Can someone explain the strong ties between US and Israel, and why US stands behind Israel, no matter what?
Essentially, though, ignoring conspiracy theories and set in stone agendas, Israel simple represented a palatable partner in an incredibly complex, hostile part of the world and there is simple more in common between the two countries, despite their own at times competing interests. But US interests align far more with Israel, or politically moderate countries like Jordan than some others in the region.
I'm sure there is an element of playing to your electoral base TODAY, but honestly, I think it's just pragmatism at the end of the day in a region where the math can be brutal and bloody, and there are no easy choices of solutions, and real partnerships are fleeting in the region since the powerbrokers in one country or region today maybe be out of the picture tomorrow. Despite internal politics in Israel looking like a bloodsport from outside, they are at least a consistent voice in a highly turbulent region.
That's just my relatively uninformed, I'm sure biased opinion, but I don't have a fixed opinion on who the good and bad people here are, and thing there's a lot of blame in every direction, and no real will to change that on any side.
Anything involved Israel just has a depressing tendency to quickly degrade into double standards, name calling and selective vision from otherwise intelligent-seeming people I would normally respect. That's what really depresses me: the inability to have an intelligent rational discussion on anything involving Israel.
Be mercilessly critical if it's justified! I certainly am, and don't think oil is worth so much blood. But it's as necessary with Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, and Palestine as it is with Israel. Just be lucid, honest and fair about it, and willing to admit you don't have all the facts or answers. Why that's so damned hard baffles me, especially from people like engineers who trade in complexity and nuance and edge cases days in and day out.
If Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Palestine have reasons to hate each other, then why intervene? It's not like backing one side will stop the conflicts and bring peace as recent history showed us.
It's all geopolitics in the end, and Saudi Arabia not only has influence by virtue of controlling so much of the world's energy supply but because it's a relatively stable and consistent power and its regional aims are in line with the US and Europe's desired strategic outcomes.
There isn't a single European government that would rather Saudi Arabia be a democratic country right now.
Russia, China, and others aren't any different.
funny though that Saudi Arabia, which I would definitely not describe as "moderate", is also a very close US ally...
It would be like saying 'Sure, the USA did a lot of terrible things in Afghanistan, but did you know that Taliban recruits child soldiers? There are blood on everybody's hand', well yes detective it's called a war, nobody is innocent in a war. The relevant issue is who let the first blood flow, who broke into a land not theirs and started the whole deadly recursion. Certainly not the people who lived there for 2000+ years.
If you remove human rights abuses from the side of Taliban, you get a bunch of people defending their home lands. If you remove human rights abuses from the side of USA, you get an empire willing to violate the sovereignty of an entire nation because it's government didn't cooperate enough with them in chasing down one outlaw. Compare those two and decide who's more at fault in the war.
Applying the same procedure to the case of the Arab-Israeli conflict is left as an exercise for the reader.
The second largest political party in the first Knesset was Mapam, which had ideological ties to the Soviet Union (the largest party was the center left Worker's Party or Mapai). The USSR was the first country to recognize Israel, followed by future Warsaw Pact members Czechosolvakia and Poland. Then Hungary and Romania recognized Israel. The next year, the US decided to recognize Israel. So Israel initially had better diplomatic relations with the future Warsaw Pact than the USA.
With the 1967 war, these Warsaw Pact countries all broke diplomatic relations with Israel (except Romania, which was in the process of breaking away from the USSR). Relations between the US and Israel improved dramatically in 1967. In 1973 Israel had an ill-fated war with Egypt, whose Sinai peninsula was occupied by Israel since 1967, and in 1977, Likud took over the Knesset for the first time.
So 1967 was an important year in the relationship shift.
“Israel is the largest American aircraft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk, does not carry even one American soldier, and is located in a critical region for American national security.” — Alexander Haig (former Secretary of State under Reagan and four-star general.)
Today they have a lot of common economic interests and trade, similar to a European country.
Alexander "I am in control here" Haig made that statement prior to witnessing Desert Storm and the three decades of conflict to follow. The thing that makes that statement ironic is that we can't really fly much from there, and at times had to actively lobby Israel not to fly attack missions in their own self-defense, because doing so would alienate our other allies in the region.
Why does nobody else follow up on the UN resolution from 1948?
(Just like in the case of India / Pakistan UN decided to divide the area into two parts, one for Jews, one for Arabs.)
I can also ask: why does so few other support the single somewhat functioning democracy in the region?
Then, on to your question: After initially being supportive of Israel, USSR took the other side early on and propped up the surrounding nations with weapons so US was kind of forced to do it.
Later on it has turned out to be a beneficial although controversial deal for both parts.
Please also keep in mind that Israel have occupied far more land - and promptly given it back as soon as a lasting peace agreement with the country in question was signed (more or less the entire Sinai. And the country who signed a lasting peace treaty and never had trouble with Israel again is Egypt).
Also, please keep in mind that significant more Jews has been chased out of surrounding Arab countries than Arabs from Israel so anyone asking if UN really divided it in a fair way should also have a good case if they weren't up against almost the entire western world, especially academia and journalists who by now have a deep and vested interest in keeping such facts of the table.
Edit: my point in the second paragraph is that I don't think it is fair to demand that Israel retreat from hard-to-attack positions that gives enemies significant advantages (especially Golan) without a lasting peace agreement.
Edit 2: as for Judea and Samaria which constitute a large part of the remaining "occupied territories" they were first captured by Jordan (which was supposed to be the Arab part of the British mandate from the start and which got 70% of the land before the UN resolution which cut the remaining 30% into a Jewish and an Arab part.)
Israel then took it from Jordan in the 1967 war and has been administering it since then.
This is always presented with the implication that they should have accepted the plan.
I think if someone, even the UN came to you (and by 'you' I mean group of people of multiple religions living in your state / country etc ) and said "I've got a wonderful plan that I want you to accept. You people who currently live in the whole of this land will get to live in less than half of the land. What do you think about that?"
I'm not sure many people would accept this.
That said:
Want to hear a joke? The UN. [1]
Have you ever seen me defend the UN on this site?
But, when the UN is responsible for todays situation to such large degree, and when someone pulls out that map, then the fact that only one part agreed to that map becomes a point.
[1]: This however is not a joke: You know why there are so many resolutions from the UN against Israel compared to the other way around? Because USSR used its veto power to block almost every single proposal that suggested condemnation of Arab states while USA allowed a number of those who condemned Israel to slip through.
Let's be clear, forcibly removing an indigenous population of over 750,000 people (this included my parents) is a crime. These refugees and their decedents have a right to return to their land. This has to be acknowledged and only then will the region move on.
Here, South Africa is a great example of a peaceful coexistence: while it has its problems, the country has moved on after Apartheid.
This is the root Palestinian problem. It's not a complicated story.
Yes, forcibly removing 750 000 people can absolutely be considered a crime.
But what then about the more than 750 000 Jews that were forcibly removed from their homes in the neighboring countries?
Should they also have the right to return?
Does it matter that Arab leadership encouraged your parents and others to leave? (In addition to the barbaric actions of certain Israeli groups.)
Because both sides are displaced, only your side was on top of that also betrayed by their own leadership and used as a pawn while the Israeli side took care of its own people including to a large degree Arabs who chose to stay.
When it comes to South Africa I have close friends and even relatives there. A fellow sysadmin friend of mine got knocked to the ground there by a gun (used to hit, not shoot) just last year in a robbery. People have to use guns, barbed wire and more to protect themselves. Politics is more or less crazy as far as I understand.
How did the US benefit? Did that benefit go to the US population as a whole, or to a few oil companies? Does that benefit exceed the astronomical cost of the many middle eastern conflicts the US has gotten tangled in?
A whole lot of other products and tech originate in Israel it seems, so much that every boycott Israel campaign only get so far before everyone figure out it isn't worth the trouble.
Besides Israel has been invaluable in getting intelligence about Russia, which as far as I have understood was the reason why the US military became so close friends with Israel in the first place.
That's a bit tail wagging the dog, isn't it? Intel has no trouble getting engineers to immigrate to the US when it comes to other countries.
> boycott Israel
There's a lot of room between "unquestioning military support" and "boycott".
For some reason Intel keep a significant presence in Israel. I'm not an Israeli and not an Intel employee so I can only guess that they find it beneficial somehow.
> There's a lot of room between "unquestioning military support" and "boycott".
Yes?
A great many US companies have a significant presence in a great many countries, that receive far less in military aid and support.
> Yes?
Meaning that boycotts against Israel are irrelevant to what the US gains by supporting Israel - I assume that's why you brought them up?
I think you are replying to something you think I said, let me explain below.
> Meaning that boycotts against Israel are irrelevant to what the US gains by supporting Israel - I assume that's why you brought them up?
No, the reason I brought it up is that if what I heard is correct we are very dependent on Israeli technology and products.
My point is that there are some strong rational reasons why Israel is an interesting partner for the US.
In the West Bank, Palestinians are not allowed to form an army, have control over borders, or even control of travel around the West Bank. So they are made to nit have their own country (which Israel opposes) but to be part of Israel. So can they vote for Knesset candidates? No. (Yet an orthodox Jew from Brooklyn who has never been to the Middle East can make aliyah to a West Bank settlement and vote for Knesset candidates immediately).
Some "democracy".
> In the West Bank, Palestinians are not allowed to form an army, have control over borders, or even control of travel around the West Bank.
Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") isn't officially part of Israel as far as I understand. Naturally they don't have voting rights in Israel.
The democracy inside Israel is as I said above somewhat functioning, at least compared to the rest of the region.
You could flip the question and ask why is so much of the world anti-Israel, no matter what?
The data on this is that in 2020 the UN adopted 17 resolutions condemning Israel and 6 for the rest of the world.
Now it’s possible that Israel is so much worse than the rest of the world, and the US is biased. Or perhaps there’s a lot of anti-Israel bias globally and the USA is actually closer to neutral.
> Now it’s possible that Israel is so much worse than the rest of the world
According to Israel itself, it launched 50 bombing raids in Syria in 2020. Many of the UN resolutions condemning Israel were due to those bombings and other actions Israel has taken vis-a-vis Syria. Including Israel's occupation and settlement of Syrian territory since 1967, which the UN condemned then, and upheld in 2020 along with the other resolutions.
The reason the UN condemned Israel in 2020 and not Bhutan, is Israel decided to bomb Syria many times in 2020, and Bhutan did not.
The is comparing Israel with the rest of the world combined, across all global conflicts and human rights violations.
Culturally both are fairly similar - both are "western"-style democracies (e.g. representative democracies with constitutions that value rule of law, independent judiciary, etc)
And, the following might be controversial - but many of americas strategic allies do much worse shit than israel, they just get called out on it less. Hell, Saudi arabia is literally murdering people in embasies and still seems to have a good relationship with the usa somehow.
Look at abortion for example, do right wing evangelicals value this issue less than their support for a 10-thousand+-kilometer-away country? did they manage to make it controversial and costly to not adopt their position on it?
Right wing evangelicals do performatively praise Israel more often, but actual lobbying is strongly bipartisan and cuts across the conservative-progressive divide.
Being anti-abortion is a political litmus test in many parts of the US.
Contrast that with majorities that pro-Israel laws always get in congress. Trump even recently complained outright that "Israel used to control the congress" and he didn't even mean it in a bad way, the ADL shat its pants and quickly tore into him saying that it's AntiSemitic (^TM) to say that. Nobody in the Democrats is willing to approach criticising Israel with an INT_MAX foot pole except possibly old-school anti-imperialism marxists, and they are fringe.
The point is swap out the people in those geographies, rerun the timeline, and you’ll find them in conflict. The reasons they each come up with in this iteration is dressing.
What reasons do you think Israel "has come up with"? To me it's quite clear there's one side that's bent on destroying the other, there is no symmetry.
Others have tried to explain this, but I want to note that this impression is a tiny bit exaggerated.
The US has a strong relationship with Israel, but there are countries which have better ties with the US, or at least get more from the US - South Korea has a direct defence alliance, Pakistan gets (read: extorts) more money, Britain has the 'special relationship', Australia just got nuke subs, etc.
Also, can you think of any US President which did not have a public fight with Israel since Carter? Excepting maybe Trump, all of them had some nasty public spat with an Israeli government.
I suspect the main source of this impression is that it's useful for both Israel and its enemies.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-blacklists-four-compan...