this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2026
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As an American myself, I've asked several people this question. No one seems to know why either. Is it strategic position in the world? I don't think they have anything the US can exploit besides that really. Am I missing something? Political arguing aside what exactly is the motivation? Thanks for any explanations.

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[–] WandowsVista@lemmy.world 5 points 7 hours ago

profit, corruption, and the genuine belief that they need to protect Israel in order to go to heaven.

these are the same people that believe god has already determined exactly how they die so they can do anything - if they didn't die, it was god's plan.

they also believe god meant for the existence of poor people. blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth (while the rich and famous go to heaven)

It presents a friendlier, strategic area to conduct attacks in the middle east for oil for the past century almost. As well as majority of them are white. In addition Israel lobbies the fuck out of our country to be friendly to them and their genocide.

[–] flandish@lemmy.world 4 points 12 hours ago (1 children)
[–] FlyingCircus@lemmy.world 3 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

It’s also the fear that someone else might take your profit. Honestly, I think this is the primary motivator for these obscenely wealthy types. No amount of more money will make a difference to their lifestyles, but they are utterly terrified of losing their hoards. A competitor might rise up and take it all away, or worse, the poors might gain class consciousness and demand it all back at the point of a gun.

Imperialism is an attack on two fronts. It puts more resources into the imperialists’ hands, but it also removes those resources from anyone who might oppose the imperialists.

The Middle East has always largely been oppositional to western imperialism, so Israel was created to make a beachhead from which they could destabilize the region.

[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 20 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Man! That's a can of worms!

Entire books have been written on the subject.

The U.S.and Israel have a tangled history going back most of a century at this point.

The short answer is that there are enough historical, religious, and cultural ties for the two countries to be allies long term. Since the us, and by extension NATO, needed a place of projected power in the region, and there was an opportunity to make that happen, Israel happened.

And, being real, Israel has mostly been a reliable ally since its creation as a country. It's hard to point to a time when Israel didn't fulfill its expected role in the relationship.

As such, it's really no surprise that when both countries have leadership that are absolute fascist pricks, that the governments would go whole hog in supporting each other.

Again, that's the disgustingly short, over simplified version. I don't have enough interest to turn it into an essay, nor even a discussion, just wanted to drop my take on the matter in a simple way since I didn't see anything in other comments to just upvote and support with a subsidiary comment as being super close to the way I would say it.

[–] Etterra@discuss.online 12 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

You forgot the part where Christian fundamentalist believe Israel is one of the key components to triggering God's apocalypse. They think it'll send the world and rapture them into heaven. Never mind that is such a thing were real, that's not where their own handbook says they're going.

[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 hours ago

Didn't forget it. Just left it at religious compatibility.

[–] Nomorereddit@lemmy.today 15 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Dude came into my gym and said he gets to workout for free because god promised him a free membership 2000 years ago.

[–] Fedizen@lemmy.world 3 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Did he also say this gave him the right to cancel other people's memberships and start talking about his right to shoot anyone who is in the gym without his permission?

[–] redsand@infosec.pub 0 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

The US and arguably the UK are vassal states of Israel through a decades long joint CIA venture to blackmail the wolrd's rich and powerful via Epstein and Maxwell. Also Israel sells a lot of government software that's backdoored, they spy on everyone and helped write your textbooks(think history). Also AIPAC money controlling politicians.

That's as close to a TL;DR as I can give you.

[–] humanspiral@lemmy.ca 13 points 1 day ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

AIPAC, and Zionist supremacists pay the most for elections every cycle, and just demand that their clients say nice things about Israel, and mean things about its enemies. Relative to other US oligarchy, the bribes to cash back ratio is small in most years. Because all US media is controlled for Zionist supremacist goals, it is far easier for all politicians and oligarchy to go along with Zionist genocidal absolutism, than to be labelled an anti-semite extremist.

[–] orbituary@lemmy.dbzer0.com 133 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (6 children)

AIPAC political donations to lawmakers and politicians. They're the second largest lobby contributor and influence politicians for Israel.

They're responsible for promoting the idea behind the Evangelical salvation end days propaganda that induces people to think a war in Israel will bring on apocalypse and rapture.

[–] jimmy90@lemmy.world -3 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

jeees you love a religious conspiracy fantasy eh

the jews needed a place to go and palestine had loads of land for sale

the rest is history

[–] orbituary@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 7 hours ago

WTAF is wrong with you?

If Jewish people have a "Right to exist," do Palestinians? If not, then where should they go?

People have a right to exist, but states do not. States change. Does Ukraine have a right to exist? They used to be a part of the USSR and were solidly inside those boundaries. Is Russia's incursion into their sovereign territory lawful?

Where do you draw the line? Who gets to exist and who gets to die? What about the children who were born there? Do you just say, "woops, you suck because I hate your parents. die, babies."

The future is not history and you are a Zionist prick.

[–] Quilotoa@lemmy.ca 53 points 1 day ago (5 children)

Evangelicals look forward to the rapture. I've been to a lot of Evangelical churches, and, without exception, they want it to come.

[–] Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 1 day ago

Do you mean the rapture of -99, 2001, 2002, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011(sure this time), 2013 (I mean 13, right?!!), 2014, ...

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[–] electric_nan@lemmy.ml 5 points 21 hours ago

It's about economic and strategic interests for the US. These have held true for decades, across all kinds of US admininstrations, and predates any real evangelical fervor. The US is guaranteed Israeli support, since Israel depends entirely on the US for its existence. In the spirit of "the purpose of a system is what it does", I don't believe that the US ever disapproves of the horrors Israel commits. The US could exercise power whenever it wants, but it rarely if ever does. Of course, Israel has its own interests, but they rarely contradict US goals in the region.

[–] ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 1 day ago (5 children)

Well, Mossad and also their tech companies (very slight difference there lol) are actually very good, so we have to buy spyware from them like palantir or else we can't intrusively peer into the lives of everyone on earth on a mass scale, and Mossad also just happens to have pedobytes (pun intended) of video data showing our leaders fucking children on some random island totally random yes so they're able to blackmail the US into being their little bitch. That's it.

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[–] ODGreen@lemmy.ca 41 points 1 day ago (1 children)

USA has a large population of Jews. Not all are zionists, in fact there have been many anti-zionist Jews protesting against Israel's genocide of Palestinians. However, some are zionists. Some Jews see Israel as a backup plan - if shit goes south in the USA they can always flee there.

USA has a lot of evangelical Christians. Somehow (it's not in the Bible) they have convinced themselves that a Jewish return to the Holy Land is necessary before the end of the world happens. Which they want to happen, because they believe they are the good guys and will go to heaven.

USA has a lot of racists. They see Israel as an ethnostate, they like that and support it. Their hatred of brown people is stronger than their hatred of Jews so they are happy to see Israel oppress Palestinians.

USA also has anti-semites who are glad to see a place exist where Jews "should" go to. And they are ecstatic that Israel's genocide of Palestinians is igniting a new wave of anti-semitism.

Many Americans also see Israel as the only democracy in the middle east. It isn't a democracy, of course, since it has de facto control over Palestine and therefore a huge population is disenfranchised. But wait - rights only for a certain group of people, oppression for the rest - that's like America when it was "great" (ie pre-Civil Rights era) and they want America "great again".

[–] blarghly@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago (12 children)

This paints an extremely bleak picture of the US population that really doesn't match reality very well.

To start, there are about 10 million Jews in the US, if we consider the most liberal possible definition of being Jewish, which includes even people who don't consider themselves Jewish but who live in a Jewish household. Source. With the current US population of 350 million, that means about 3% of the population is Jewish. That is not enough to sway any real policy decisions, unless the group formed an extremely organized voting bloc, which they do not.

Evangelical Christians make up a more significant chunk of the US population, but they tend to be more concerned with restricting women's bodily autonomy. If you were to grab a random evangelical off the street, they might know about this rapture theory, but they would probably be like "why are you talking to me, I'm trying to buy milk"

It is difficult to measure how many people in the US are racist or antisemetic, since such topics are taboo and people tend not to advertise their stances. But I would guess that the population of racists or antisemites who are really in the weeds enough to support Israel would be lower than the population of Jews. Most of these people are not smart enough to pull off those mental gymnastics.

Instead, the important thing to know about the average American is that they are not keeping up with global geopolitics. They understand that part of the reason for the creation of Israel was so the Jews wouldn't get genocided again, and they know that Nazis and genocide are bad, so they support it. They might have heard about Hamas, Gaza, or a two state solution, but they would fumble if you asked them to explain the difference between Hamas and Hezbollah, or asked them to point to Gaza on a map of Israel. And if you asked them to explain the two state solution, a lot of them would struggle to remember what the other state even is. Their main concerns if you start talking to them about the Isreal-Palestine conflict are (1) to make sure that you understand that they are not a nazi, and don't want the Jews to be genocided again and (2) exiting the conversation as soon as possible so they can buy milk and watch Survivor.

[–] AskewLord@piefed.social 3 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

evangelicals and jews in the USA are far more political active though than the majority of the citizenry. there interests are over-represented in government, esp at the federal level.

especially evident by the power of their lobbying groups over members of congress.

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[–] RIotingPacifist@lemmy.world 19 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

The US is a global arms manufacturer with a democracy attached, if there wasn't an Israel to prop up the US would find something similar and arm it to the hilt.

The ~~US~~ Military Industrial Complex gets to remind everyone why it's a superpower, it gets to make and sell it's weapons, survialiance tech, etc, it keeps it's opponents weak and desperate but armed such that there is always fear to keep selling the forever war (both to the US, but also ton Israelis (and to a lesser extent to Jewish people living elsewhere)), by political maneuvering it gets to police feespeach.

liberals/conservatives get to feel like they are not racist because they support a minority led country, who many don't consider white in that context.

If it wasn't Israel it could be a different proxy state in the middle East or maybe Africa/Asia.

IMO it has very little to do with Jewishness and a lot more to do with geopolitics, yes they use the Holocaust for propoganda 🤢, but they don't give a fuck about Holocaust survivors. Also and this is small compared to committing genocide, but they've redefined the Holocaust to exclude all of the non-jewish victims which were historically included as recently as a decade ago in common usage of the term (e.g what I learnt in school, what was on Wikipedia, etc)

[–] CannedYeet@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Israel has its own military industrial complex. It's an even bigger portion of their economy. They're a very high tech nation. ICQ, the predecessor of AOL Instant Messenger, was invented in/by Israelis.

[–] Formfiller@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Without the US pumping all our tax dollars into it they wouldn’t have the money for universal healthcare, free college and unlimited war and genocide

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[–] chortle_tortle@mander.xyz 9 points 1 day ago

with a "democracy" attached

[–] Pulsar@lemmy.world 3 points 20 hours ago

https://youtube.com/shorts/BST65vtg_lU

This is as relevant today as it was in 1987.

[–] AmazingSUPERG@thelemmy.club 51 points 1 day ago (4 children)

I think it is the religious end of things; by that the Americans can tell themselves they are protecting god’s chosen people. So in a way they are doing god’s will.

Also money talks and the isreali lobby has lots of it.

[–] dlsloop@lemmy.zip 29 points 1 day ago

As someone who grew up religious, this is it. The people primarily voting maga into power are christians and they fervently believe Israel is right because they are god's chosen. Religion has absolutely no place in politics or we end up in situations like this.

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[–] Objection@lemmy.ml 17 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Israel is an unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Middle East. The Middle East is full of oil and independent countries that the US would rather control as puppets.

Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Iran, Palestine, Lebanon - every country that doesn't bend the knee gets bombed. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Turkey, Israel - those countries that do bend the knee get limitless military support, regardless of how oppressive they are.

The US is intent in conquering the entire Middle East by force. Israel is not unique, it's just the most firmly controlled US proxy.

[–] Resonosity@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 11 hours ago

Yep and if Israel ceased to exist, the US would create one for this reason. Need some attack dog in the region to get the other Arab nations to do as they're told.

[–] WoodScientist@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Eh. The US really has no interest in actually conquering the Middle East. Outside the main US territories, the US is a trade empire, not a settler one. The US is never going to try and annex territory in the Middle East and make it a state. The US just wants to make sure the oil keeps coming out of the ground and that it keeps getting exported at an affordable cost. It's primary goal is to prevent Middle East nations from using their oil for political leverage or for purposes other than export. It would have made a lot of sense economically for a country like Saudi Arabia to not get into the oil export business. Instead, they could have kept their oil domestic, built up a supply chain of value-add products, and export those. Instead of exporting raw oil, they could mainly export plastics, highly refined fuels, and the things made from plastics. But the West wants cheap energy, and they want the higher places on the supply chain.

It's ultimately all about the oil. The day the oil runs out or the day oil is no longer needed, Israel will be abandoned and left to its own devices.

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[–] ccunning@lemmy.world 28 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

The politicians are into it for the campaign donations.

The average citizen supports it because they generally still have a post-WWII mindset and are resistant to criticisms of Israel and conflate anti-Israeli sentiment with antisemitism which Israel encourages.

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[–] Nemo@slrpnk.net 23 points 1 day ago (21 children)

It's a friendly nation in an area where those are scarce, so being able to base military operations out of there is seen as a key strategic asset.

Not defending, just explaining.

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[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 7 points 1 day ago

The Suez Crisis was the last major diplomatic action that the USA took against Israel, with the USA using its ownership of British and French debt to keep the Suez Canal Egyptian. After that, Israel invested a lot help shape the perception of Israel to Americans and invested in several pro-Israeli candidates in both parties through AIPAC and other means. It worked well.

[–] mrdown@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago

There is three groups that guarantee support for Israel the imperialist side who have Israel as an ally to keep control on resources and trade routes. There is the evangelical side who believe the rapture would happen once Israel have total dominance on the region and finally just people who get the money from the lobbies to get in position of power and express dominance .

American are copping when they only focus on the evangelic because they refuse to acknowledge that the USA was always imperialist . People have tendency of wanting to be proud of their countries

[–] devolution@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Evangelicals and the Left Behind theory.

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