliance' to 'business ties' and 'peace' is not terribly helpful. Don't call me a liar if you're going to use such tactics.

They are allies. Saudi has big plans for the relationship. Maybe not official things signed.