Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Foreign Policy & News Israel is Lying?

You mean the people who, according to history and archaelogy [but not according to the Bible!], were exactly the same people as the Hebrews?

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America supported Israel too much but now the relations between them are changed and they will get worse in the time to come. Arab countries are a lot to do in this matter as Israel is never been a good friend of Arabs and America support them that everybody knows. There are many more reason responsible for such conditions between Israel and America.

Adrien, welcome to RR!

I agree on the first, the military support was a little over the top. How much have things really changed though? It appears to me that the whole thing is on the back burner for now and just waiting for the next anti-Arab military action by Israel.
In some ways I hope so, in others not. Politically Israel is our best friend in the middle east, some see this as a good thing. I'm not so sure that an enclave of mostly European Jews in the middle of the Arab world is the best place to search for friends. While the US will never get along philosophically or in terms of religion with the Arabs I don't see that as a reason not to be able to get along politically.

In what sense is Israel our best friend in the Middle East? It seems to me that Israel has always been clear that they would pursue what ever policy they consider to be in their best interest... regardless of how we feel about it. I wish I could say the same were true of our own policy towards Israel.

With friends like this, who needs enemies?

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Welcome to ReaderRant, Adrien! Nice to see you jumping in. We're a friendly bunch (mostly ).

We and the Israelis have in the past shared considerably more of common interest than we do today. We need to decouple our foreign policy from reflexively jerking every time the patella tendon that is isreal is whacked with some kind of hammer.

The Arabs have never been in the past, are not now, and will never in the future be our friends - we simply do not have that much in common with them other than oil. All we can ever have with that culture or they with us will be some coincidence of interest(s) of a finite duration. We have simply more in common and of mutual interest with Israel - but then they, too, are not ultimately our friends.

Lady Thatcher said it best when she said of Gorbachev that he was someone we could deal with on our mutual problems. Politics and statecraft are not about love and kisses, they are about mutual interests.

Something I've mentioned a few times before, and which I believe should be the basis of rational exchange between and among nations, is the maxim of Lord Palmeraton: [England] has no eternal enemies and no unchanging alliance, just eternal and unchanging interests.

Mutatis mutandi: The United States has no eternal enemies and no unchanging alliances, but we have eternal and unchanging interests.

I do not think that any national politician would dare say anything other than that our alliance with Israel is unchanging and unchagable... We could change our alliance wuith gemany, or japan, or Iran, or Iraq.... but Israel?

I doubt that "eternal and unchanging interests" applies, since technology aqnd political changes in other countries could easily change some of our interests. For example, if we replaced most of our use of imported oil with another energy source then we would be much less interested in spending billions of dollars protecting our access to middle-eastern oil.

Or say our demographic makeup shifted enough to make us more than 50% Catholic and Spanish-speaking. That would certainly change some of our interests as a nation!