[jrochkind1]

> I don't understand how a tiny country like Israel has become so important in global politics.

Here are some of my favorite sources on that! These are all leftist and pro-Palestinian sources, but they are academic and studied. These are about why Israel is important to the "interests of the USA" (ie, what those with power to decide national interests think).

* “Framing Palestine: Israel, the Gulf states, and American power in the Middle East" by Adam Hanieh https://www.tni.org/en/article/framing-palestine

* The first chapter of "Palestine: A Socialist Introduction", “How Israel Became the Watchdog State: US Imperialism and the Middle East" by Shireen Akram-Boshar. The publisher Haymarket is giving away the ebook for free. https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1558-palestine-a-social...

* "No, the US Doesn’t Back Israel Because of AIPAC" by Joseph Massad https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/no-the-us-doesnt-back-israe...

[jrochkind1]

(Odd to me that I'm getting downvoted for suggesting the US support for Israel has to do with US interests, and providing sources going into detail on that, and people are getting upvoted for saying it's because Jews have a lot of influence! It's really not mostly because Jews have a lot of influence.)

[throw310822]

Sorry, but it's really, really hard to read anything about US politics and not to think "wow, Jews really do have an enormous amount of power".

From the lobbies (e.g. AIPAC), to the actual members of the government and leading institutions, to the CEOs of the biggest companies and chiefs of financial institutions, to the media and newspapers, to Hollywood, etc...

Not saying they don't deserve it, but still, just to think how over-represented they are...

[jrochkind1]

Most Jews are white people. There are more Jews in certain industries, but in general disproportinate representation is not as great if you compare to other white people in general. Not saying there still isn't some in some places, which I can't totally explain. (Also why are so many doctors from the Indian subcontinent right? Why are black women over-represented in home health care and latino men in kitchens? Anyway, this is now just an offensive stand-up routine) White people have a lot of power in the USA, wealthy white people have most of the power for sure.

On the issue of foreign policy towards Israel specifically, rather than sociological mysteries in general, I posted articles (from Palestinian and Arab scholars and activists sympathetic toward Palestinians!) making solid arguments for why this is not the explanation of US foreign policy towards the mid-east, and thinking it does is a distraction from what's really going on and how to change it (which I want to as well).

[throw310822]

> in general the over-representation is less compared to other white people in general.

Genuinely curious about this. It would basically mean that Jews are under-represented among white people, and this sounds... well, implausible. Jews are about 2% of the US population, can you name any high-profile position in which less than 2% of the total white representation is Jewish?

For example, in the current US cabinet there are 26 members, of which about 13/14 are arguably white, more or less in line with the percentage of whites in the general population (between 60 and 70%). Of these, half (7) are of Jewish descent. That's a ~15x over-representation.