Because all Israeli politicians are evil ?!?
There weren’t any evangelicals with any power 75 years ago.
Most of you are too young to know, but Israel was a cause celebre back in the day. For good reasons. And those reasons have not gone away.
I had a feeling someone would get fixated on that, and miss the forest for the trees.
No, they weren’t a political player back when Israel was first recognized by the international community. That was largely on the back of international guilt over quietly permitting the genocide of Europe’s Jews. Then, starting around the mid-1960s, there began a lengthy period where the ME was essentially a proxy battlefield in the Cold War: The US supported Israel, while the USSR supported (mainly) Egypt and Syria.
And then the Evangelicals got in on the action. Starting roughly with Reagan, so early 1980s. Meaning they’ve been a political force for nearly 40 years, just about half of modern Israel’s history.
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An important but often unspoken reason the United States has traditionally been such a big supporter of Israel is that the United States, like most Western powers, has always had an undercurrent of anti-semitism and a lot of people were worried that if the Jewish people didn’t get a homeland over there then they might all try to move over here.
Which is not to say that the state of Israel is necessarily a bad idea in principle, but a lot of Israel’s defenders are not acting out of the best interests of the Jewish people. Strange bedfellows and all that.
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Actually, the International community first recognized (what was to be) the state of Israel many decades before the Holocaust.
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The ethnic Jews were never expelled from Palestine, just temporarily removed for a few years a few miles from Jerusalem. They converted to Xtianity and became the Palestinians. The “Diaspora” are descended from BC converts when proto-Judaism (not mono-theist) spread across the ME.
Don’t take my word for it, check out the ultra-Zionist Wikipedia.
They missed an opportunity when the first boatload of Euro-American terrorists arrived.
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You are calling the Jews who settled in Israel and the ME “Euro-American terrorists” ?
(After 1948 it became perfectly legal “State of the Jewish People (Only!)” violence.)
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Oh, I see. Israel is just for Jews? And the Jews are the terrorists?
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This is fascinating, and really educational. Tell us more about how Israel is for the Jews only, could you please?
You could ask Nut’n’Yahoo, or any of the vast majority of Israeli Jews who vote for him.
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Why would I ask HIM anything - he obviously says Israel is just for Jews, just exactly as you said.How come the world lets them get away with such stuff?!?
It has to do with “shared (religious) values”.
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Trump is just a rich con man, Nethanyahu is a genuine terrorist. In 1968 he participated in an attack on Beirut international airport, blowing up over a dozen civilian airplanes. (Most of Israel’s leaders over the years have had a background as terrorists or war criminals).
Some people express surprise of US support for Israel. Given the similar history I find it pretty natural. Both countries were created by persecuted religious minorities fleeing oppression in Europe. Colonizing a new, “unihabited” land, removing the pesky natives that insisted they lived there and gradually putting them in reservations. Israel is like USA during the Indian wars.
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I remember reading, a while back, some interview with a Palestinian politician who had talked to Kushner, and Kushner told him that he “didn’t understand the situation in the Middle East.” The guy was obviously affronted on some level, but more baffled, and asked, honestly curious, “Okay, what elements of the situation do you think I’m missing here?” Kushner didn’t - couldn’t - answer him, of course, instead acting affronted and refusing to ever speak to him again if he was going to be “sarcastic.”
That just feels like the Trump admin in a nutshell - come in with absolutely no expertise and the most superficial understanding of the situation, but claim to know more than people actually living it; be unable to justify your position, play the victim, and then just disengage and go off and do whatever you wanted to do in the first place, unbothered by any pesky questions, facts or complexities of any sort…
I think everyone agrees - it’s not actually a “peace plan” at all, but a bit of political theater for domestic audiences of Trump and Netanyahu.
Reading Trump’s statements, I was highly amused/amazed/horrified/angered by Trump’s claims of ownership - describing it as “his vision,” talking about how much “he was doing” for the Palestinians (leaving aside that he’s doing less than nothing for them; even in theory the supposed benefits would come from other countries, even those requiring some impossible and nebulous conditions to come true). I really wanted someone in the press to just ask him a question about a specific element of the plan, because there’s no fucking way he even has any idea what’s in it, much less does he understand it.
I was also amused/amazed/angered/horrified (amuzangrified?) by how pleased Trump and Netanyahu were, patting themselves on the back for creating this “successful” deal (that has zero percent chance of happening) by simply not involving one of the parties in making the “deal”…
Or, to put it another way:
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I know very little about the problems in Israel/Palestine and always looked at it as complex and messy and I have avoided looking into it too deeply. I feel like I have a better chance of brokering a deal then Jared ever did.
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That means leaving Israel to do whatever it wants, because the Palestinians will never get anything approaching a fair deal without pressure from powerful countries with which Israel needs good relations
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