should america support Israel?

[Jaysyn]

No. No. No. Money that should be going towards American health care and education is instead paying for Israeli weapons.

I agree, if they can't stand on their own after 60+ years....

[Anomalocaris]

To be honest, that we should have propped them up in the first place 60 years ago was perhaps the greatest and most damaging diplomatic folly committed by the western world in its intercouse with near and middle east in all of 20th century.

To sooth our conscience for what we've done to 12 million Jews, we chavalierly wrote off the self respect and aspirations of 70 million Arabs as unimportant and entirely dismissible.

We then compounded our folly by driving ourselves ever deeper into a retorical trap about Israel's "right to exist"

[shortbusgangsta3]

Moshe Dayan in 1956 said of Palestinians in a eulogy for an Israeli soldier:

"Do not today besmirch the murderers with accusations. Who are we that we should bewail their mighty hatred of us? For eight years they sit in refugee camps in Gaza, and opposite their gaze we appropriate for ourselves as our own portion the land and the villages in which they and their fathers dwelled."

This is 2014; the Palestinian people have now been living under intolerable oppression for far more than 8 years.

And your delusional conclusion? God must be proud.
[/quote]

Great post!

[Thumpalumpacus]

I'm personally against giving Israel grants and credits any more. That money buys us enemies without giving us any say in a policy that exacerbates our foreign-policy problems in the Middle East.

If we're going to be giving them money, I goddamned well want to see return-on-investment.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

All American politicians who vote for foreign aid and give our tax dollars to foreigners should be considered traitors. Our own country is turning into a garbage dump while they funnel money hand over fist to their buddies in other countries.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Some days (and there aren't many), I kinda sorta wish the US would let Egypt destroy Tel Aviv a little. Not too much, just enough to make it difficult to find the place again without a diving bell or a divining rod.

Boru

[Cato]

Some days (and there aren't many), I kinda sorta wish the US would let Egypt destroy Tel Aviv a little. Not too much, just enough to make it difficult to find the place again without a diving bell or a divining rod.

Boru

The Egyptians don't have a good track record when it comes to fucking with Israel.

[Anomalocaris]

Some days (and there aren't many), I kinda sorta wish the US would let Egypt destroy Tel Aviv a little. Not too much, just enough to make it difficult to find the place again without a diving bell or a divining rod.

Boru

The Egyptians don't have a good track record when it comes to fucking with Israel.

The Egyptian army clearly out-planned, out-maneuvered, and out-fought the Israeli army in 1973. They were only defeated when political leadership under Sadat compelled them, after attaining all their planned objectives, to keep going and to greatly exceed their plans in a futile effort to relieve the Syrians.

Had they stuck to their plan and focused on holding the ground they've taken, it would have been extremely difficult for the Israeli army to dislodge them even if the Israelis could turn their entire army to face the Egyptians after defeating Syria, and in all probability the war would have ended in a military stalemate with Egyptians having the great moral advantage of still being in control of initial fields of battle of the war as well as at least some of the territorial gains made in the war.

Once the war drags on internation opinion would turn against Israel because such territorial gains Egyptians held, and Israel is attatempting to retake, were universally acknowledged to be Egyptian territory in the first place.

1973 showed Arab armies, under prevailing military realities and when trained by the soviets and have their acts together, can match and surpass Israeli army in high level military planning and leadership. The Egyptians at least also gave Israeli army a run for its money in middle level leadership.

[bberryhill0]

All American politicians who vote for foreign aid and give our tax dollars to foreigners should be considered traitors. Our own country is turning into a garbage dump while they funnel money hand over fist to their buddies in other countries.

We're talking about one tenth of one percent of the Federal budget. The only budget with enough money to make a cut useful is the military.

[Anomalocaris]

All American politicians who vote for foreign aid and give our tax dollars to foreigners should be considered traitors. Our own country is turning into a garbage dump while they funnel money hand over fist to their buddies in other countries.

By world standards what is considered a dump in the US would still qualify as highly developed luxury in 85% of the world.

In addition, under most circumstances foreign aid is a vastly more economical means of influencing world events in our favor than sending troops.

During the 11 years when American forces occupied Iraq, the US spent about 60 times more on pacifying and occupying Iraq than it did on aid to Israel.

Annual American aid to Egypt cost about as much as what it took to support just one single day of major combat operation by American forces during initial phase of operation "Iraqi Freedom" in 2003.

One might question where American spends its foreign aid. But to denounce foreign aid itself and fail to recognize its efficacy as an economical instrument of foreign policy is idiotic.