The US is supporting Israel through what we can mostly all agree is a genocide of the Gazans. Clearly, Biden isn’t a genocidal maniac, yet he’s all in with unwavering support. Why are we doing this? There has to be a logical reason that isn’t just “we want Israel to kill everyone in Gaza and take their land a la lebensraum.”
We know this is an emotional topic, so please be respectful of each other so that we can have open and clear authentic discussion on the matter.
Israel is a military toehold in the region. Israel desperately needs our help, so we help Israel because it allows us to have someone who desperately needs our help in the region.
Without US money there’d be no Iron Dome. There’d be no Israel of any kind. Israel needs the US, and that is why we chose Israel as our local ally.
From Machiavelli’s The Prince:
Considering a selfish, manipulative, ahem Machiavellian worldview, the reason the US supports Israel is because Israel is the local minor power, which can only become the local major power with our help.
With US help, Israel is on top over there. Without it, Israel is a minor power. That is why Israel, specifically, gets our military investments.
Israel does not need our help, they could easily defend themselves against their neighbor and as a nuclear armed country they know the US will jump in to defend them.
A country of less than 9.5 million people cannot afford to fund the occupation and blockade of 5.5 million Palestinians alone, still less make all the weapons required.
They don’t need to, they just need to verify their Sampson defense and no one would dare attempt an invasion, it’s quite literally the only reason their country isn’t a smouldering crater.
You’re not wrong about the nukes. You’re wrong about Israel not needing support from the US to continue existing in its current form, which is the point I addressed.
In the early decades, they flirted with the USSR to keep the US onside. The nuclear threat now performs at least some of the same blackmail. But the blackmail is necessary because this is a tiny country keeping millions of people under brutal occupation. It is not physically possible for Israel to have the Occupation without bucketloads of funding from a superpower.
It’s absolutely possible, you seem to ignore the technological and firepower disparity and focusing solely on military size.
Iran is 14th Israel is 17th and that’s ignoring a nuclear arsenal.
And yet they are writing checks that the US has to cash