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Comment by throwawayq3423 | Hacker News Reader

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How would we know? If they're really successful about it, wouldn't it look something like, say, ~2 years of almost complete inaction while Israel flattens Gaza?

I think “how would we know” is actually a pretty good point. I do also find Israel’s outsized influence on the US inexplicable.

Israel is a solitary, functioning, modern liberal democracy surrounded by repressive, autocratic states. Until about a minute ago, supporting liberal democracy was important to all US administrations.

The people of the US are (until maybe(?) a minute ago) largely supportive of Israel. Partly because of a (relatively) large and visible Jewish population (THANK YOU EUROPE!), and partly because it has been a majority Protestant Christian nation with an affinity God's Chosen People.

You don't need to go all QAnon to figure this out.

> Israel is a solitary, functioning, modern liberal democracy surrounded by repressive, autocratic states. Until about a minute ago, supporting liberal democracy was important to all US administrations.

IDK about functioning or modern or liberal, but the rest seems about right.

I have never been to Israel. But for a small country that has always existed under a threat of the destruction, not just by the county of Gaza, but occupied Lebanon, Iran, and basically some large population of every surrounding Muslim nation, they've done quite well. I'd say very modern. And given the penchant of the polity to protest and a free and rambunctious press, I'd also say very liberal.

You may have different definitions of these words.

I don’t think an open apartheid state that regularly supports the illegal dispossession of homes from civilians for a project of religious conquest can be considered to be liberal or modern or functional. But I suppose if I didn’t think Palestinians existed or were deserving of human rights then I could arrive at your same conclusion.

Personally I’d rather visit Jordan or Lebanon than Israel any day of the week.

Jordan and Lebanon are repressive and autocratic?

Did Lebanon declare war on Israel through the legislature or by Presidential decree? Did the the people demand that Hezbollah, under the control of democratically elected representatives, launch rockets every day across the border?

Jordan: "According to Freedom House, Jordan is ranked as the fifth-freest Arab country, but still regarded as "not free" in the 2021 report. It is also classified as having an authoritarian regime according to a 2020 democracy index."

But I'll accept your quibble: "Not All Nations"

It’s not really inexplicable. Looking into evangelicalism.

outsized influence =/ blackmail, even if the outcome might be similar.

I see your point, but to the parent's point, they've never done so so comprehensively that they no longer need to do so secretly.

I wonder how many Americans know about the night when Kissinger et al activated entire US military, incl nuclear forces, just so some soviet weapons wouldn't reach Egypt during Israel's Yum kippur war- all while Nixon slept. Soviet union was so taken aback, they immediately folded. Of course they would, they treated this thing like a minor regional conflict thousands miles away from home. Their mistake was believing American govt would do the same.

Source- Kissinger: A Biography by Walter Isaacson

Or about the USS Liberty. A US navy ship that was destroyed by the Israelis. Israel said it was a case of mistaken identity and President Johnson accepted that explanation. Admiral Moorer, the 7th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, accused President Lyndon B. Johnson of having covered up that the attack was a deliberate act.

Well, usually the story told to counter this is that he said that Israel wouldn’t get one bullet until Egypt blockaded Straits of Tiran. Kissinger didn’t exactly have a track record of saying philo-Semitic things.

That's very likely the case, though I don't think either of us have the details to make that assertion confidently. My comment was only in regards to lobby groups which operate freely on US soil staffed mostly by Americans.

Were there an analogous "ARPAC" which lobbied for Russian interests I imagine it would be under an immense amount of scrutiny.

Let's wait to see what that golden pager does.

It'd be hilarious if it were a passive listening device like The Thing, but Trump seems so attention-hungry and security-oblivious that you could probably just leave a big microphone on his desk like an old-timey chat show.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)

I thought of that, too. Surely they wouldn't be that bold, but then again, it's such an obviously crazy idea that it might just work.

I've read at least one book that argued otherwise.

You have zero evidence for such a strong statement. Most blackmail goes undetected, so there's no way to say this confidently.

If Trump was taking direct orders from Putin, what would he be doing differently?

And who has?

What was Biden’s ineffectuality about then?

Every single poll during the Gaza war has shown majority support from Americans that "israel has a right to defend itself" and "the US should support israel until the hostages are returned".

I don't understand why people think it's a conspiracy theory that Americans are fine with Israel bombing innocent brown people in the desert, since we did that ourselves for 20 years on the back of actual lies and a general hatred of Islam that is still here today, where we have re-elected the guy who made a literal muslim ban, and still insist that islam is a threat through "migrants".

Americans have very little empathy for brown people in the middle east. Israel has a much more "westernized" vibe for Americans, so of course they can empathize with them more. Remember that any American over the age of 20 have seen MULTIPLE TIMES that there was "relative calm" and then Hamas started killing innocent jewish people. If you are older, you remember when all these countries openly called for the extermination of Israel as explicit foreign policy.

As of a few days ago, 33% of DEMOCRATS still see israel in a positive light https://news.gallup.com/poll/657125/views-israel-ukraine-mex...

You can argue that the AIPAC influences american's opinion, but it is actual american reported opinion that we should support Israel in their extermination of "terrorists".

Biden passed more consequential legislation than almost any president since FDR. The chips act, the inflation reduction act, the infrastructure act. The list goes on and on. He even had a bipartisan immigration bill that was closer to being passed than any other bill. He was an incredibly effective legislative leader while in office.

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