4 ms·

The article bangs on about how China got a single US congressman. Israel has enormous influence over the whole of congress. http://original.antiwar.com/smith-

• joejerryronnie 9y ago
  The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
  • Udik 9y ago
    And the enemy of your friend is your enemy. And when you're big and powerful, some friends might be using you just for that.
  • lithos 9y ago
    The enemy of my enemy is the the enemy of my enemy, nothing more and nothing less. There's a fair chance they earned that status for a good reason.
• shliachtx 9y ago
  > Israel has enormous influence over the whole of congress. No, Israel has enormous support by Americans so it gets a lot of support by Congress. No surprises there, that is how a democracy should function. > The US give Israel billions of dollars in foreign aid every year. Because they are a democratic ally with a stable government in a highly volatile region. Of course, there can be legitimate debate if that level of funding is a good idea, but it is entirely within reason. Additionally, much of the funding was in exchange for repeated concessions from Israel in peace talks which were always rebuffed and rejected by Palestinian leadership. > Allows them to disgregard UN resolutions and prevents the recognition of Palestine. ...by which they are uniquely singled out and targeted by countries with tremendous human rights violations such as Syria, Iran, etc. > Israel has nuclear weapons and is outside the Non proliferation treaty and yet the US goes crazy about other countries that try to get weapons. Because Israel is a stable democracy under existential threat by it's neighbors, as opposed to, say, Iran or North Korea which are destabilizers. > Meanwhile AIPAC isn't even registered as something foreign. Because it isn't. AIPAC is made up of and supported by American citizens. And this is where these arguments begin to take an undertone of antisemitism. The assumption that AIPAC is a foreign organization implies that it's members (primarily Jews) are foreign by virtue of being Jewish. > Now even Jerusalem is recognized as the capital of Israel, by one country in the whole world. Because it is their capital. America recognizes Seoul as capital of South Korea and Pyongyang as capital of North Korea, does it not?
• godzillabrennus 9y ago
  Reminds me of how the NRA is supported by a small but active part of the population that votes. Jews may be small in number but I would bet dollars to Latka’s that they vote. If Tech issues brought people out to vote like guns or Israel I bet we would have more engineers in Congress.
  • Udik 9y ago
    Jewish Americans are about 2.6% of the US population. I doubt that their obviously disproportionate influence in politics is carried out through democratic vote. Channelling donations and exerting pressure by means of well organized lobbies is a much more effective way of getting what you want.
  • itdpyddpfyfuug 9y ago
    The Jewish people aren't a monolith. Some of us prioritize freedom, democracy, and peace for all people and stand against theocracy. You're probably right about voting.
  • oculusthrift 9y ago
    i don’t think it’s about the number of voters...
• tome 9y ago
  Israel has never been a signatory to the NPT (unlike North Korea and Iran). As far as I understand they are under no obligations not to develop nuclear weapons technology and they do not have the right to help with civilian nuclear infrastructure programmes that signatories have.
  • jackpirate 9y ago
    It's not clear to me why it's important that Israel never joined the NPT regime. For example: North Korea was never found in violation of the NPT regime. The NPT has a specific procedure for countries to withdraw from the treaty, and North Korea followed the procedure correctly. Note that I'm not saying this withdrawl was good, only that they never violated the NPT in the same way that Israel never violated the NPT.
  • cbzbc 9y ago
    Yeah, though this dates back to a time when not joining the NPT was seen as controversial (there was a diplomatic fuss at the time, and a lower level fuss some decades later when India started developing weapons while remaining out of the NPT). At the time the US insisted on carrying out inspections of the Negev facility to ensure that weapons were not being developed. In the event they eventually stopped as they felt that their inspections were not particularly effective.
    • tome 9y ago
      > this dates back to a time when not joining the NPT was seen as controversial I hope it's seen as no less controversial today!
      • cbzbc 9y ago
        It should be, however the events surrounding Israel, India and Pakistan successively going nuclear-armed has weakened the force of the rhetoric somewhat.
  • Feniks 9y ago
    Israel got its nukes with help from US, English and French scientists. Do not ever underestimate the level of guilt people have about the Holocaust. Nobody was ever prosecuted for leaking nuclear secrets to Israel.
• christmasity 9y ago
  It's hard for major newspapers to publish critical articles on israel because of the israeli influence in news media. Not to mention the amount of jewish owners, investors, editors and journalists. Do you expect a Josh Rogin to write a critical article on israel? Do you really expect washington post to publish negative articles on israel? The editor of washingtonpost is martin baron, a child of israeli immigrants to the US. The guy who wrote the op-ed and the editor both have ties to israel. What are the chances of a negative article regarding israel?
  • dragonwriter 9y ago
    > Not to mention the amount of jewish owners, investors, editors and journalists. Uh, the Israeli news media is even more dominated by Jewish owners, investors, editors, and journalists (and caters to a more Jewish audience), and they have no problem ciriticizing the Israeli government from all imaginable sides.
    • kencausey 9y ago
      There is a big difference in the perception of internal versus external criticism.
    • Udik 9y ago
      True, but irrelevant: the Israeli media doesn't have the problem of acquiring and maintaining support for a foreign country. On the opposite, the fact that criticism towards Israeli policies is much more pronounced and direct inside Israeli media than it is in the media of a completely independent country, is a clear sign that the debate is artificially stifled.
      • dragonwriter 9y ago
        > On the opposite, the fact that criticism towards Israeli policies is much more pronounced and direct inside Israeli media than it is in the media of a completely independent country, is an obvious proof that the debate is artificially stifled. But not support for the claims that the reason is Jewish actors in media rather than, say, a combination of a broad consensus on US geopolitical interests and widespread and deep bias against Arabs and Muslims in the US. While criticism of Israel is muted in the US press, it isn't inversely correlated, AFAICT, with outlets that have Jewish investors, Jewish editors, or even with the particular piece being written by a Jewish journalist/columnist.