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.

  • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    21 minutes ago

    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.

  • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    21 minutes ago

    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.

  • Rioting Pacifist@lemmy.world
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    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
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      2 hours ago

      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
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        53 minutes ago

        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

      • Rioting Pacifist@lemmy.world
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        True, I don’t like the term globalist as it’s too often abused, but the fuckers profiting from these arms companies can live anywhere and don’t give fuck about either country beyod their ability to capture the governments and sell them weapons & tech.

        There are stronger bonds between arms manufacturers regardless of nationality than those arms manufacturers and the people of the country the company is “based in”.

  • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
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    3 hours 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.

  • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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    4 hours ago

    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.

    • WoodScientist@lemmy.world
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      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.

      • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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        I call the US being able to dictate what happens to the oil as “conquest.” Of course they aren’t going to do formal annexation, there’s no reason to.

        • WoodScientist@lemmy.world
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          You can define things however you want, but words do have meaning. Conquest implies direct political control over a place.

          • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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            Not really. There are plenty of cases in history where conquest results in establishing a tributary or proxy state. Japan conquered Manchuria in WWII, the fact that they set up a puppet government does not change that fact at all.

            The word you’re looking for is annexation. I’m not “redefining” anything.

  • ODGreen@lemmy.ca
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    8 hours ago

    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
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      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.

      • ODGreen@lemmy.ca
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        4 hours ago

        You make good points - the reality is that most people whether in the USA or not are “apolitical” and have a surface-level understanding of things. Probably the thing to figure out is how that surface-level understanding is even formed. Those who DO have a strong opinion about things are more likely to be the ones trying to pull “common sense” or surface level understanding toward what they support.

        • blarghly@lemmy.world
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          Probably the thing to figure out is how that surface-level understanding is even formed.

          I think probably the biggest factor is simply the fact that WW2 occupies such a large space in the American historical zeitgeist. WW2 is a story that makes us look good, and we like stories that make us look good, so we keep telling them. And in the WW2 story, the jews are the victims, and their happy ending is creating a homeland of their own. So the American view, by default, is that Israel has an ethical right to exist as a home state for the jewish people.

          Many jews in the united states, especially older jews, are very sympathetic to this view. While they have never experienced systemic persecution themselves, the jewish community at large is bonded over their historic persecution and internally reinforces these norms. Meanwhile, jewish people are significantly overrepresented in the entertainment industry, in wealth, and in positions of political power. The meme of “jews run the world” is a conspiracy theory - but jews do have an outsized influence in society relative to their population. This is likely due to founders effects of immigrating with some level of wealth or expectation of wealth, compounded over time with the additional benefits of being part of a social network which advances its own. For example, a young jewish comedian will have another jewish comedian friend who has an aunt who has a friend who knows Seinfeld’s neice’s boyfriend, who can arrange for him to open at a moderately popular LA comedy club. Being part of the jewish diaspora will give you opportinities that you otherwise wouldn’t get. And so you have a lot of wealthy jews in positions of power in the government and the media, with a culturally imposed mandate to consistently remind the non-jews of the jewish history of persecution and the need to support and protect them from further persecution.

      • treadful@lemmy.zip
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        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.

        Consider that much of the Jewish population is condensed into a few important population centers. This makes them a pretty strong voter bloc in some parts of the country.

        • blarghly@lemmy.world
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          5 hours ago

          Sure, in some parts of the country. But Jewish influence in national US politics comes more from the population’s outsized influence in wealth, certain industries, and political positions - not from the average jewish voting bloc itself.

        • Rioting Pacifist@lemmy.world
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          Highest Percentage by State:

          • New York: ~8.5%–8.8%
          • Washington D.C.: ~8.4%
          • New Jersey: ~6.2%–6.3%
          • Massachusetts: ~4.5%

          New York, DC & Mass are hardly battleground states, and while I don’t know as much about New Jersey they haven’t voted for a Republican president since Bush Sr

        • GuyIncognito@lemmy.ca
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          Voting is nothing, money is everything. Don’t look at it as a matter of votes, but as a matter of donors, and AIPAC is a very significant donor.

      • Mugita Sokio@lemmy.today
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        “Jew” is actually something us Khazars made up around the 12th or 13th century. I’m a partial Khazar, and I never knew that until I learned what it meant.

  • mrdown@lemmy.world
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    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

      • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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        I don’t think Jesuits would sponsor Evangelicals. They might have similar stupid goals of bringing humanity back into medieval times, but they are in completely different teams.

  • ORbituary@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    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.

    • Quilotoa@lemmy.ca
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      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
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        8 hours ago

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

      • ProIsh@lemmy.world
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        Well yeah, if that comes then they’re proven right and they get to go to heaven while all the “bad” people stay here.

        • marcos@lemmy.world
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          You communicated that part badly, your comment looks like you are saying it’s false and the only reason people believe Evangelicals want that is because of AIPAC.

          • ORbituary@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            You read that point badly and assumed that what I was saying that the reason Evangelicals want this is because of AIPAC.

            See how that works?

      • ORbituary@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        6 hours ago

        We do. The US government gives billions of dollars to Israel, who in turn launders that back into AIPAC and into our politicians pockets. Sure, there are other donors like Miriam Adelson, but she can’t fund the entire government (even though it takes as little as $10,000 to get a politician to change their vote.)

        https://www.trackaipac.com/congress

        • aceshigh@lemmy.world
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          1 hour ago

          I imagine the us government can’t fund its own candidates and so has to go this route?

          • ORbituary@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            6 minutes ago

            The US government has legalized bribery in the form of Political Action Committees, aka “PACs”. Each PAC is a special interest group that contributes to a politician in order to help get them elected. The PAC then expects an ROI - return on investment - for the money they contributed to the campaign. The ROI usually comes in the form of shilling for said special interest.

            To add fuel to the fire, when Citizens United was overturned in 2010, it allowed dark money to be invested into campaigns. This shit was so significant, that I can actually remember where I was when I heard about it and can still feel the echos of dread. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/citizens-united-explained

            This country is fucked. No politician will ever vote to repeal that. Why would they? The amount of money they receive from it would make Scrooge McDuck blush.

  • Jimbabwe@lemmy.world
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    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.

    • gibmiser@lemmy.world
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      I think it is as simple as it is far enough away that many “normal” people didn’t want to look into the details of it and the news wouldn’t cover the bad shit israel would do. I remember being content with that same narrative and sentiment your dad had, and I think it was just because I was focused on other things.

  • AmazingSUPERG@thelemmy.club
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    10 hours ago

    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.

    • Arcden@lemmy.zip
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      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.

    • leaky_shower_thought@feddit.nl
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      i think religion does play a huge part of this.

      as well as all of its variants – the og books of the bible are centuries old and prone to a lot of interpretations.

      apart from that, i believe it is the special interests, the money and their invitations of “pilgrimage” to israel.

    • leoj@piefed.social
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      8 hours ago

      ding ding ding, this is my exact thought, and I remember my ultra religious dad glazing israel while reading me the bible as a kid.

      No thanks.

  • InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world
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    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->>

    Tap for spoiler

    https://www.tbn.org/

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

  • ccunning@lemmy.world
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    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.

    • AskewLord@piefed.social
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      USA has the largest Jewish population outside of Israeli. And Jewish people are over-represented in media, government, and other leadership/power positions. They are also much wealthier. 55% of jewish households in USA make over 100K, only 19% of the general population does…

      All of the most successful/influential people I have known in my life were Jewish, and very pro-Israel. The only Jewish people I have known who was critical of Israel was Israelis who were born there. American Jews seems to idealize it, like you said. Because they only go there for birthright and they believe they are a superior people.

  • CIA_chatbot@lemmy.world
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    8 hours ago

    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