It seems to me that to get elected president in the U.S. you need to be a strong supporter of the state of Israel. Are there a lot of Jewish voters in the U.S.? Does it really make that much difference?
Is American support for Israel more militarily strategic? Or more anti-Islam?
It seems that with over 200 countries in the world, the pretty small country of Israel gets a disproportionate amount of attention.
Why?
How many democracies are there in the middle east?
A lot of it has to do with religion; Christian support for Israel, either on the mandate of supporting God’s chosen nation/people and/or hopes that it will bring about the End Times. And yes, there is the democracy factor.
It may sound a bit odd, but it’s not just Jews , a lot of evangelicals in the US are big supporters of Israel .
There aren’t “over 200” countries in the world.
Why does it seem to you that to be elected you need to be ‘a strong supporter of the state of Israel’? What is your evidence for that? Was Obama considered ‘a strong supporter of the state of Israel’?
Certainly Israel is an ally in the region, so it’s militarily and politically strategic because of that, though obviously that has downsides as well, as several countries in the region (and more importantly many people from the region) don’t particularly like Israel and are critical of the US’s relationship to them.
Again, what is your evidence that they get ‘a disproportionate amount of attention’ from the US or from our Presidential candidates, which I presume is what you meant since that’s what your thread is about. The US doesn’t give them a disproportionate amount of foreign aide, for instance…IIRC, we give about the same the Egypt and more to other countries. We don’t sell an unusual amount of, say, military equipment to Israel either…mostly because they have their own industrial military complex.
Depends on your definition. There are over 200 UN members.
Aside from Israel itself, the US is the only country that has what I’d call a “significant” Jewish population (source). That being said, it’s not so many that they themselves have a huge cache of votes for politicians to go after, and they’re consistently strongly Dem.
My personal impression is that that American support for Israel preceded any widespread animosity towards Islam. I’m not sure I’d call it “militarily strategic” either. More like “cultural”.
Well, it depends on the attention you’re talking about. The US has a “large” Jewish population, which probably contributes to the outsized attention from us. They also seem to get a lot of attention from the UN, for “other” reasons.
Americans fell in love with Israel after the 6 Day War because they kicked ass and took names and that’s the way we saw our country at the time. Over time Israel’s enemies kept making themselves the bad guys with terrorism, warfare, and the oil economy. In the mean time Israel has steadily been a strong economic and military ally.
Religion comes up in US and Israeli politics, but there are plenty of other motivations for a strong relationship betwixt us and them.
There aren’t many, and even among those who are, many are secular Jews who don’t care much for Israel. The bulk of American support for Israel stems from American Christians, and especially, American evangelicals.
Interesting to note that Israel has about 7 million Jews and there are about 6 million Jews in the US.
Mostly it’s the religious right who think it’s necessary for Jews to be in Israel for the End Times to occur. Personally, I think their love for the Jewish people is a little hypocritical if they also believe that Jews are denied entry into heaven due to not accepting Jesus. But there are enough right wingers who are convinced that the Jews HAVE to live in Israel that they have made this one of the most important parts of their foreign policy doctrine and many are cocksure that Israel is incapable of doing wrong, even when led by a fathead like Bibi.
“other”?
IMHO a lot of the Israeli focus / obsession at the UN is driven by antisemitism.
193, plus two non-members, the Holy See and Palestine.
Lots of reasons.
Lots of Jews in the US so politicians want their support. Jews are also over represented among those who give large amounts of money to political campaigns.
Evangelicals like Israel because the Bible is full of blessings for people who are good to Israel and Jews.
Strategically they have been are allies since the Cold War and it makes no sense to not support your allies.
Culturally Israel is a prosperous democracy in a area of the world filled with murderous tyrants. When people see one side blowing up buses and teaching children to throw rocks at soldiers, it is easy for most americans to pick a side.
Economically they are a good trading partner and buy alot of our weaponry.
And a lot of the American support for Israel is also driven by antisemitism. There’s a large minority of Americans who think Isreal’s purpose for existence is to get nuked during Armageddon, and so it has to continue to exist until the proper time.
Well, AIUI, eventually, according to Scriptural eschatology, the whole *planet *will be destroyed. So Israel being “nuked” or not is irrelevant given that the entire planet is going to be gone.
Re. American support of Israel- whom exactly is America supporting? There are around 7 parties in the current governing coalition and 16-17 parties in parliament, and elections are coming right up!
Pretty much was going to reply with the same. It’s kind of silly to say this is ‘antisemitism’ based, since essentially it’s the signal for everyone to die and only the elect/select or whatever get to go home to Jesus. The rest of us (Jews included, to be sure) are headed down town…