Western countries apply their moral principles differently to their allies.
A 1:1 scenario would be if Ukraine invaded Russia and then Russia took control over Ukraine territory, which in that case i'd argue the outcry would be minimal.
What matters is that Israel is maintaining their illegal occupation even today, and even expanding it (building new settlements, etc.)
The annexation of the Golan Heights is somewhat justifiable on strategic grounds. The occupation of the West Bank is a land grab, pure and simple.
But you’re mischaracterising the strategic importance of the West Bank. If it was a sovereign nation, the logical thing for the West Bank government to do would be to place artillery on the high ground near Israeli cities. The artillery would be sufficiently protected and would be capable of causing widespread destruction. That’s powerful negotiating leverage, even if the artillery isn’t used. This is similar to the state Seoul is in - within range of NK artillery.
That’s why there is no 2 state solution the Israelis will agree to where the Palestinian state operates its own military. It might be morally right, but it would be a death sentence for Israel.
Source - Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall.
That's a massive exaggeration.
It would theoretically be a risk for Israeli citizens living close to the border, but would lead to an overwhelming punitive response from the Israeli army, strongly backed by America.
Israel has by far the most capable military in the region, routinely inflicts casualty ratios of 10-20:1 in its favour in any conflict with Palestinians, and is backed by the most powerful military in the world.
The threat posed by an independent Palestine would be negligible. However the spectre of that threat is used to justify the continued occupation and expropriation of the West Bank.
But artillery still exists. And if the enemy has the high ground and the cities are in the plains, the death toll will be in the tens of thousands before victory is achieved.
This is the reason every citizen in Seoul knows where the nearest bomb shelter is. I can understand (but not condone) someone wanting to avoid that fate.
It's really hard to imagine a two-state solution working, when leading Israeli politicians repeatedly declare that Israel consists of all the land between the Jordan and the sea. And even if it could be agreed, Israel would remain a segregated state. A single state with one-man one-vote would quickly put an end to apartheid, and to many of the most serious complaints of the Palestinians.
The argument against a single-state solution is that it would put an end to the idea of a "Jewish homeland". That is true; but a "Jewish homeland" must necessarily be an apartheid homeland, which discriminates against non-Jews.
Not that my opinion makes any meaningful impact on global scale, but I do at least vote with wallet and don't buy any Israeli products. I respect their military prowess but I have much higher moral expectations from place I will anyhow support with my money.
9/11 didn't happen out of the blue, it was a response to american foreign policy in the middle east.
The troubles didn't happen because the IRA thought British rule was legitimate
Etc.
The vast majority of terrorism is because one group is controlling a region that the other group thinks they should not.
In my opinion, most long running conflicts tend to have both sides doing terrible things over the course of the conflict, so its rare there is one side that is "good" and one that is "evil".
I know, that's exactly what England did under Cromwell; one of my ancestors was such a settler.
If you don't consider the details of the situation, the comparison basically becomes so vauge as to be useless.
If the territory had been annexed and put under civilian law and everyone there had been given Israeli citizenship 60 years ago, I would indeed agree that although that was bad, it’s not worth crying over spilled milk in the present day, much like e.g. the British conquest of Quebec. But that’s not the case. It remains a military occupation and bad stuff continues to happen, today.
As a strictly emotional thought, this makes me feel Israel is a country to cozy up to the strongest nation at the time. If the US falls from grace Israel will have no problem ‘switching’ sides to Russia.
"Israel Passes U.S. Military Technology to China" [1]
"a 2013 National Intelligence Estimate on cyber threats “ranked Israel the third most aggressive intelligence service against the US” behind only China and Russia" [2]
"Israel among the U.S.’s most threatening cyber-adversaries and as a “hostile” foreign intelligence service." [3]
"Israel’s snooping upset White House because information was used to lobby Congress to try to sink a deal" [4]
[1] https://www.military.com/defensetech/2013/12/24/report-israe...
[2] https://www.timesofisrael.com/new-nsa-document-highlights-is...
[3] https://theintercept.com/2015/03/25/netanyahus-spying-denial...
[4] https://www.wsj.com/articles/israel-spied-on-iran-talks-1427...
How a so called ally can perform such levels of espionage and the US has a hand in paying for their own ‘downfall’. I suppose the only reason Israel gets away with it is due to the influence Israel has on politicians with AIPAC/lobbying efforts.
"NSA tapped German Chancellery for decades, WikiLeaks claims"
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/08/nsa-tapped-g...
Though, I do disagree with spying on allies. There is a history with Germany that may have given credence to the wiretapping.
With that said, the US is not giving Israel weapons to China. But, Israel has given US tech to China (and likely will again).
That's in line with Israel's priorities, which first and foremost is its own survival.
At lot people kind of lazily expect Israel to act like your typical invincible Western state, but it's pretty vulnerable. It's also probably acutely aware of that fact, since within living memory all its neighbors vowed to destroy it and nearly did so.
Citation needed. A strongly held opinion isn't a fact.
> Instead they will not supply anything more than medication. The US gives Israel plenty of military $ for them to share in times of need.
They have or are going to have a field hospital, and have given aid to Ukraine and surrounding countries.
Israel is a US ally. Israel would be strategically harmed by pissing off Russia (they depend on Russian good will to stop Iranian spread of weapons to Syria and Lebanon). And for what - symbolic gain alone?
It's pretty obvious what the Israeli government and population generally seem to think about Russia's actions (as it is obvious what the Chinese government and Chinese population generally seem to think, another country that's trying to stay more "on the fence" but clearly supportive as opposed to Israel that is clearly not supportive).
Israel can also help mediate the end of this conflict as they have pretty good relations with both Ukraine and Russia, and odds of that are higher if they don't give or sell weapons directly to Ukraine.
> As a strictly emotional thought, this makes me feel Israel is a country to cozy up to the strongest nation at the time. If the US falls from grace Israel will have no problem ‘switching’ sides to Russia.
What you are describing in geopolitics. Israel is not special in this regard.
One major factor of alliances is realpolitik and benefits to ones' country. The US has close relations to Israel for many reasons, and the relationship didn't benefit the US in some or many ways, do you really think the US would be a close ally of Israel?
For any smaller country (in terms of population, economics, etc) like Israel, being aware of the massive countries (like the US, China, EU, to a lesser extent Japan and India) are sensible considerations. The US would do the same thing in Israel or any similar sized country's position, would it not?
1. "And for what - symbolic gain alone?"
You advocate giving (or selling) weapons. That isn't symbolic alone, so I'd remove this if I could. It's really more common to see the view that Israel isn't taking a clear enough stance again Russia with symbolic things. It seems pretty clear (see the UN vote).
Nonetheless, Israel giving or selling weapons would complicate an already tricky relationship with Russia. Russia may act as if it is an act of war (arguably it would be reasonable for Russia to do so).
2. India is another country to consider. While not as close an ally to the US compared to Israel, they are either an ally or friendly (depending on the arena / what you mean by ally). India abstained from voting in the UN vote criticizing Russia's invasion of Ukraine. In US media and social media, they got relatively little criticism and attention for this compared to comments I've seen directed at Israel. Even though Israel did in fact vote to criticize Russia. Some people in this thread were at best unaware or at worst lied about this basic, verifiable fact. Apparently Israel even lobbied some other countries to vote the same way they did.
India's reasons for abstaining are also realpolitik and largely driven from considerations around military cooperation with Russia. I don't know too much about Indian / Russian military cooperation, but from what I've read it is much closer and deeper than Israel and Russia. Israel and Russia I'd describe as having few overlaps and at a distance. I'd characterize it as Russia begrudgingly accepting Israel's occasional attacks on Syrian targets and / or Iranian targets in Syria that are trying to supply better weapons to Hezbollah, Hamas, or other people closer to Israel. Given that Syria is a close ally of Russia, it's mildly awkward for Russia, but Syria depends on Russia more than the other way around, Russia is more powerful, Israel is useful for Russia for economic reasons, and Russia can understand Israel's military considerations.
Which is equivalent to an $800 tax break the US gives the Israeli citizens each year.
West didn't ignore apartheid, they quietly supported it, because USSR supported Mandela and anti-apartheid struggle. Kinda "enemy of my enemy is my friend".
IMHO that was the stupidest position of the US, they should've "united" with USSR on anti-apartheid position.
That is why the west supported some terrible regimes, including Apartheid South Africa and Pinochet in Chile. Because they could claim to be "anti-communist".
Maybe, but not one of nearly the same strategic importance (and lobbying/PR prowess) as Israel.
The new regime in south Africa has some nostalgia for the assistance offered to them by the USSR back then, that is why they abstained on the vote on UN resolution against Russian attack on Ukraine.
In some ways it was a proxy war.
Did you forget the part where all Israel's neighbours attempted to invade it and ended up losing territory?
Ukraine never attacked Russia on the other hand...
That is irrelevant ancient history. What matters is that they continue expanding their occupation (building new settlements, passing new discriminatory laws, etc.) today.
Because it's supported by the wealthiest country with the biggest army.
Geopolitically, Israel made the diplomatic masterstroke of allying itself heavily with America, which makes it rather difficult to actually punish them through the official channels for such things. Even things like symbolic non-binding UN condemnations of the most heinous things Israel has done would get regularly vetoed by the US up until recently.
Furthermore, there's a question that most anti-Zionism doesn't have a good answer to: how do we keep another Holocaust from happening? Winding down the underlying Israel-Palestine conflict in a one-state solution means significantly diluting the Jewish majority in Israel with people who are, justifiably, very angry about the shit Israel did. Actually, they're unjustifiably angry, too; and one of the prevailing political parties in Palestine has made "commit another Holocaust" one of their explicit goals[1].
Conditioning any peace solution on special protected status for Jews might fix this, but the only difference between that and "special protected status for whites in South Africa" is an increasingly flimsy social context that's doing an awful lot of work. It would be difficult to balance the need to prevent another Holocaust against the needs of Palestinians, and the sort of right-wingers that like the idea of race wars would absolutely insist on their needs overriding the "other side's"[2].
Nothing I said above should be taken as justifying Israel's nonsense, or the nonsense of Hamas, of course. But Zionism relies upon all other alternatives either being unworkable, or worse. Israel is very much akin to an apartheid state, but all the countries that can really put pressure on Israel to stop that have no moral authority to do so. The UK and France are responsible for partitioning Palestine in the first place; Germany killed six million Jews; and America refused to admit refugees from that genocide. Zionism is banking on history repeating[3]; or at least people believing that it will repeat should Israel step back from the brink of ethnostate nationalism.
[0] For the purpose of this comment I will restrict "Zionism" to just the demand for a non-secular Jewish state in the land currently occupied by Israel and/or Palestine; i.e. Zionism in it's current form.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas_Covenant
Granted, this is #NotAllOfHamas, but party hardliners still insist it's their manifesto.
[2] Insamuch as you can even neatly divide the people in question into two "sides". In fact, Israel and Palestine do not divide neatly into Jewish and Muslim; there are plenty of Israeli Arabs and Palestinian Jews out there.
[3] When they aren't insisting that this is an "ancient conflict" to make their side seem more legitimate.