The tail is wagging the dog. Not a good position for US to be in. Makes us look weak. This is not how friends treat each other.
Call me paranoid, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Bibi’s insane escalations have two reasons. Both to keep the war tempo up (and thus the excuse to keep him in power and out of jail), and to dare the Dems to come out against him. Either they don’t, and prove they’re whipped; or they do, and open themselves up to a new line of attack. Bibi’s blatant alliance with the GOP is well-known.
Call me paranoid
Paranoid isn’t the word I was going to use, I was thinking ‘self-obsessed’.
Seriously though, I think it’s a little conceited to conceive of the escalating middle-eastern conflict as revolving around some personal vendetta against our specific domestic political party.
Netanyahu is an opportunist. A bunch of things came together to set the stage for this expansion, but he’s been a imperialist with eyes for Lebanon and “Greater Israel” since at least when he served in the IDF, and he is not alone inside Israel, either. If he were ousted tomorrow, there’s a greater than 50% chance a new zion-expansionist gets voted in after him. He’s personally unpopular domestically - not because of his activities in the West Bank, Gaza, or Lebanon, but because he’s cashing out Israel’s diplomatic capital all at once and Israel is likely to see a period of isolation and an economic collapse once the dust settles. Israel was enjoying prosperity and a lack of consequences to their expansion through occupation and settlement before they turned Gaza to rubble, and Netanyahu has put that all at risk again by going in balls-deep and daring the US to pull him out.
Democrats would prefer Israel not make a bloodbath out of their carefully curated diplomatic embargo around the middle east, but they certainly still want Israel there acting as their proxy. Democrats won’t risk being the ones to lose that foreign policy keystone by making any kind of opposition public, but if they can manage to get Netanyahu ousted their PR nightmare might finally come to an end.
Seriously though, I think it’s a little conceited to conceive of the escalating middle-eastern conflict as revolving around some personal vendetta against our specific domestic political party.
I love how you lot swap between “ISRAEL IS UTTERLY RELIANT ON THE US AND DEPENDENT ON ITS OPINION” and “The US doesn’t matter because a shitlib spoke”
Sorry for suggesting that a political leader is trying to help his political allies who are interested in assisting him in his ongoing goals, I’ll remember next time that the US has no influence on Israel.
I’ve never suggested Israel is ‘utterly reliant on the us’, only that the US is their biggest ally protecting them from international sanction.
Netanyahu almost certainly is reacting to the political environment in the US, but I think it’s more of an opportunity he seeks to exploit than a motivation for further expansion.
I also think Liberals tend to de-emphasize the importance of Israel to US foreign policy goals, which includes Democrats. I don’t think most democrats would take action against Israel because most of them know that losing them in the ME puts most of their foreign operations there at risk. It’s wishful thinking that the Democrats might be taking action if they weren’t currently in an election against a fascist.
I don’t think most democrats would take action against Israel because most of them know that losing them in the ME puts most of their foreign operations there at risk.
Yes, as we all know, Israel is our only ally in the region, and certainly a very reliable one. /s
Not many others with the same ideological alignment and geological position to exert control over access to trade routes through and around the Mediterranean, we don’t.
To say nothing of the significance of Israel as an intelligence apparatus - Israel is probably the most important ally in that region by a mile.
Not many others with the same ideological alignment and geological position to exert control over access to trade routes through and around the Mediterranean, we don’t.
Ah, yes, the important thoroughfare of Israel, the crossroads of the Middle East. Israeli shipping and port systems definitely aren’t notoriously corrupt and inefficient, and we all know the importance of Israel’s territorial waters, which don’t even extend into the Red Sea, much less the Gulf of Suez. And who doesn’t pass by Israel’s Mediterranean territorial waters when shipping to many other countries, such as [checks notes] Turkiye, Syria, or Israel? Good thing we don’t need other aligned states in the area which Israel agitates, like Egypt, or Saudi Arabia. I mean, imagine if Egypt had some sort of vital canal to world trade running through it, or if the Saudis’ coastline extended along one of the most traveled shipping lanes in the world? Ha ha, wow, we would have to be really stupid to back Israel if that was the case!
To say nothing of the significance of Israel as an intelligence apparatus - Israel is probably the most important ally in that region by a mile.
Israeli intelligence is useful, but very far from indispensable, especially considering Israel’s political objectives in presenting and sharing evidence.
