The middle east, it's energy resources and trade links are vital to the stability of the 'rules based order' - what washington calls the US empire. Israel is a vital partner in this region. They need our security architecture to exist and we benefit greatly from having a dependable and depend ally supporting our imperial presence. Israel knows how important they are to US imperial policy in the region.
There are also strong cultural and person-to-person ties between the US and Israel. The US received a steady influx of Europe's Jewish population, fueled in part by frequent 19th and (notably) 20th century pogroms. US Jews vote Democrat by 3:1 - 71% D vs 26% R since 1968. Republicans have apocalyptic Christians in their base who support Israel for bonkers Revelations reasons, but the image of the US as a glorious crusader attacking infidel Arabs still resonates with the wider christian base as well.
The only thing Israel 'has' on the US is the reality of US foreign policy and domestic politics.
I am guessing their calculation is that losing support of Israel lobby is 100% loss?
Yeah, I've been presuming that's a significant part of it. That and the importance of a dependent and dependable ally to help anchor US security architecture in a vital region. Israel needs US imperial presence in the region. Saudi just benefits from it.
US support for Israel continuing the current conflict or US support for Israel in general? If really forced into it, maybe the Democrats can withdraw their blessing for the current conflict, but I don't see how they could end support for Israel. If Putin wins the US election who knows what could happen but short of that Israel is just too important to the US empire and they know it. I mostly believe the official line from Washington that they don't have that much leverage against Israel - in the sense that Bibi&co have enough counter levers to make acting against them more costly than it's worth for the Democrats.
Hence the bullshit antisemitism law, the brutalizing of campus protests, etc. Democrats are even willing to drive down turn out among their base in one of the most important elections in US history over this - I just don't see them doing that if they had a better card to play.
Our fundamentally inhuman treatment of the Palestinian people led to October 7.
There are only two ways to prevent it happening again. We could stop the unconscionable deprivations we inflict on the Palestinian people or we could speed up the genocide we've been engaged in.
No surprises that the government compromised of war criminals and people the Israeli courts have deemed to be terrorists are going for the later. The far right are in charge and they're pretty open that this is the goal.
It's not divide and conquer, that implies keeping multiple groups at parity and fighting each other. Israel intentionally kept the crazies in charge to undermine the viability of a Palestinian state.
The best description I heard was that he was a man born with the greatest privilege of all - to have never once been disturbed by the stirring of a conscience.
A lot of these hand axes may have had some kind of not-strictly-functional purpose during their heydey in the stone ages as well. Heaps of them show no evidence of wear or use and are noticably gorgeous - just really pleasingly shaped.
Why are they including their invasion of Ukraine, Napoleon's Russian invasion AND the period of Mongol dominance over the Rus? Is Putin claiming the Mongolian conquest of Kievan Rus as a military accomplishment of Russia?
Jealous! My sister lived in that area and we went squirrel walking a few times on visits but I was never so lucky as to have one crawl over me.
That walking up to you and standing up behavior - I've started to see that at a cemetery here in Portland that we walk around, but so far all the squirrels have waited a short distance away for food to be thrown to them.
Hegar @ Hegar @kbin.social Posts 2Comments 677Joined 2 yr. ago
That ended over 15 years ago.