Comment by ktownsend | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ktownsend | Hacker News Reader

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Historically, this hasn't always been the case, and the US were actively opposed to Israel's covert Nuclear program, for example, which was built with French support against the wishes of the US government at the time. The world has change significantly since then, including the French and American governments alignment of interests and weighing to pros and cons. I'm sure other people here can provide more nuance than I'm able to on the 'why', although there is a lot of emotional nonsense and baggage that comes with this particular topic, so you need to take it with a healthy dose of skepticism that there are NO blanket right and wrong people here and there is blood on everyone's hands.

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.

> But US interests align far more with Israel, or politically moderate countries like Jordan than some others in the region.

funny though that Saudi Arabia, which I would definitely not describe as "moderate", is also a very close US ally...

The enemy of my enemy (Iran), is my friend.

I agree that it's mostly interests rather than electoral politics, though there's a certain amount of the latter as well (and Israel have invested heavily in public diplomacy programmes to try to keep their stock high in that regard). It's worth noting that one of the other closest allies of the US/UK in the region is Saudi Arabia, who nobody would describe as 'politically moderate' or close in values.

There clearly aren't a lot of good bedfellows to be had in the region. US engagement in ME politics is rife with contradictions and blind self-interest, as are political calculations in the EU, China, or anywhere else with enough reach to matter. When you have to weigh blood, oil, military projection, and short-term regional influence in a unpredictable region, it's hard to see anyone as being on the right side of anything. At least the Russians aren't even pretending otherwise, which is sadly refreshing!

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.

> But it's as necessary with Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, and Palestine as it is with Israel.

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.

The Iraqi prime minister just escaped a bomb attack a few days ago. No friend of Saddam, but I believe the US has responsibilities now. Well, that would be true for Iran as well...

It's not just the US and UK supporting Saudi Arabia (and other Middle Eastern dictatorships like the UAE), but pretty much all of the EU as well. Look at the sort of military tech they're able to get quite easily from Germany (despite the occasional temporary freeze after bad press, later quietly lifted), France, the Netherlands, Belgium, etc.

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.

> Historically, this hasn't always been the case

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.

Comparing the blood on the conquerer hands and the blood on the conquered hand is always a strong indicator of either misinformation or bad faith.

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.

Wait, you're just outright saying that you are OK with the Taliban to committing human human rights abuses?

No, I'm saying that the US also committed human rights abuses, so it's not very useful to look at human rights abuses as a measure of who's more evil. You have two tools, both run on linux and windows, so portability is not a useful measure of which tool is better, remove it from both sides of the equation and look at what's left.

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.

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