Genuine question - why does the USA support Israel so strongly?

[Bathsheba1789]

Genuine question. I just don’t understand it. I do know some of the history, and the feelings about the need to create a Jewish homeland post WW2. However currently - Netanyahu and Biden don’t get on, Obama had a very frosty relationship with Netanyahu. The current Israeli coalition government contains some openly extremist politicians who have used racist rhetoric against the Palestinians in the past.
The IDF are clearly committing war crimes and the international pressure for a ceasefire is mounting.
So why is the US so pro Israel? The current debate about the UN resolution - why is the US demanding the language be watered down to keep Netanyahu happy - for goodness sake the USA is the most powerful country in the world.
genuinely don’t get it. This isn’t a goading question I just scratch my head at the whole thing (when not feeling utter despair at the terrible suffering in the world).

Most of the theory on it indicates that it is due to Israel being a strong support to America during the cold war. They were a key ally at that time for America. Truman was the first world leader to recognise Israel as state. US supports Israel’s military superiority in the region and to prevent hostile acts against it by Arab nations.

Israel has broken 62 international laws to date. America continues to veto everything put forward by the UN to bring a ceasefire. Iraq broke 2 international laws and America went to war with the country for 8 years.

Arab Israeli citizens make up about 20% of the Israel population. Many other countries in the Middle East won’t even let Jews in, let alone grant citizenship.

I don’t understand why Israel gets constantly hauled over the coals for everything it does, whilst the vast majority of the Middle East butcher and abuse their way through vast swathes of their population and international law whilst the liberal left looks on with a benign smile.

Yes, the Israeli government does many things worthy of criticism and condemnation and it routinely is criticised. But sauce for the goose and all that…

Its population are educated and sophisticated. As opposed to who? Be careful your racism is slipping out here
Yes great the LGBT community and women have equal rights but what about Palestinians living in Israel? Lets talk about their rights? Any country that picks and chooses who does and doesn't have rights is not a liberal democracy. Israel is like no other democracy I know....

@TheSuggestedAmendment it’s population are sophisticated…unlike…the civilians of neighbouring countries? Hmmm that kind of language can go down a dangerous path.

Name the other countries in the middle east that western nations are looking at with benign smiles? Iraq? Iran? Afghanistan? Syria? The Yemen? Saudi Arabia? Quatar? Did you notice all the protests when the world cup was held there? I could go on. There is also one key difference none of those countries are holding themselves up as a great democracy in the middle east.

Yes, the Israeli government does many things worthy of criticism and condemnation and it routinely is criticised
And that is why they are criticised

Many other countries in the Middle East don't grant ANYONE citizenship. Regardless if you were Jewish, Muslim or Christian.

If you were born in the ME ie parents worked there - you still wouldn't get citizenship. You get it for the country your parents have citizenship.

it’s interesting that the evangelical Christian right are so pro Israel - you don’t need to go too far back in history to see that that wing of American society used to be profoundly, and violently, anti semitic.

That's to do with how some groups on the evangelical right interpret the book of Revelation. They think by supporting Israel (as a country) it hastens the second coming or that it's proof we're in the end times. There was an interesting BBC documentary on this looking at the evangelical right and Trump's approach to policy.

There's also a pro-Israel lobby in the States (lobbying is rife in politics before anyone objects to lobbying in politics being discussed) as well as the US having a vested interest having a military partner in the region. There's a lot of mutual benefits to the US and Israel from this relationship.

Nope, don’t remember any protests on anywhere near the scale of the pro-Palestine protests for the migrant workers in Qatar, and there hasn’t been a peep from the rentamob about Saudi treatment of Yemenis, or against the Syrian regime’s treatment of the opposition. BAE is still happily selling all kinds of stuff to the Saudis.

Protests here about Iraq/Afghanistan etc were all about the West’s involvement, not about the Taliban’s appalling treatment of women.

Wasn't it Joe Biden decades ago that said 'If Israel didn't exist, we'd have to invent it'?

Obviously protests take different forms depending on the issue. Israel is currently bombing the hell out of Palestine so the protests are more intense due to the seriousness of the situation. You can split hairs all you like my point still stands in response to your assertion that other countries in the region just get as you suggested, benign smiles, which is simply untrue. If anything Israel gets more of a free pass when it comes to criticism then most of the other countries I have mentioned

Unlike other neighbours who don’t have that level of access to tertiary education. Levels of education between countries are a matter of record.

You’ve ignored my point though as to why the US would consider Israel a strategic ally, and focussed on the identity part.

No @ayegazumba I get that it’s a strategic ally. I guess I just think at what point does that significance become tempered by the war crimes Israel are committing. (Hamas commits war crimes too and the 7 October attacks were abhorrent - but one does not justify the other).

I guess strategic significance is clearly seen by the USA as vastly more important than the valid concerns of the Palestinian population, which is very depressing.

@Bathsheba1789 the whole thing is depressing. Hamas have spent the last few days rejecting ceasefire agreements. I also don't doubt there is a lot of pressure from the US behind closed doors for israel to come to the table with ceasefire offers. But I don't necessarily agree that they're committing war crimes. There's so much israel are doing which other countries wouldn't in times of war. Humanitarian aid, pre warnings of attacks etc. I think the sad reality is israel are fighting an entity that doesn't care about it citizens, to such an extend that it celebrates martyrdom and citizens dying for their cause. How do you deal with that? It's an impossible situation

If we take the point that strategic interests outweigh the concerns of a local population, why does this particular conflict get so much attention, whereas inter-Arab conflicts don’t? I didn’t see mass campus protests in the US or in London when the Saudis took action in Yemen. Is it lack of visibility? The USA would consider the Saudis an ally in that sphere.

Maybe it isn’t explicitly clear because the reason isn’t a good one.

I'm sorry but you are talking absolute rubbish here. 62 international laws have been broken. 62. Let that sink in for a moment. That's not Hamas saying it. That's the UN.

Humanitarian aid?? They are the starving the people of Gaza by not letting aid in.

Humanitarian aid, pre warnings of attacks etc
Give me a break pre-warning? They tell them to move because of imminent attach then bomb the place they have told them to move to!

Post below taken from the "Why can't Gazans leave thread". Loads more examples of this on the thread if you want to take a look.
From sky
Another example of why the Gazans don't trust the IDF.

Israel said it would be used to give clear and precise evacuation orders to try to keep civilians in the densely populated Gaza Strip away from active combat zones.
Using on-the-ground footage, satellite imagery and mapping software, a Sky News visual investigation found that Israel's evacuation orders have instead been chaotic and contradictory and that a neighbourhood in Deir al Balah was hit one day after the IDF said evacuees could flee to the city.

Israel is an apartheid state, that is not the same as a democracy. Here's a wiki link with the names of all the organisations who have said as much. Israelis live under civil law but Palestinians in the occupied territories live under Israeli military law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_apartheid#:~:text=Comparison%20to%20South%20African%20laws,or%20non%2DJewish)%3B%20draconian

Its population are educated and sophisticated.

For a period Gaza had higher literacy rates than Israel. 57% of the students at the Islamic University of Gaza are women.

Your racism is showing.

Whatever America's reasons are, it won't be moral. Every country acts primarily in its own interests.

What has lack of access to tertiary education got to do with being sophisticated? It is just another example of dehumanising Palestinians

That is just one more horrifying image to add to the many others we have seen during this conflict and this man was detained, without charge, in the West Bank before 7th October.

How can anyone defend it? Even if he was guilty of a hideous crime starving prisoners is a violation of human rights.

I didn’t say anywhere else didn’t have high literacy rates. Your obsession with identity politics is showing.

The question is : why is the US so supportive of Israel? The answer includes that it has developed educational establishments which equal R&D and other structural parts of a sophisticated economy.

Gaza has several universities and I'm sure they'd love the opportunity to develop all the "structural parts of a sophisticated economy".

I wonder why they haven't?

Challenging racist assumptions is not an "obsession with identity politics".

The threads in here are because of all the arguments. If I was to start a thread about Russia being awful I’m sure everyone would just agree with me. Nobody would think that I was saying Russian citizens were awful. Nobody would think that I was Russia didn’t have a right to exist. Nobody would think I had deep rooted anti Russian sentiment that was leading me to criticise their governments abuse of human rights in Ukraine.

Personally I’m outraged that initially the UK, the EU and the US clapped on the Israeli authorities actions in Gaza despite their being evidence of human rights abuses from the start. They should have called for restraint on the large number of civilian deaths straight away. They waited too long and everyone has blood on their hands now. Every single ally is saying - stop killing civilians - now but it’s too little, too late.