[Allfodr]

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.

[thot_experiment]

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.

[Allfodr]

> 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.

Of course I fully support the aid for Israel.

[disgruntledphd2]

> Arab citizens can vote

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.

[Allfodr]

> Call me when the citizens in Gaza and the West Bank get a vote.

They can. They voted in Hamas in Gaza and the PA in the West Bank. They are not Israeli citizens, which is why they don't vote in Israeli elections. You wouldn't expect the US to give voting rights to Mexicans or Canadians who aren't dual citizens, would you?

> Like, it's great that Israeli Arabs are treated (somewhat) well

"Somewhat"? They get subsidized education, skip mandatory military service, and in some cases receive more benefits than the Jewish population through affirmative action. Gaza and the West Bank aren't part of Israel. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and handed civil control of the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority under the Oslo Accords.

> if they keep bombing other states and killing people

Nice summary for wars that were NEVER started by Israel. And before you mention Iran, it has been at war with Israel since 1979, the moment it declared it would erase Israel off the face of the Earth, and has been actively attacking Israel through its proxies (Hamas, Hezbollah) for decades.

[disgruntledphd2]

> They can. They voted in Hamas in Gaza and the PA in the West Bank. They are not Israeli citizens, which is why they don't vote in Israeli elections

OK great, what country are they citizens of, then? Are they stateless? Sure seems like it.

Like, either the current settler activity in the West Bank is an illegal invasion and occupation of another country, or Judea and Samaria (funnily enough where most of the New Testament happens) are part of Israel, and thus the Palestinians there should get votes in Israeli elections. You can't have it both ways.

> Nice summary for wars that were NEVER started by Israel. And before you mention Iran, it has been at war with Israel since 1979, the moment it declared it would erase Israel off the face of the Earth, and has been actively attacking Israel through its proxies (Hamas, Hezbollah) for decades.

I'm certainly not going to defend the Iranian regime or Hezbollah. Hamas are assholes, but there are legitimate concerns around what has happened to the Palestinian people since 1948 (well really before that, but 1948 is a convenient date). I don't agree with their violence, but when there is no hope of a negotiated solution, I'm entirely unsurprised that some people choose violence.

[Allfodr]

> what country are they citizens of, then? Are they stateless?

There's a third category you're missing: disputed territory pending final-status negotiations. It's a real thing in international law, not a dodge. Taiwanese don't vote in PRC elections. Western Saharans don't vote in Moroccan ones. Kosovars didn't vote in Serbian elections while the status was unresolved.

Also worth getting the facts straight on who actually controls what:

Gaza isn't occupied. Israel pulled out in 2005, every settler, every soldier. Hamas runs it because they won the 2006 election and then murdered Fatah members in the streets to consolidate power. The blockade started after that, not before.

West Bank Areas A and B (where most Palestinians live) are under Palestinian Authority civil control, with PA security control in A. They vote for the PA. The reason they haven't voted lately is Abbas, who is in year 21 of his 4-year term because he keeps cancelling elections. That's not on Israel.

East Jerusalem Palestinians can apply for Israeli citizenship. Most decline for political reasons, which is their call, but the option exists.

Israeli Arabs (the ones who stayed in 48) are full citizens. They vote, sit in the Knesset, sit on the Supreme Court. An Arab party was in the governing coalition as recently as 2021.

So "stateless people denied votes" doesn't really hold up.

> when there is no hope of a negotiated solution

This is the part I'd push back on hardest because it's just not what happened.

1947 partition: offered a state, Arabs rejected and invaded. 1967 Khartoum: "no peace, no recognition, no negotiations" after losing a war they started. Camp David 2000: Barak offers ~92% of the WB plus Gaza plus East Jerusalem, Arafat walks with no counteroffer and launches the Second Intifada. Taba 2001: same deal sweetened, no agreement. Olmert 2008: 94% plus 1:1 land swaps, shared Jerusalem, refugee compensation framework. Abbas literally never responded. Says so himself in interviews.

Meanwhile every neighbor that actually wanted peace got it. Egypt 1979, Jordan 1994, then UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan in 2020. Turns out it's pretty achievable when one side shows up.

The PA also still runs the "Martyrs Fund" paying salaries to families of terrorists scaled to how many Israelis they killed. That's a policy choice, not the behavior of people with no options.

> I'm entirely unsurprised that some people choose violence

The thing is nobody actually applies this principle evenly. Kurds have a way better case for statehood and don't fly planes into buildings. Tibetans, Uyghurs, same. The "violence was inevitable" reasoning only ever gets extended to this one conflict, and that should make you suspicious of the reasoning rather than confident in it.

[thot_experiment]

> 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.

I know it can seem like this but it's important to make the distinction that Jewish people are not the same set as zionists and israelis, and that conflation is something the latter two parties DESPERATELY want you to make.

[disgruntledphd2]

That's totally fair and a distinction I definitely support. I really, really really like almost all of the Israeli people and Jewish people I've met and worked with, and hence why I care about this a lot.

[sillystuff]

> They're condemning the only democratic country

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.

[mcphage]

> the one place in the region where these rights actually matter and mean something

What was the article about, again? Was it about respecting the rights of women?

[Allfodr]

We must make a distinction between the actions of the government (and the military) and the actions of some lunatic individuals, though.

[mcphage]

I don’t think we do in this case. This is the very first line of the article:

> Israeli soldiers and settlers are using gendered violence and sexual assault and harassment to force Palestinians from their homes in the occupied West Bank, human rights and legal experts say.

So here we’re talking about both the military and some lunatic individuals.

[rozap]

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.

[sheikhnbake]

A norse mythology username extolling the evils of non-western countries while full throating a genocidal apartheid state. name a more iconic duo

[sillystuff]

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.

[Allfodr]

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.