No Stupid Questions

The region is still very important from a geopolitical standpoint. As last months oil prices have shown.

Israel don't have (m)any friends in the region. They are a reasonably stable democracy. This makes them a dependable ally. What would happen if there was a revolution in Saudi Arabia for example? Probably something similar to Iran 1979.

So having Israel as an ally is a huge multiplier in power projection in the region.

Why do you need to project power when it's so expensive? It's sort of what superpowers do. Meddle in the affairs of smaller countries to further their own goals. If not the US then Russia or China.

My dad is in his 80’s and has been an atheist and hardcore liberal democrat for most of his life. The only political subject we’ve ever seriously butted heads on is Israel.

The last time we argued about it, his position was basically that, as a state, it had the right to defend itself from all the “hostile” countries around it. According to him, it even has the right to expand outward to protect itself by creating buffer zones. If Palestinians didn’t want their innocent children bombed to bits, all they needed to do was renounce Hezbollah and/or leave the area entirely.

I was pretty dumbfounded hearing him say this. He’s an avid reader and total history nerd, so to hear him hand-waving genocide was pretty shocking to me. I think it comes from growing up a boomer and a lifetime of deep-seated indoctrination that painted post-WW2 Jews as forever the good guy victims who are just struggling to recover from the atrocities of the past. A mindset that people born in the 70s, 80s, (and so on) just can’t relate to.

I know that doesn’t exactly answer your question, but I wrote this out as much for me as for you. I love my dad and he’s an extremely good person, so it’s pretty shocking for me to have this huge wedge issue between us. If he could learn to separate Jewish people from the state of Israel, he might understand, but frankly, at his age, I doubt he’ll ever come around.

There are obviously a lot of reasons - one I haven't seen mentioned here yet is that they're our only real ally in the region and the best spies in the world; a combination that makes them incredibly attractive as "strategic partners" if the goal is to influence politics in a region you have very little other indirect methods of manipulating.

They've worked damned hard to make sure they're in that position, too. Being invaluable to maintaining US influence in the middle east is the reason the US backs them militarily, and without that backing they'd get absolutely flattened by their neighbors. Thus the toxic symbiotic relationship you see today, with massive campaign contributions and influence operations from both sides designed to ensure they don't ever lose that mutual support.

Similar question, where do they get so much money to impact american politics with? What does Isreal export so much of?

AIPAC gives money to politicians, Epstein gathers dirt on rich people and politicians- politicians now have to do whatever they are told by Israel. citizens United accelerated this by making it easier to just bribe (sorry “give donations”) politicians than using pedophile honeypots to gain influence

I've commented before but I will again because I got a lot more answers than I was expecting. Thank you everyone so much, there is a ton of info that I've never heard or even considered.

AIPAC has infiltrated all the way to the local level. Including Mayor and state legislatures, etc. Israel is the only nation that people dont have to register as a foreign agent for… Israel is our greatest enemy and it has fully infected everywhere

It's their attack dog in the SWANA region. As Biden said, if Israel did not exist the US would have to create an Israel.

Evangelical Christians are a big part of that. Check out TBN, an evangelical fox type network, to get a wiff of what they are on about.

Link->>

Particularly the new/talk segments. Don't do it if you're mental health is bad.

Simon Whistler did a nice video on the history of Israel and US support of it. The US kind of got dragged in early on and solidified its support in dribs and drabs over time, now to the point where people have been convinced that that support is correct.

Vrillium covered this really well. Explains the pipeline from Jewish summer camps to AIPAC Congressional handler.

https://youtu.be/ETzvmLZN9go

Thank you so much for the thoughts, they all make sense.