birdog1960

um, what does the fact that for many months after the us attacked iraq, a significant majority of american believed that iraq was involved in the wtc bombings tell you? yes, itthink much of the population is highly susceptible to propaganda. i googled it. it didn't come up. probably because it was buried beyond googles discovery threshold.

i stand corrected. hardly where you'd expect to find it or even be likely to find it: under a headline stating "netanshitehead rips hamas". sure, there's no pro israeli us media bias.

just did a quick look to see where elsr this story is being covered so far: almost nowhere. ny post has a bit. no cbs,nbc,abc and of course no drudge. his lack of anything that reflects badly on israel has been striking. i'll bet bbc picks this up next. be amazed if we ever hear a peep of this on fox. incredibly sad story but people need to know what happened on that beach.

wow. so banking is considered racist, huh. is there not significant israeli wealth that can be attributed to the banking industry? is not the banking industry included in the descriptor "finance"? i think your racist radar is tuned to a very specific frequency. you need to add some band width. i know it's knee jerk to equate criticism of israel with antisemitism just as it is to equate criticism of income inequality with c;ass warfare but they really, truly aren't the same. so let's turn to viable partners. the us govt has this really nice site that enumerates foreign trade with other countries by region. israel trades $45 bil with us at a us trade deficit of1.1 bil (not including the 3bil per year we give them). united arab emirates does 26.7 bil for a US 7.3 bil surplus and as far as i know they don't make products they export to us in occupied settlement territories. saudi arabia does business in the high $50 bils. would losing commerce with the israeli's hurt us. yes. but losing commerce with the arabic states in the region would hurt more.

so it's the sodastream that's so important? are petrodollars less valuable than banking dollars?

and what are the serious consequences to the us should israel be overun.? mer perm thinks it's about the oil. israel doesn't have any. libya and iran and iraq have lots. none of them are friends. our interventions to ally or occupy them have been disasterous. and yet oil costs haven't crippled us. and where would we ever be without all those useful medical and technological innovations in widespread american use without which our quality of life would suffer. i just love me my sodastream.

have you considered what outcome mgiht have occurred had we not been there? or if we chose to ally with someone else (hell, the russians are obviously buddy-buddy with assad, from your persperctive principles are irrelevant so why shouldn't we have worked with him or some similar past or present despot). remember the argument for the domino effect in southeast asia? we we're there ostensibly for the same reasons. and that global disaster that was supposed to happen if we weren't? never happened. why are you so certain this case is different?

i got "we're allies" "foothold in the middle east" and some vague reference to fighting the domino effect of russia/communist domination in the middle east. this is what makes you unimpressive. i expect they looked a lot like gaza.

i feel evertything i've posted in this thread is within the scope implied by the threads title. it's unsurprising. what is surprising is the average US joe's support while seemingly unable to specify reasons for it. it's like "it's cuz i'm supposed to. it's what i've always done" we're allies. bleet, bleet, bleet....

the question of doing something versus doind nothing (or doing something different) in a certain situation is usually best analyzed by including a cost-benefit ratio. so i've advanced some costs. how bout you advance some specific benefits?

look at the poll. no a majority of canadians are not cool with isrrael. no other counmtry polled had a majority that was cool with them. so why not?

no. i'm asking any of you to give specific examples of tangible benefits those 70 years of "alliance" have resulted in. we have objective evidence of the costs: $3 billion per year, loss of some exclusive military tewchnology and loss of respect from much of the rest of the world for siding with a perceived undesirable and negative regime. and i'm also asking why a majority of the populace of every other country polled believes that israel is a negative influence on the world while the US is the one outlier. "we're allies" isn't an explanation. "allies" implies symbiosis. what are the benefits that the american populace is aware of that justifies that label. if you're proposing one of those benefits is in waging a proxy war against the russians, why not just say that? then we can discuss what level of success our alliance has brought to that particular issue.

could you do a little more superficial analysis, please? why are we close allies with a country that most of the rest of the world dislikes intensely? some cryptic awesome benefits of this relationship have been alluded to in this thread but no specifics guiven. what are the historic benefits we've seen. what are likely to be the secret ones that some here seem confident exist? what makes us trust israel when they've sold our technology to enemie (eg china) and reportedly been selective inn sharing intelligence with us? oh, and the UK scored 78% negative on israel in the same poll. what do we know that they don't and vice versa? clearly, what the populace knows and what the gov't knows are 2 different things in both countries. why the huge diffence in attitudes of the populace?

an objective measure of israel's popularity (as defined by positive or negative influence in the world) in the world: http://www.bbc.com/n...europe-22624104. it ranked above only iran, pakistan and n korea on a global basis. admittedly a single poll but a huge margin of error would be necessary to shed a positive light on israel's global reputation. in comparison, a 2013 gallup poll of americans found 51% approval. on the israel/palestinian question 78% of republicans sided with israel. a significantly smaller number of dems agreed but still a small majority. most here discount the effect of media on these numbers. what are your alternative explanations?

it certainly has programs and policies that test the definition of the word. i agree. but it's more democratic than anywhere else in the middle east.

perhaps a sense of scale would be helpful. helping with quelling abductions does not equate to helping build one of the worlds best equipped military powers. the point was that it helps explain americans overwhelming support for israel over the palestinians in this elsewhere hotly debated conflict, in addition to other reasons given. how do you explain it? do you feel the media is not contributory at all?

once again. we aren't picking sides in a nigerian conflict nor are we likely to. popular US opinion matters little. it matters very much vis a vis the middle east.

we aren't taking sides in a one sided televised war between any of those countries nor are we selling them f16's and spare parts.

alladin was cast as jewish by the producer of the disney film. his first line is "oy-vey". even the arab aunt jemima character has been co opted. that should tell you something.

answer the question. where and who are the arab counter parts in pop culture?

ever seen ben hur? the ten commandments? "raid on entebe" or similar homages to military jewish victories? how bout "fiddler on the roof"? seinfeld? a whole slew of jewish comedians and musicians? where are there arab counterparts? are there no interesting or talented arabs?

i don't concede the point at all. are you really saying in all of history (cuz we're even talking historical pieces here) there has never been an heroic arab worthy of a movie or tv show. yup, that's what you're sayimg all right. how would we know? 99% of what americans know about arabs, they learn from tv or movies and there aren't many american arab media moguls, now are there? and what about the converse. are there no israeli villains that might be portrayed as such in the media?

really? name me an american movie or tv show with an arab hero. (sinbad and alladin = aunt jamima btw) maybe they're out there but i can't come up with one off the top of my head.

why do you think they are so effective, especially in america? been giving this some thought and here's what i think: the other side is their own worst enemy. attacking the US directly or indirectly is dumb. denying the right of isael's existence is stupid. if arab =terrorist in people's minds, palestine and all arabs lose. israelis are clearly terrorizing palestinians but that's largely inconsequential to americans because they are not like us and frankly, we are mostly concerned only about ourselves. which brings us to the second point. some israeli's look like middle americans. few palestinians do. sounds trivial, arbitrary and superficial? yup, it is. but it matters just like physical attractiveness matters at a job interview. thirdly. israel is a democracy. whether that is material to our national agenda in the region is less important. they are like us. we like people like us and not those that are different from us. next is the religious angle. for a predominantly christian nation, many of us hear weekly if not daily, that jews are the chosen people of god (nevermind that nasty story about abraham and sarah). fundamentalists take this to apocalyptic extremes. lastly, american media is biased on this issue. it's other biases not withstanding, this one is blatant and very important. from movies to tv shows to most news shows, we are exposed to one side much more frequently and effectively than the other on this issue. any other thoughts on why?

wow...and you bought that? they're never the aggressor here? they're not the occupier? neither organization is honorable. they're both full of criminals. this self defense theme as an excuse to empower and heavily arm like minded nut jobs is really becoming a tired cult conservative chant and apparently holds when only "desirable" nut jobs are armed to the teeth.