Because I don't think US tax money should go toward reparations for Palestine, Lebanon, Iran or anywhere else. We're not 'complicit' in the way you're framing it
The only reason Israel is able to commit the horrors they are is because they can fuck around without finding out due to US protection paid for by our tax dollars, we are absolutely complicit. Of course that's only in the immediate term, I urge you to look at the history of the region even a little critically, so much of the conflict there is rooted in British, American and Israeli meddling, it's an insane take to claim that we are not responsible and that we have not benefited immensely.
No, money has nothing to do with it. The US military aid package to Israel is only around 2-3% of Israel's annual state budget. That's a relatively small amount, and far less significant than people tend to make it out to be.
The US provides this aid because it serves American interests. A large portion of the money is actually spent in the US, benefiting the American defense industry, not just financially but also through technological development and shared innovation.
What Israel truly gains from the relationship with the US is diplomatic cover, mainly the UN Security Council veto. Israel is by far the most condemned country at the UN in terms of resolutions passed against it, whether that's justified or not is a separate debate.
I don't understand what the purpose of making a distinction between monetary support in terms of direct aid, and indirect aid. The entire apparatus of the US government is paid for by our taxes, we pay for it either way. We also pay for it in instability and negative sentiment.
> Israel is by far the most condemned country at the UN in terms of resolutions passed against it
It's crazy to me that you know this and yet it seems like you are still in support of the US protecting Israel? You still think this is a net win for the world? That's incomprehensible to me.
> It's crazy to me that you know this and yet it seems like you are still in support of the US protecting Israel? You still think this is a net win for the world? That's incomprehensible to me.
It's crazy to me that you know the UN is literally run by states that actually commit war crimes, kill LGBTQ people, suppress women and minority rights, countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and you still think UN condemnation means anything. They're condemning the only democratic country in the entire Middle East, the one place in the region where these rights actually matter and mean something. Arab citizens can vote, gay people can live openly, women sit in parliament and serve in the military. That's Israel. And that's who they keep putting on trial.
Call me when the citizens in Gaza and the West Bank get a vote.
Oh, they're citizens of another country you say? What country would that be?
Like, it's great that Israeli Arabs are treated (somewhat) well, but it doesn't excuse what's happening in Gaza and (particularly) in the West Bank.
Regardless of how progressive or democratic a state is, if they keep bombing other states and killing people, they will most likely be judged for it.
It's profoundly depressing that the Jewish people, fresh off of 2k years of oppression, have decided to speedrun the same behaviours against someone else.
An apartheid ethno-supremacist state is, by definition, not democratic.
In the last month, the Israeli Jews passed a law to allow the death penalty, but only for non-Jews*. The Israeli lawmakers celebrated their lynching law by wearing noose shaped lapel pins. There are several 10s of laws that favor Jews over non-Jewish citizens of Israel. Palestinian citizens are, at best, second-class citizens.
Non-Israeli Palestinians who were violently driven from their homes in previous Israeli Jewish genocides of the indigenous population, do not even have a right to civilian courts. In most cases, the Israeli Jews imprison these Palestinians without charge, trial, or fixed sentence-- including young children. Rape and torture by Israeli Jews is systemic in these detention centers.
Their "democratic" process includes mobs of Jewish Knesset (parliment) members threatening, on the floor of the Knesset, the rape of Palestian Israeli members of the Knesset including, Haneen Zoabi and Sa'id Naffaa.
* The law doesn't really change anything in reality, as Jews have always been able to rape, torture and murder Palestinians with impunity-- e.g., for the year prior to 7 Oct., Israeli Jews murdered, on average, one Palestinian per day, in the West Bank. That rate is much worse now.
Genocide committed by a democratic country that is cool with lgbtq people that have tech jobs and hang out at cafes doesn't make it OK. You're concerned with aesthetics over everything else.
Read up on "Operation Clean Break" / "The Clean Break Doctrine". Israeli Jews came up with a plan to overthrow Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran... Seven states in all that the Israeli Jews wanted to destroy so they could engage in genocide of the Palestinians without opposition, and steal the land of their neighboring states for their "Greater Israel Project" (Israel refuses to declare their borders as they plan to steal more land from their neighbors and the remaining surviving Palestinians).
The fun part was that their plan was that the US would do their fighting for them. And, it worked. US wars in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran. Millions dead in illegal wars of aggression, all to benefit genocidal messianic religious crazies who call themselves Israeli Jews / Zionists. Many trillions of the US debt is due to these wars for Israel. The US has gained nothing from any of these wars.
Professor Jeffrey Sacks is a good source for material about this.
The "Clean Break" conspiracy theory is way overblown. The 1996 paper was a policy memo written by American neoconservatives (Perle, Feith, Wurmser) for Netanyahu, advising Israel to ditch land-for-peace, focus on its own security, and pressure Syria and Hezbollah. It also suggested removing Saddam to weaken regional opposition to Israel.
It was not a secret blueprint for the US to destroy seven countries so Jews could seize land and build Greater Israel. The paper said nothing about Libya, Somalia, or Sudan and had nothing to do with territorial expansion.
The Iraq War came from flawed WMD intelligence, Saddam's history of invading neighbors, and defying UN resolutions. Libya was Obama-era regime change over Gaddafi's brutality. Syria was a civil war plus ISIS. Iran has never been invaded. None of this traces back to a 1996 memo.
The death tolls? Saddam, Assad, Gaddafi, and Iranian-backed militias own enormous chunks of those numbers through chemical weapons, terrorism, and repression. Blaming it all on Zionist wars erases that entirely.
Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, has offered land-for-peace repeatedly, and spends most of its time defending borders against neighbors who call for its destruction. The Greater Israel narrative ignores Arab rejectionism, radical Islamism, and Iranian expansion entirely.
Pinning US foreign policy on a single Israeli advisory paper is scapegoating, not analysis.