there are no egyptian or jordanian citizens under an Israeli occupation.
I don’t think they’ll want us to give everyone a gun there either.
They produce some delicious clementines.
But six million never could have. The Ashkenazi culture of the “Jewish Pale” of Russia and Poland could be exterminated, but not relocated wholesale, not even if they had started in Herzl’s day. That is why Israel’s native language is not Yiddish.
And halvah.
This is a very odd statement. Sure, the culture wasn’t transmitted to Israel (except for a small minority), but many people were: and it is the survival of the individual humans, not the culture, that is the more significant.
The culture of the Pale would not have survived, except as a tiny minority, if every Jew in Eastern Europe had immigrated to America prior to WW2 (note that most US Jews don’t speak Yiddish today). Yet that certainly would have been better for them, than to be horribly exterminated! :eek:
Well - technically he came from the Roman imperial province of Galilee.
Bet you didn’t know that Dopers have already settled this issue in a poll.
Note the grossly inaccurate claim at the bottom of the page, that Israel gets 1/3 of the U.S. foreign aid budget (it’s actually between 1/13th and 1/14th of the budget according to my feeble math).
Hmmmm. Would they take him back?
I believe he’s already been returned to sender.
It’s funny that no one has mentioned the strength of the Jewish lobby as one reason for the aid. People are giving all sorts of non-starter explanations like “it’s a Democracy”, as if that was ever a reason to give a country billions of dollars.
AFAIK, AIPAC is the only ethnicity-based group that all U.S. presidential candidates give speeches to. If this is incorrect, and they all also meet with other ethnicity-based groups, I’d like to know.
In addition to the Jewish lobby, I believe there is a large influence from Evangelical Christians, who believe in some sort of biblical prophesy involving Israel, which leads to their supporting it, but I’m not sure of the details, so if anyone knows more about this please explain.
The aid was mostly an inducement to make peace. It’s why we also give a lot of aid to Egypt and Jordan.
AIPAC is powerful, no doubt. Heck, they even got Donald Trump to use prepared remarks and a teleprompter! That is powerful.
Or from a different angle; 6.3 million Jews in Israel, 5.8 million in the USA, and just 1 million in all of the EU; The Jewish lobby is strong because Jewish culture is strong here.
NAACP.
When the Jews re-settle in Jerusalem, God will come and fix everybody’s problems. The details are murky but that’s the gist of it.
Those silly Jews, always lobbying to give money to Egypt and Jordan. 
BTW, AIPAC is a pro-Israeli lobby, not an “ethnic” lobby. Not all Jews are pro-Israel and not all Americans who are pro-Israel are Jews. This is somewhat significant as a fact right now, as the US presidential candidate most opposed to AIPAC is Bernie Sanders - who is, in fact, Jewish. He’s the only one to deliberately not attend AIPAC.
There are 55 million Hispanics in the US, and yet the US presidential candidates are not all rushing to give speeches to Hispanic lobbies (if this is incorrect, please let us know).
The fact is that Jews are highly successful in many spheres (business, entertainment, entrepreneurship, politics, etc) and so the 6 million Jews in the US do have a huge impact on US culture and political discourse. It’s not a bad thing, it’s admirable how well Jews are doing. But it is a factor in the power that AIPAC has.
I’m not sure all the candidates gave speeches there. Some quick searching shows Hillary did, but I couldn’t find anything for Ted Cruz or Trump.
You are being sarcastic, but that doesn’t change the fact that, if it means better chances for Israel’s survival if Egypt and Jordan get tons of aid from the US, then pro-Israel people (Jews and non-Jews alike) will prefer to give money to Egypt and Jordan.
Israel is not in actual existential danger currently from either Egypt or Jordan.
People in the US (pro and anti-Israel alike) have a rather unhistorical habit of thinking that Israel’s very survival hang on US financial support.
This ignores history and context. Israel has, it is true, in the past been threatened existentially by the Arab world. During the Cold War, and when the Arab world was both united against Israel (particularly, Syria and Egypt), and funded by the Soviet Union. Even then, Israel was able to defeat the Arab alliance against it - twice; the first time, with exactly zero support from the US.
Times have changed. The Soviet Union is no more, and Putin’s Russia is a sorry replacement as far as solid support goes. More significantly, the Arab alliance is deader than the Dodo. Syria, as a cursory glance at the news may reveal, is in no position to launch wars against anyone, as it is currently torn apart by civil war itself; Egypt is under a shaky military dictatorship, and its largest threat is internal. Jordan was never a true existential threat to Israel on its own.
The original reason for the payments was not to “ensure Israel’s survival”, but rather, to ensure that Israel and Egypt agreed to the peace deal the US hammered out - one in which Egypt (the loser in war) got the Sinai back (but gave the finger to the Arab alliance); and one in which Israel, the winner in war, handed over the Sinai (which contained its then-only reserves of oil, and significantly, strategic room vs. Israel). As in any deal, both sides had to do things they found unpleasant, and to make the deal stick, the US offered to sweeten the pot with dollars all around.
Reasons for continuing the payments have varied over the years: demonstrating political support for Israel is part of it, as is propping up reasonably friendly regimes in Jordan and Egypt (both of which are currently under considerably greater threat than Israel).
The amount of dollars is significant for Israel, but not essential. Israeli military spending in 2015 was 18.5 Billion.
Israel receives from the US 3-4 Billion per year, the majority of which is tied to US arms sales; in effect, an indirect subsidy to the US weapons industry. Losing that cash would be painful to Israel, but it is hard to make a case it would be fatal (indeed, that fact is a good reason to argue such payments should be wound down: they are unnecessary).
Egypt is in a worse case, as the economy of Egypt is in the toilet and its politics in permanent crisis. The notion that without the subsidy Egypt would attack - and defeat - Israel lacks reality: both Egypt and Israel are more at threat from unconventional sources, such as ISIS (currently active, ironically enough, against Egypt in the Sinai).
Jordan is currently far more concerned, and with good reason, with the spillover of the war in Syria than it is with Israel.