What does the U.S. get out of its alliance with Israel?

Great Debates
221

To be honest I hadn’t thought about them because there probably aren’t more than forty or fifty Jews left in Lebanon and I’m sure most are pretty elderly.

The answer to the question is terribly. At one point in an attempt to score PR points Hezbollah announced they’d help rebuild a synagogue in Beirut, but there’s nowhere in the Arab world where Jews are treated with anything remotely equality or acceptability.

That’s a terrible analogy. The Muslim and Arab terrorists who’ve engaged in “terrorism” against the Israel or the US don’t object to Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories but to Israel’s existence.

Moreover, I don’t know what you mean by “blowing up our buildings” in response to the occupation.

Off the top of my head I can think of only three things you might be referring to. The Marine barracks in Lebanon, the Khobar towers, or, of course The World Trade Center in New York.

However, Hezbollah blew up the Marines because they were in Beirut not because the Israelis were in the West Bank and the Khobar Towers were blown up because our infidel boots were trampling through Saudi Arabia.

As for Osama Bin Laden, he declared war on the US not because of the US support for Israel but because of US soldiers being in Saudi Arabia, the home to Mecca and Medina, which drove him wild. That’s why he declared war on us in the mid 90s not decades earlier.

Osama has certainly gave lip service to the Palestinian cause, but to him, it was merely a small part in the grand struggle of all true Muslims in their fight to recover all the lands held by Muslims but now held by the Kuffar(non-believers). He’d be just as angry at us for supporting Spain for occupying Al-Andulus and just as outraged over our support for India, the occupier(from his POV) of the Kashmir district.

222

Cherry tomatoes? Bullshit. It makes me question the accuracy of the rest of this list.

One cultivar was developed largely in Israel using various Peruvian species in the 1970’s. There are several varieties that are more popular. Claiming that cherry tomatoes originated or were invented in Israel is the height of ignorance.
ETA: I didn’t realize we were 5 pages in at this point. Sorry.

223

So maybe Lebanon doesn’t treat ALL its ethnic minorities better than Israel treats arabs?

I think its a GREAT analogy. North Korea with its nuclear weapons and hundreds of thousands of rockets pointed at Seoul poses at least as much of an existential threat to South Korea as the terrorists pose to Israel.

Riiiight, don’t listen to what OBL said, listen to what you think he must have really felt. How much terrorism came out of that region of the world after the Spanish retook Spain or India retook Kashmir?

You know a lot more about the history of the area than I do but are you saying that if Israel had been created in Venezuela instead of the middle east, that we would STILL have all that terrorism coming out of that part of the world?

Are you saying that if Yasser Arafat had made peace with Israel in the 1970’s with a two state solution or some right of return or restitution (and people keep telling me that the vast majority of Palestinians would probably prefer restitution over Israeli citizenship, but wtf do they know), we would STILL see .

Besides, my point is that the only reason people question our support of Israel is because they act like jerks far more frequently than they have to.

224

I am ardently pro-Israel, and…nah. Rotten analogy. Hamas and Hezbollah aren’t nation-states. Gaza and Palestine aren’t nations. They’re in a weird shadowy halfway existence, more than mere non-governmental-organizations, but way less than states. I don’t even know if they have a regular military, but if they do, it’s tiny.

North Korea is a military powerhouse, built, of course, on a foundation of shifting sands. Still, while they couldn’t conquer South Korea, they could do immense harm (and immense harm to Japan, too…) Hamas and Hezbollah, if they went full-out total moose-gonzo, couldn’t do a fraction of that level of harm to Israel.

Yes, in both cases, an all-out assault would be suicidal. The analogy is correct to that degree. But, seriously, I think that the Korean issue is very, very different from the Palestinian issue.

225

Sigh. Ok, I’ll concede that the 40 or so Lebanese who are Jews are treated worse than Arab Israelis, but as a rule ethnic and religious minorities are treated vastly better in Lebanon than in Israel, have been integrated into the society better, and that Lebanon has done a much better job at strengthening a common sense of identity within it’s citizenry than Israel has.

I’m not sure why you’d find that surprising. Israel is founded on a form of blood and soil nationalism based on 19th Century ideals that is certain to create tensions between the 80% of the citizenry who are Jews and the 20% who aren’t.

Lebanon is country made up of a number of different ethnic groups and was founded as “bi-national” state with a fairly complicated confessional system designed to encourage unity and create a common sense of identity while maintaining their own identities. That’s why by law the President of Lebanon is Christian, while the PM is a Sunni and the Speaker of the Parliament is Shia.

For all the problems the Shia have in Lebanon, I would far prefer life as a Shia in Beirut to life as Christian or Sunni Arab in Israel.

Er… I’m judged Osama Bin Laden based on what he said and his actions. The US had been supporting Israel for decades, long before he issued his declaration of war. He made clear in his “fatwa”(if such a term is appropriate) that what caused him to declare war on the US was the US stationing troops in Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War.

He was enraged by having infidel boots in the land of Mecca and Medina. If you want a readable account of him and his motivations, which has little to do with Israel then I’d recommend The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright. As Wright notes, yes eventually Osama started paying lip service to the Palestinian cause, but it wasn’t something that motivated him and you’ll notice that Al Quaeda has long gone after American targets while not going after Israeli or Jewish targets.

Depends I suppose on how you define terrorism. In terms of atrocities, ethnic cleansing and massacres, vastly more were committed during the Christian retaking of Iberia and the expulsion and massacre of the Muslims there than has ever been dreamed of by even the most blood-thirsty of Israelis or Palestinians.

As for “Kashmir”, well, it wasn’t “retaken” by India and disagreements between India and Pakistan over the Kashmir have led to several wars and the partition of India resulted in far, far more massacres, ethnic cleansing, refugees and other assorted atrocities than ever occurred during the partition of Palestine.

So, respectfully, I think your argument isn’t terribly persuasive.

Considering how much of the “terrorism” within the Middle East has little to nothing to do with Israel I’m a bit surprised at this question.

Arafat was dumb but he wasn’t stupid nor was he suicidal. The 70s weren’t the 90s.

226

I’m not sure I would agree with this characterization. After all, Lebanon has been torn apart by bloody civil war along confessional and ethnic lines relatively recently - from the 70s lasting until 1990.

I’d hardly call this a history of unity and a common sense of Lebanese identity. Though obviously more powerful outsiders (Israel and Syria) continually stirred the pot for their own ends, it is equally obvious that many Lebanese evidently are more loyal to their ethnic/confessional faction than to their country as an abstract unit.

The main difference between Lebanon and Israel is that in Lebanon, no one faction is powerful enough to dominate the others completely; the effect of this historically has not been a happy multicultutralism, but rather a precarious and fragile peace, mandated in part by outsiders.

No question that Israel was founded on ethno-nationalism; so were many nations. Some succeed in reigning in the passions so created by the rule of law; others, for various reasons, do not. In the case of Israel, while the situation is by no means perfect, the rule of law largely applies; in Lebanon, for large stretches of its history as an independent nation, it did not.

227

Well, my work is done.

So you think we would see just as much terrorism coming out of the middle east if Israel was located in Venezuela?

I’ll ask again, do you think we would see so much terrorism coming out if the middle east if Israel was in Venezuela.

Its a hypothetical to try and tease out what you think the world would look like if Israel wasn’t a factor.

228

Actually, yeah, pretty much. Too many ideologies in conflict, too much oil money destabilizing things, too many great empires grinding together on their frontiers. The Middle East (or Near East) was a mess before Israel came to be. The Turkish Empire’s collapse and disintegration, at least as much as Israel’s existence, is at the root of the chaos. Without Israel, the Shah still would likely have been overthrown by hard-line theocrats.

229

:rolleyes:

History buff, aren’t you?

230

Forget about US.

It is Canada who has the “strongest” relationship between two natio… ehm… Governments.

And, apparently, Canada has a new Foreign Minister operating in shadow - http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1253310--burman-what-has-prompted-canada-s-move-against-iran

231

Also, articles.

Oh, and, look at the very first thing your cite says.

232

nm.

233

Also Uzis.

234

Of course it’s BS.

Windows NT - Dave Cutler - Wikipedia did it in US
Zip and its variations - Phil Katz - Wikipedia did it in US
Voice mail patent - Gordon Matthews did it in US

One thing good at - taking credit for stuff.

235

Bullshit back.

Windows NT - most of the kernel and a lot of other parts of the OS were written in Microsoft-Israel. I personally knew people working on that.

Zip - look up who Abraham Lempel and Jacob Ziv are, what they did and where they worked.

Voice mail: invented by Comverse, which was an Israeli startup (and later moved to US)

If you want some additional stuff:

VOIP: invented by Israelis, company: VocalTec

Intel’s Centrino chip: developed in Intel-Israel

and, of course, cherry tomatoes: Tomaccio - Wikipedia

236

Care to expound on this in some manner that would be helpful, rather than vacuously snide?

237

Sigh.

You’re shifting the goal posts. You rather foolishly and snarkily demanded to know if the Spanish “retaking” Spain and India “retaking” the Kashmir led to massive violence and bloodshed/terrorism and after I pointed out the Reconquista, and the conflict over the Kashmir had led to violence, bloodshed, massacres and genocide that made the Naqba and the continuing conflict over Israel/Palestine look like a Sunday school picnic, rather than admit you were wrong and made a stupid, ignorant argument you decide to pretend you didn’t make such a claim and now thunder on about what if Israel was located in “Venezuela”.

Considering how much violence and terrorism has little to nothing to do with the conflict between the Israelis and the Muslims, I think your question is rather odd.

Look, I know you clearly think that the Jews are the be all end all of the Middle East, and it’s certainly true the Jews are loathed throughout the Middle East by both Christians and Muslims and Arabs and non-Arabs with passions that many would find difficult to appreciate, but the Jews certainly weren’t responsible for the conflicts between the Algerians and the French, the radical Muslims and the Ba’athists in their various incarnations, the Kurds and the Turks, the Shia and the Sunnis in Iraq, Lebanon, the various Gulf countries, the jockeying for positions between the various Middle Eastern governments, the feuds between Iran and Iraq(which long predates the Islamic Revolution) and assorted other feuds.

The collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the Europeans carving up the Middle East(or Near East depending on your POV) was far more responsible for the current situation then anything done by the Jews.

238

Correct version: advanced breeding of cherry tomatoes. :smiley:

There are other veggies and fruits to which Israel has contributed hybrid breeding (cantaloupes come to mind), but to my knowledge they didn’t invent the fruits and vegetables themselves.

239

Indeed. The way I’d put it is this: the Israeli-Arab situation (and the problems therein) is one of the conflicts spawned by the late-colonial carve-up of the dying Ottoman Empire. It is a subset of a much greater set.

240

There is this, which is likely worthy of its own thread:

Netanyahu Lashes Out At U.S. Over Iran Program

Look, Bibi, you want to go to war with Iran? Fine, do it on your own dime and accept the consequences – remember, Iran has a right to defend itself as well. But stop the bluster and the attacks on Obama. There’s no fuckin’ reason the US should do the heavy lifting for you, nor should you implicitly get involved in the US elections. You boy Mitt’s going nowhere & Obama is not going to forget the attacks.

Foot in mouth disease, Bibi? Get over yourself.