I don’t agree with the assessment, but in terms of a great power being very interested in the interests of a small country, consider Serbia and Russia before WWI.

I agree vassal is the wrong term... but we are currently committing global economic suicide on behalf of Israel's interests. I'm not sure what word is appropriate. Perhaps we need a new one.

I'll look at Serbia, thank you.

suzerain

While too big a subject to cover well here, the Serbia / Russia thing is different to US / Israel.

Primarily a Russia friendly Serbia was important for Russian trade routes (Black Sea to Mediterranean via the Dardanelles.) In other words geography made Serbia important.

In a twist on that theme, the strait of Hormuz is important to, well everyone, and we now see how geography can magnify a countries strategic value.

There were other factors which came into play with Russia. Ethnically Serbia was aligned with Russia - similar to the US / Israel relationship today.

It also didn't hurt that Russia at the time was experiencing internal discontent and this was a convenient way to thin the population, and get rid of malcontents. (Ironically would end up having the opposite effect of organizing, arming and training an army that ultimately would be instrumental in the revolution. )

The history leading up to ww1 is fascinating- so many players, all with really "big picture" goals, mostly with weak leadership.. Ultimately conflict was inevitable- if it hadn't been the arch-duke it would have been something else.

In part it's because they have the best intelligence apparatus in the world. I'm very impressed at how far above their weight they're punching.

If you can see enough of what an intelligence apparatus is doing to be impressed I'd say they're not doing a very good job.

What they seem to be most unique in is the impunity of their operations, like when they assassinated a completely innocent guy in Norway, of all places: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillehammer_affair

wow, that's shocking to read. Didn't hear about this in any European news.

Assassination is sort of the mossad's thing. I highly recommend the book "Rise and Kill First" (by an Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman) who describes this approach to international relations as something approaching an addiction. He alleges they've assassinated more people than any country on earth since their founding in 1948 and lays out a very convincing picture (to the extent he can—there are moments when you can tell he would like to state things more baldly).

The best intelligence apparatus in the world missed the Oct 7 planning which Egyptian intelligence noticed, told the Israelis about directly, and still went ignored?

Hence the theory that they did know, but chose to let it happen in order to justify the following escalation

They're also obviously fine with breaking eggs to make an omelette. Given their history, they seem to regard breaking eggs as the goal, and making an omelette as an afterthought.

Perfect excuse for the ongoing genocide.

This is what I ask everyone who thinks October 7 was an attack launched by Hamas of its own volition.

Anyone who's been to and seen the Gaza border knows how impossible it is to cross - unless of course there was some inside permittance.

So what are you proposing? Are you saying Hamas did not perform the October 7 attack? That they were mind controlled? Or … ? This feels like over the top conspiracy theory.

To me it’s obvious where blame lies. Gaza residents voted Hamas into power, despite Hamas’s vile charter pledging erasure of Israel and Jews and so on. Hamas then spent more than a decade launching tens of thousands of rocket attacks against civilian targets in Israel.

The mass murder and rape of October 7 was completely in character for Hamas. And for people saying Hamas isn’t the same as the residents of Gaza - look at footage from October 7 where the streets were full of Gazans cheering as the dead naked bodies of women, with blood on their genitalia, were paraded through Gaza city.

All of this speaks to October 7 being exactly an attack launched by Hamas of its own volition, with the support of Gazans.

As for this:

> Anyone who's been to and seen the Gaza border knows how impossible it is to cross - unless of course there was some inside permittance.

They used paragliders. This is well known. They don’t have to climb walls with barbed wire if they fly over them.

This is not the point OP wanted to make, and you seem smart enough to understand that.

> Gaza residents voted Hamas into power, despite Hamas’s vile charter pledging erasure of Israel and Jews and so on.

Reminder:

* The last parlimentary election held in Palestine was 2006 [1].

* The median age in Palestine as of 2023 was 19.8 [2].

* The voting age in Palestine is 21 [1].

In other words, the majority of the population today were born after the last major election, and they aren't voting age now, let alone at the time of the last election. When you account for people who were voting age in the last elections, the number of people still around today is a rather small minority. It shrinks even further when you consider that Hamas only got 44% of the votes for Parliament (alas, due to how district votes are handled, that gave Hamas 74 of 132 seats).

Given that, I'm a little less sure about holding the current population of Palestine responsible for Hamas. You could argue they should be doing more to displace Hamas, but perhaps that can wait until after they're done worrying about starving to death or being shot by IDF snipers while accepting food from aid workers.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Palestine

2. https://ourworldindata.org/profile/population-demography/pal...

See also: https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/11/01/majority-palestinians...

From what I know about rebels and paramilitary orgs (like FARC), they're always supported by the local population in return for "protection", policing. Same goes for Hamas. I wouldn't say they voted for Hamas but I'm quite sure they support and offer shelter and food to Hamas fighters.

My other experiences with Palestinians revealed that they're very empathetic people and they integrate quite well into other cultures when they're not bombed or shot at.

It is well documented that Israel had heard rumblings that something was coming.

A year prior, they had documentation of a plan like what unfolded on October 7th, but dismissed it for reasons I won't speculate on. Google 'Jericho Wall'.

Approximately 3 weeks prior to October 7th, Unit 8200 produced a document based on months of research, that showed Hamas seemed to be doing a lot of training and coordinating for something.

In the days prior, Egypt warned Israel that something big was happening imminently, but again, it was ignored for reasons I won't speculate on.

The night before, the IDF identified a number of anomalies in Hama's behavior but did nothing with this information.

A number of members of the intelligence and military leadership have stepped down since, acknowledging the failures.

Anyhow, for whatever reason, your belief that this was completely in character for Hamas, seems to be at odds with the beliefs of Israel's intelligence and military community in the months and days prior to the attack on October 7th. Which is, odd, to say the very least.

Hamas are fanatics and were dumb enough to try it. They also had the tunnels, missiles from Iran. But I"m quite inclined to believe the Israeli leadership let it happen as a pretext to crush them afterwards, level Gaza, maybe even go against Hezbollah and Iran, but that's a bit too far fetrched.

That's precisely what I meant. Hamas always had these plans on how to launch an attack. Israel gave them the opening. And why is everyone forgetting the fact that Yahya Shinwar was basically a Mossad puppet by the time he was released? They released him precisely because they thought that he was milder compared to his contemporaries in Doha.

People who've been to that border in normal times know how fiercely that border is protected.

It escapes me how a Palestinian born in a refugee camp and involved into lifetime strife against Israel can also be a Mossad puppet, but who knows.

Hamas are crazy fundamentalists that Iran is using along with Hezbollah to perpetrate attacks against Israel. Just what Netanyahu needs to start another war.

> Hamas are crazy fundamentalists

They're normal people—dentists, engineers, bakers, whatever—born into an environment with no sovereignty and the constant threat of death or worse. That's enough to put a gun in anyone's hand. We must stop with this wholly inaccurate and shallow characterization. They are not Boko Haram or ISIS or Al-Qaeda. In fact, they worked with the IDF when ISIS was messing with them about 8 years ago. Are they predominantly muslim? Yes. But their struggle is for sovereignty, not fanatic fundamentalism.

That's the image they have created for themselves after kidnapping, raping, abusing and killing innocent civillians and concert goers. Compared to Fatah and the other PLO members who established themselves as political parties, they are just a terrorist organization and recently designated as such in most of the civilized world. Israel has probably discretely supported them in the past order to prevent a two state solution.

Raping and abusing? Do you have a link to what you're referring to or are you confusing them with how the IDF treats their prisoners? Because that rape and abuse is extremely well documented.

> they are just a terrorist organization and recently designated as such in most of the civilized world

I would not call the west "civilized". We're just rich. We call a lot of people terrorists and overlook our own terrorism, like basically everything the CIA & the IDF & the mossad do. convenient eh?

PLEASE read anything but western news, I'm begging you. You don't realize how insane you sound to most of the civilized world.

Both sides commited rape and abuse of prisoners and civillians. That's why Hamas is a terrorist org and Netanyahu and friends are war criminals.

Funny, I always thought it was about the schools and hospitals getting bombed nonstop for decades.

Every Gazan is not a Hamas supporter. Do you know the kind of shit Hamas pulls against its own people?

There wasn't any chance of Hamas being overthrown by the Palestinians either. With clandestine support from both Israel and Qatar, Hamas ensured that they were the only ones with guns on the Strip.

Yahya Sinwar was captured and imprisoned in a Mossad cell for years. Even if he weren't an active Israeli puppet, Mossad would've easily known the ways they could manipulate him into a specific action, and egged him to carry that out. It's already been established that the Hamas leadership in Qatar were in the dark with respect to the October 7 attacks when they first happened too. I don't condone Hamas either, but it's also very likely Israel is heavily complicit.

I've been and I've seen. It is a fence. A very long fence. You can't cross it with bare hands, and if you try, you will be shot. This is not the case when dozens of bulldozers simultaneously cross the fence and many thousands of trained terrorists coming out of tunnels and cross the fence through the openings. If you don't have prior intelligence, you can't stop it.

I believe they let the oct 7 attacks go through to serve as a pretext for Netanyahu to level Gaza. No evidence whatsoever.

Regardless of anything else, absolutely no one is calling shin bet the best in the world at what they do. The FBI is much more effective. It's the israeli agencies that focus on transnational threats human and signals intellegence (mossad and 8200 respectively, along with other groups in the laters perview under military intellegence).

France has the best intelligence apparatus. Recommend checking it, that's also why they are way under the radar. If achieving intelligence by any means was the goal, yeah then Mossad.

Let's compare facts: There's only 10M people there. I think PR skews reality massively

Population metrics deskew this distorted reality: France has 69M, China has 1.4B, Russia 143, Germany 83M people. Mathematically and from a technological sophistication standpoint, these governments must have higher advancements and frequency of successful Intel vs Israel. Mathematical probability speaks against Israel.

Where was that apparatus on october 7th?

it's not, they have a good PR. Best intelligence is quiet.

>Any man who must say, 'I am the king,' is no true king

Really it comes down to religion, and Israel being the bastion of anti-islam in the Middle East. Doesn't hurt that they are also liberal democracy and have advanced economy as well.

> liberal democracy

With a big honking caveat-asterisk that it only applies if you're on the right side of the apartheid.

Well, on the right side of the border. Everybody within the actual borders can vote, regardless of race, religion, etc. In a lot of ways it's a more democratic system than the US has, with multiple functioning parties.

The "apartheid" part is the people in the West Bank and Gaza, who are not Israeli but also not their own country.

Israel has never published their official borders. Even Somaliland has declared their borders but the "only democracy in the middle east" has never done so in it's entire history.

Israel has clearly defined borders. If youre are talking about the West Bank there’s area a, b and c which are controlled by Israel, both, and PA respectively. I’d call that borders.

Sure and they exercise sovereignty far beyond those borders in a blatantly illegal manner. They do not acknowledge their de facto borders because it would be admitting to acts the world would be required to condemn to maintain the pretense of law and order.

If you need to protect your border inside, than you already failed. Borders are protected outside the country.

Israel has never defined its own borders. This is easily googleable. There are borders that are well understood by the international community but it is a fact that the state of Israel itself has never defined it's own borders.

>Well, on the right side of the border.

Which border? The Israelis don't recognize a border, which is why they have illegally annexed the Golan Heights in Syria, are currently attempting to colonize Southern Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza.

> Everybody within the actual borders can vote

Unless you're a Palestinian in illegally annexed Jerusalem... Then you don't have citizenship and have to keep proving that you live and work in Jerusalem to avoid losing the residency rights.

How is it illegally annexed? Jewish people lived in that region first. Islamic Arabic people were a later phenomenon. Islam wasn’t even invented until something like 700 AD. The Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem is literally built on top of an ancient Jewish site (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Mount).

> lived in that region first

The whole premise/approach of "here first" is deeply flawed, and I think this blackly humorous cartoon [0] is a relevant critique of it.

Tying things back to earlier discussion, here's the thing: One can either say a place is a "liberal democracy" or it can disenfranchise people due to events thousands of years ago, but you cannot do both.

Democratically speaking, people whose lives are principally controlled by a government today deserve (for their hardship) a say in its operation today. What happened even a single generation ago is irrelevant to that relationship of duty and obligation.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-evIyrrjTTY

Hmm, you may or may not chuckle a little at the tale of a Jew and a Palestinian visiting sperm banks on either side of the wall: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuvvfnjgZlM

Probably every single person in the region is a descendant of the Jewish people who "lived in that region first".

And if we go back further: If Abraham existed, then like 99.9% of all living humans are descendants of Abraham. Do they all have claim to Israel's land?

It doesn't make sense to look back that far.

Also a very large percentage of the current Jewish people in the region are descendants of European colonizers. The original Jews converted to Islam over thousands of years, then Jews from Europe came over just after WW2 (this was the Allied counter-proposal to the Holocaust) and said it's ours now.

>> Jewish people lived in that region first.

I'm going to skip over the obvious assertion that they weren't- Cainanites were in the promised land when they arrived - but instead focus on the "here first" doctrine.

Because if "here first" is the primary source of political legitimacy then that argument extends to lots of places. It would require that Texas should be part of Mexico, that current govts in Australia, New Zealand and Canada are illegitimate, that all whites in South Africa should be disenfranchised, that most of Europe needs to redraw borders.

In other words, appealing to the political boundaries of a period thousands of years ago is not quite the killer argument it might appear to be.

(It does however support Greenlanders in their fight against US rhetoric. )

It's also fun that the people who advocate the right for Jews to "return" to Palestine because they were there 2000 years ago, are the same that deny the right of return of Palestinians to the land because "dude you lost it 80 years ago, you need to accept and give up".

I mean if voting for a parliamentary representative is your barometer, would you consider Russia a liberal democracy? Or Iran? Both have formal democracies, and Iran even seems to have pretty contentious ones replete with unexpected reformist upsets. If voting at all is your barometer, we could toss in Cuba, China, and North Korea. Apartheid is not characterized by voting rights but by a qualitative difference in access to justice when pursuing basic rights. Think: Jim Crow south. Formally, black people had access to all the same public things white people did. In practice, it took nearly a hundred years to work its way through the courts to be afforded true protection by the state.

Plus, you need only to look at marriage & inheritance laws and access to citizenship to see that the state is dedicated to jewish people—arguably, a jewish supremacist state with a non-jewish underclass.

What’s wrong with Islam?

Not sure we're allowed to discuss that here, nor do we have the space.

Assuming you are serious,

There are a couple of wikipedia pages from where you can start your studies (and follow links for more);

Criticism of Islam - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Islam

Criticism of Islamism - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Islamism

I don't like how Americans dismiss their own agency in this all. This is not being forced on us by Israel. A huge and underdiscussed reason why the US and Israel have the relationship they do is because of the roughly 100m American Evangelicals that want it that way. That's also why the GOP is seen as the party more favorable to Israel (not that the Democrats are necessarily adversarial, but they clearly aren't as agreeable as a whole).

Only roughly half of evangelicals in the US actually support the state of Israel. I've never even heard of any of my local reps mentioning Israel when running, course maybe I either wasn't looking for it, or the target audience?

I have friends from all walks of life, and trust me when I tell you, the GOP isn't all in on Israel. Which is weirder to me, because I'll hear about how antisemitic the right is, and then in the same breath hear people blame them for Israel's support? When you factor in that roughly half of evangelicals (which can be Democrats too mind you) support Israel, I guess that kind of pans out with why you hear both angles? It's just bizarre to me either way.

I know we benefit militarily from Israel when you factor in all the technology we've designed for them, that we can use for ourselves (Iron dome comes to mind), there's also special ops we otherwise might have never heard of like Stuxnet, which is the coolest thing I ever heard about (I mean really, it was impressive). I'm never blindly a supporter of any nation, because all nations can mess up, but I don't like blindly hating people or nations either. Not everyone is so black and white as everyone seems to believe nowadays, often it feels like the truth is somewhere in between.

I have heard casual antisemitism from strongly pro-Israel evangelicals. There is no reason to think these attitudes are mutually exclusive.

Theologically their support for Israel is rooted in antisemitism. They need Israel to trigger the end times so Jews and other nonbelievers will be punished and ultimately destroyed.

If you pry and ask the right questions, they'll admit that they don't want this to happen, because they really want all those Jews and nonbelievers to convert and be saved. This is also antisemitism, but it's wrapped up in a millenia-old death cult.

Millennia old death-cult is an accusation that we can throw at Judaism as well. Hell they're basically the OG.

> This is also antisemitism, but it's wrapped up in a millenia-old death cult.

Dispensationalism isn’t a “millennia old”; its a 19th Century doctrine. (Younger than the United States, older than Christian Fundamentalism.)

> Which is weirder to me, because I'll hear about how antisemitic the right is, and then in the same breath hear people blame them for Israel's support?

The proto-typical versions of this are (1) supersessionism in more traditional Christian thought, and (2) more modern "dual-covenant" thought. The latter is not always explicitly antisemitic, but can be implicitly so if it sees Jews as primarily fulfilling a Christian eschatological purpose (undergoing mass conversion as part of the rapture).

> Only roughly half of evangelicals in the US actually support the state of Israel.

I'm not sure where you're getting the info on evangelicals but from what I can find, support is closer to 82% [1]. Zionism in the US isn't actually a Jewish issue. It's a Christian issue. For every Jewish Zionist there are ~30 Christian Zionists. Why? It's theological. I'm referring to dispensational premillenialism [2]. To summarize, in this theology Israel is the key to bringing on the End Times and the return of Jesus Christ.

> I've never even heard of any of my local reps mentioning Israel when running

So this is intentional. Israel realizes how unpopular Israel is or just that people don't care so there extensive spending is hidden behind PACs that none of the messaging is ever about Israel. $35 million was spent to oust Thomas Massie in his recent primary. How much of it was about Israel? None. You only find out after the election who AIPAC funded when the intermediary PACs have to reveal their financing.

> have friends from all walks of life, and trust me when I tell you, the GOP isn't all in on Israel.

It's pretty close [3][4]. More importantly, anti-Israel Republican politicians are few and far between. It just isn't a popular stance to take in Republican primaries.

[1]: https://globalaffairs.org/commentary/blogs/american-evangeli...

[2]: https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/dispe...

[3]: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/04/07/negative-...

[4]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/702440/israelis-no-longer-ahead...

I think this is correct. There has been bipartisan support of Israel for decades. Netanyahu even mentions in his autobiography that Israeli politicians usually underestimate the strength and durability of the relationship with America.

> Which is weirder to me, because I'll hear about how antisemitic the right is, and then in the same breath hear people blame them for Israel's support?

Despite the Right trying to redefine antisemitism in terms of opposition to the State of Israel, anti-semitism and anti-Zionism are somewhwere between uncorrelated and anti-correlated. Certainly, dispensationalist, eschatologically-motivated Christian Zionism (the main reason for the tie between evangelicalism and support for Israel) is not at all associated with pro-Judaism.

> When you factor in that roughly half of evangelicals (which can be Democrats too mind you)

Evangelicals “can be” Democrats, but again the Israel-Evangelicalism tie is mainly specifically through dispensationalism, which is almost exclusive to White evangelicalism, and White evangelicals split about 85/15 Republican (or Republican-leaning independent) vs Democrat (+Dem leaners).

> I know we benefit militarily from Israel when you factor in all the technology we've designed for them, that we can use for ourselves (Iron dome comes to mind)

Funny that would be the example that comes to mind, because Iron Dome was developed by Israel (by Israeli state-owned defense firms), not by the US for Israel.

You may be confusing it with the similarly named American (proposed) “Golden Dome” system, whose name Iron Dome inspired, but we didn't develop.that for Israel either (in fact, it hasn’t actually been developed), the only connection to Israel is the inspiration for the name.

> Despite the Right trying to redefine antisemitism in terms of opposition to the State of Israel

I don't think it splits along traditional right/left lines. The ADL is not typically considered right-wing, and they're what everyone cites to conflate the two concepts. Furthermore you're seeing this adopted at the university level to effects chilling to campus free speech in ways I've never seen before—again, not typically a right wing bastion. Then you have right-wing figures like Candice Owens, Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly who have all spoken out against Israel. Now those may be fringe figures but they're on the right fringe. It seems like it's the center, the broad center, that is scared to rock the boat.

I think there's parallel valid points on all sides. GOP is also split over Israel. Young Republicans/conservatives do not care at all to continue the relationship. There's those evangelicals that also do not represent Americans who increasingly question and neutral/negative towards US-Israel relationship.

I do wonder how long this can continue. American people should have the final say on which relationships are beneficial to them not special interest groups. The fatigue is very real and palpable and its growing to be an ugly force that is also being exploited by extremists.

This trend change in how American youth view Israel is also a big reason why so many social media platforms are exchanging hands, ex. TikTok by blaming some other scary foe like Russia or China. These are mere attempts to buy time at the inevitable in that America is going their own way and it will be ultimately the American people that will decide.

Look at what's happening in South Korea right now. Election fraud has triggered both the left and the right. The usual opportunists and politicians tried to exploit the situation and they were rejected. The fatigue from the people and the current arrangement is turning into visible anger in countries which face serious structural problems due to the huge wealth gap parity and falling birth rates.

One need not look far at places like Quebec or Paris or Belgium to see exactly where this is headed for people who have nothing to do with Israel but are associated by guilt.

accusing ppl of racism because one observed anti-semitism is on the rise is delulu

why dont you let us know what you really think of the Jewish community and stop trying to pretend its limited to just Israel ? We are not gullible as you assume

Again, completely different response than when Islamophobic outbreaks occur. Those are never met with 'but it you look at it with a larger geopolitical context'. But there is totally no different standard for Jews, it's totally just anti-Zionism.

Hide behind whatever justification you want for the double standard. It's easily seen through.

Edit: maybe we are talking past each other. I'm saying attacking random Jewish people around the world is unacceptable. I am saying people understand attacks = bad with Islamaphobia, and no one justifies 'but....'. When it comes to Jews, people quickly suck 'Israel's actions are causing' which is disgusting. Nothing is causing/justifying attacks other than the attackers moral failing.

I'm specifically pointing to people such as yourselves hiding behind "oh I just hate israel" we know thats not hte full story here.

You keep trying to redirect and inject Islam and minimize cases of anti-semitism in those regions.

OP didn't say it was being forced! American politicians are 100% to blame, Israel just acting in its own interest as it should

Israel is likely to get shredded if it keeps acting "in its own interest". The US doesn't look like it can sustain this global network of military bases and Israel will probably be left high and dry. This Iran war is threatening the entire global economy. That is a lot of potential enemies if the diplomats and analysts come to believe it is because Israel doesn't like peace and negotiation. At this rate Israel could keep winning of battles in the US Congress and in the Middle East right up to the point where it loses the war and gets wiped out.

The risks they are taking are stunning, and the payoffs highly questionable. I don't think this can be said to be in their own interests. Nuclear deterrents go a long way, but at some point they're not enough to defend a group as crazy as the Israeli government if they keep stirring up trouble.

The diplomats in question are Witkoff and Kushner. Whatever they believe about Israel’s motivations, Israel will always have their full support.

Witkoff and Kushner may always give their full support to Israel, but Witkoff and Kushner are unlikely to always represent the United States (and even moreso unlikely to always have the ability to exercise unlimited influence over US policy), and even—especially—were that not the case, the US is unlikely to always have the international power it has recently.

That's really interesting. I am an Evangelical, and no one that I know supports Israel. Could it be something else?

It's always weird hearing yourself described and recognizing approximately nothing, right?

The hubris to think a group of people could precipitate the rapture is just awe inspiring and the hubris to reduce someone's relationship with the creator to some Wikipedia excerpts is a bit less awe inspiring.

Are you denying radical evangelical conservativism exists?

It could be that you are utterly crazy, so the GOP uses you as a kid will point to a crazy neighbor to decorate their own crazy ideas, and you do nothing to disabuse anyone because you’re too crazy to care.

That's interesting. Every evangelical with whom I've spoken seems to be willing to give Israel carte blanche

Anyone can call themselves a Christian. One can only tell a true Christian by their fruits. (e.g. love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, and many others)

Your movement knows and cares nothing about Jewish culture and uses the resurrection of the state of Israel in that geographic location as a pawn to both rationalize progress towards your doomsday prophecy and the validity of your belief system at all

All so you get an accelerated chance to ride with Zombie Jesus on a cloud to heaven while the rest of us experience supernatural calamity, and most illuminating is the fact that the Jews don’t. get. to. come.

Its all so contrived and opportunistic

Instead of stating that, Israel is masqueraded as our democratic partner in the Middle East where we can store bases as if we don’t have bases in every surrounding country there.

It’s just your sect perpetuating this nonsense. We built this nation devoid of a divine monarchies, the only freaking one with the opportunity and resources for it to matter at the time, and now have to deal with you guys and your anti-intellectual doomsday cult.

The US has no reason to be involved at all. But even beyond that, look at what the US did to Ethiopia and Eritrea under the mere allegation of famine inducing actions:

EO 14046 just a couple years ago put the entire ruling party on the OFAC economic sanctions list, and the military and businesses formed by personnel in either and by their spouses. You know that would be essentially every person in Israel if we held them to the same standard? Should be fine, only antisemitic people believe there’s a disproportionately large consolidation of economic interests amirite, FAFO but just the find out stage

Takes only the stroke of a pen, Congress not needing to be involved at all, and can even apply to our dual allegiance citizens in the US

You seem pretty upset. But, rest assured that I'm not your problem. And, the Gospel has nothing to do with any of that. True followers of Jesus Christ are just here to love Jesus and love those around them.

Anyone can call themselves a Christian. In fact, the bible repeatedly warns about this, and instructs us to test everything. It says one can only discern a true follower of Jesus by their fruits and the company they keep.

Actually, when you talk to a lot of "Christians", you'll find that most don't know the bible, and many worship something else that they picked up from tv, usually Judaism (i.e. do they mention the 10 commandments?).

The conditional paths to salvation is a core aspect of Christianity whether your personal journey and house of worship focuses on that or not

Evangelicalism is an accelerationist sect to get your savior to come back and bring the most devout to heaven at the expense of everyone else, before allowing the world to get destroyed

These are inseparable concepts. You may have simply began identifying as Evangelic just by birth or proximity or to grift your way into a relationship, but again, you are in a death cult that is trying to use Jewish people as pawns ever since their Zionism ideology coincidentally matched your prophecy. And then they are condemned to burn with the rest of us in a supernatural nightmare as our world gets destroyed by your creator’s more powerful creations while you are insulated if you did everything right. That’s what the rapture is.

Your choice and practice of peace and love has nothing to do with Evangelicalism as a distinct Christian sect. Anyone can read inspirational and feel good messages from the book of Psalms from any variant of the text. You don’t even need that Abrahamic religion for that, you dont even need religion for that.

I’m not even writing this for you, you’re cooked and gain more benefits socially and mentally from rationalizing this, I’m writing this for passerby’s, people already noticing cracks in the belief system they associate with.

People that can help get our country out of involvement in this while you guys pretend there is a persecution complex around holidays. Everyone just wants to ignore you.

That’s quite a response! And, the confidence! I appreciate you, man.

It's the only nation on earth that can't be criticized without the victim card being played every time. Utter a discouraging word about the secular leadership? You're labeled a bigot.

This is a hotly debated topic.

The John Mearsheimer view is that "The Lobby" [1] has effective control over US foreign policy. There's a lot of evidence for this such as AIPAC indirectly unseating anti-Israel candidates. The Thomas Massie primary was the most expensive in history. $35 million. For a primary.

Noam Chomsky on the other hand rejects the notion of "the lobby" [2], instead arguing that Israel is an tool of American imperialism. Then-US Secretary of STate of Alexander Haig is widely believed to have described Israel as an "unsinkable aircraft carrier" [3] in a resource-rich region even though that term originated in the Pacific in WW2. The US has had an interest in disrupting Pan-Arab Nationalism [4], preferring a divided Middle East to guarantee access to oil.

The truth lies somewhere in between. There are clearly material interests and the US could shut down Israel in a day if it so chose. But the US has taken actions that clearly aren't in its national interest and the perfect example is the current Iran war.

Under no circumstances was this ever going to end well. The military knew it. General Caine tried to stop it when Trump didn't heed his warnings [5]. The US intelligence community was against it. also saying Iran wasn't developing a nuclear weapon [6]. Trump instead listened to Miriam Adelson, Benjamin Netanyahu and Mossad, who collectively (allegedly) convinced him it would be a Venezuela-like regime change operation.

This move will (IMHO) go down as the largest strategic blunder in US history and it will reshape geopolitics in the Gulf, Europe and Asia for decades. Even other wars that were lost (eg Vietnam, Korea) didn't have this kind of impact. The US could essentially walk away from those at little cost.

My point is that you can't take the Chomsky view as this being purely materialist. It just doesn't fit the evidence.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Israel_Lobby_and_U.S._Fore...

[2]: https://mondoweiss.net/2011/02/chomsky-materialism-and-the-i...

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsinkable_aircraft_carrier

[4]: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v12...

[5]: https://edition.cnn.com/2026/02/25/politics/caine-iran-hegse...

[6]: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/us-intel-community-agreed-b...

Hum... I don't think Chomsky's opinion on the matter has any relevance at all.

He's there right at the Lobby. We have no way at all of knowing he's saying it doesn't matter because he saw it doesn't matter, or because it dictates what he says.

What? Noam Chomsky has been labeled a self hating anti-Semite by AIPAC. For decades.

The same Noam Chomsky which was a friend of Epstein which had ties to Israel high schelon.

John Mearsheimer fully discredited himself around the start of Ukrainian war.

How do you figure?

Mearsheimer was right: Putin wrecks Ukraine.

https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Why-t...

Why would an article from 2019 be a counterargument to criticisms from 2022? Especially when the first sentence of that article is a prime example of Mearsheimers blind spot: that the Russians aren't actually realists, but instead are a kind of idealist focused on Russias dignity as a (percieved) great power. Almost like virtue ethics as opposed to the consequentionalist ethics of realism.

I agree that Chomsky's assessment hasn't made sense for a while. Maybe it did until, I don't know, the camp david accords, but at some point the Lobby became too integral to even clearly acknowledge. Perhaps Citizens United helped metastasize the problem. It's also simply a dogmatic, cultural reflex at this point: to not support Israel is politically unthinkable on the hill. It was political suicide for so long the older politicians especially are incapable of even milquetoast critique.

It's also worth noting that the public is so aware of AIPAC that it's become a bit of a too-visible stink. More and more pro-israel money is being funneled through other mechanisms: Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI), NORPAC, United Democracy Project (UDP), Pro-Israel America. There are also regional pacs, like To Protect Our Heritage PAC in Illinois, SunPAC in Florida, etc.

Yeah, I've seen that show too. It's not real. You could tell by the fact they've never mentioned AIPAC in the entire run of the show.

It's not American evangelicals. It's been a long campaign and the evangelicals are still being targeted by Israel because no one else is left, but there aren't enough American evangelicals to swing things.

Not to mention, it often comes down to primary voters, to say nothing of Hollywood/media blacklists

> the Democrats are necessarily adversarial, but they clearly aren't as agreeable as a whole).

Democrats only changed recently. For some decades before that, the Israel lobby had significant sway over them (including allowing dems to publicly admit certain things).

Ah but this is were the Temple will fall a second time!

Because the interests of Jews and Christians do not and never will align. Already there are reports of orthodox Jews harassing Christians...

"Christians in Jerusalem fear rising violence"

https://p.dw.com/p/5ELHW

Voters—democrats especially—are voting against politicians that don't speak out against Israel. But that's a very recent phenomenon. Democratic leadership strongly supports Israel to this day, including both Schumer and Jeffries. Cory Bush and Jamaal Bowman, both outspoken in criticism of Israel, were each primaried by democrats with support from leadership, and Bell (who ousted Bush) promptly lost in the general. That is—they willingly gave up a house seat just to ensure a pro-Israel party line.

As I said, things are changing, but it's still largely verboten to speak baldly against Israel as a democrat. In the senate, there are people who oppose arms sales to Israel, largely because of the Leahy law prohibiting arms sales to countries who commit war crimes, but few speak strongly against the clear slaughter (let alone describe it as a genocide as the rest of the world seems comfortable doing), or ascribe it solely to Netanyahu. This, when democratic voters mostly do not have a favorable view of Israel, seems to be a fundamental failure of representation.

On the republican side, Massie and previously MTG were opposed. Only about 43% of republican voters strongly support Israel. I don't believe any senator opposes arms sales to Israel. Again, this seems like a failure of representation.

To characterize this as a symptom of evangelicalism is historically understandable, but young evangelicals do not follow this trend, and even historically it's only a small part of the story.

But, americans rarely vote based on foreign policy (something like 3-5% of americans depending on the election). That we well and truly are culpable for.

The part about not voting based on foreign policy is surprising because the presidential campaigns and debates often end up making that a focus.

People will believe what is told to them, such as "greatest ally" story.

I always thought it was because of Jeffrey Epstein that politicians don't want their dirty laundry aired.

Exactly. It is clear as crystal that Epstein was (is) a Mossad honeypot.

> This is not being forced on us by Israel.

somehow the narrative has been able to conflate Israel with jews. so the first person who says something about halting aid to Israel or stopping the genocide is called "anti semite". The fear from this alone is enough to keep almost everyone quiet, especially journalists. It's a perfect byproduct of cancel culture.

It’s reminiscent of Dune: - Small devoted religious sect seeds messiah myths in the distant land for generations, so that in their time of need, they can tap of this devotion from “the people in the south” to fight on their behalf

If the Jews invented the idea of Jesus so that they could benefit from an evangelical army 2000 years later, I'd say they've earned it.

Let's not forget the asymmetry. If someone calls that modern Israel isn't the biblical Israel and that in biblical terms it's closer to the "synagogue of Satan" (Revelation 2:9) it risks being persecuted, ostracized, fired, prosecuted, jailed, murdered.

You shouldn't dismiss Israel power in cultural warfare, financial and political ties. Epstein was probably the tip of the iceberg.

And that can be recognized without diminishing the intrinsic dignity of every human being that live in Israel and outside of it independently of race, nationality, religion, etc.

All of it was done by Americans. It's just that most of them weren't really loyal to America. All those pro Israel lobby groups are over here, not there.

There is no where near 100m American evangelicals. There’s less than 60m almost certainly. It doesn’t account for everything.

I've seen estimates that 6% of America is evangelical. (Source: my memory.) Note that the estimate comes from an evangelical, who is drawing the lines at what an evangelical considers evangelical; that may not correspond with where others think the lines should be drawn.

But accepting that number, 6% x 340 million people = 20.4 million evangelicals.

The US is neither a vassal of Israel nor simply doing its bidding. That is poor propaganda.

If you operate with a lens that forces you to ask "how is this Israel's fault?" without ever asking any other question, you're going to end up mostly with answers that are only for entertainment value the same way you would if you asked any LLM a leading question that already assumed a desired answer.

It's not Israel's "fault" that American leaders are slavishly loyal to them. Israel is just putting their country first, as is their duty. It's 100% on American politicians for failing in their duty to put America first

We are putting America first. Usually when we get involved in anything, it's a result of many reasons intersecting. We tend to wait until enough reasons pile up that acting is worth it. If the only reason you can think of is Israel, who trained your brain to default to that? Who does it benefit for them to be invested in making you think that way?

You are bombarded with so many things that tell you everything is bad and going wrong in the world, it's easy to get pulled into the gravity of it without ever asking what is going right? So much so, people deny anything is going right, emotionally.

There is a large gap between what the general populace understands about the world and how it works, versus the actual logic that causes the world events. When the gap is large like that it takes more effort to understand and so fewer people in the world will. The harder it is to understand, the easier it is for people to spread lies about. Does consensus alone make something true? No.

> Israel is just putting their country first

Is walking down the street, slugging everyone that gets in your way, "putting yourself first?" Is moving your fence into your neighbor's lawn and then pulling a gun on them when they come to talk about it "putting yourself first?"

At some point Israel needs to reckon with the fact that its behavior is beyond selfish, it's suicidal.

> The US is neither a vassal of Israel nor simply doing its bidding.

This is propaganda as well, only more agreeable to you.

What questions did you ask to arrive at that conclusion?

How is Israel making America its “vassal”? That’s hyperbole and is far from reality. The amount of money spent on Israel aid is very low in the grand scheme of things - $300 billion cumulatively, inflation adjusted, since 1947. Currently $3.8 billion a year, which is about 0.05% of federal spending this year.

And America, as well as the rest of the free world, have plenty of reason to contain Islamic fundamentalism and terrorist groups, independent of Israel.

Sure, the Iran conflict is inconvenient economically. But let’s not be under any illusion as to what the Iran regime was and still is - an authoritarian theocracy that backs numerous proxy terrorist groups across Asia. Not just Hamas but many others:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_and_state-sponsored_terro...

>But let’s not be under any illusion as to what the Iran regime was and still is - an authoritarian theocracy that backs numerous proxy terrorist groups across Asia.

And let’s not be under any illusion as to what the Isaeli regime was and still is - an authoritarian theocracy that has slaughtered more women and children in the last year than all of the terrorist groups in the world combined.

> And let’s not be under any illusion as to what the Isaeli regime was and still is - an authoritarian theocracy

Israel is a democracy and not a theocracy and not authoritarian either. You’re simply making up things randomly. It is literally a parliamentary democracy with secular law. And remember, Israel has a 20% Arab population (almost fully Muslims) that thrives in Israel.

> slaughtered more women and children in the last year than all of the terrorist groups in the world combined

It’s a war of self defense against a terroristic government and groups that are using civilians as human shields. The collateral damage is clearly the fault of the terrorists. But also let’s not forget, Gazans voted for Hamas, still supported Hamas after October 7 per polls, and therefore share in the responsibility for Hamas’s actions.

You are a disgrace calling this genocide "self-defense". Seriously. Denying civilians access to fresh water, ambushing ambulances and now blaming the victims? This is utterly disgusting.

Just watching how emergency workers in Lebanon get double tapped (among hundreds of hundreds of other awful things), how Hospital are getting bombed killing doctors and medical personnel to Red Cross and WHO total indignation is enough to tell you that Israel is a war crime machine.

Also realize that a lot of these people that are being slaughtered are Christians.

You’re saying that while in that same year:

Iran killed 40k citizens

Sudan has 10 millions displaced citizens, 500k children dies of malnutrition in the last 1.5 years.

Myanmar has tens of thousands of dead from civil war.

Ofcourse you don’t care about any of those, because you only count how many got killed by the Jews right?

Can you list the measures by which you believe that Israel has made the US its vassal?

American companies must sign a document signifying they will not boycott Israel if the company wants to get government contracts, it was illegal to burn the Israeli flag in the US before it was illegal to burn the US flag, 99% of congress votes in favor of Israel (as evidenced by Thomas Massie’s recent primary Israel will spend $$$ to buy a US politicians seat if they do not support Israel).

Massie going against Trump is why he lost. Plenty of republican politicians are against Israel.

The money to oust Massie came almost exclusively from pro-Israel groups. Who then celebrated their ability to control US elections.

solarhoma sez "it was illegal to burn the Israeli flag in the US before it was illegal to burn the US flag,"

It is legal to burn the USA flag in the USA.

Ok. Then my point stands even more firmly that you are able to burn the flag of the country you reside in yet cannot burn the flag of a foreign nation.

Nope. For the most part in the USA you can burn any flag provided you aren't violating some property law or safety statute by doing so.

if this was the case, there would be no state sponsoring palestinian terrorism for a long time.

Look at what happened after 9/11, it's pretty clear there's a wide difference between how US consider its own security matter vs israel's one.