Israel, cont.

Matt Yglesias on America's curious relationship with Israel:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said a lot of things in his address to a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress on Tuesday, most of them foolish and some of them offensive. But one of his very first statements was among the most important: "Israel has no better friend than America," he claimed, "and America has no better friend than Israel.

The former is accurate. The latter is absurd.

Protecting Israel is a special project taken on by the United States. The reasons may be good and bad, but it's a burden we undertake. Israel does us no favors and is no use to us. Recognizing that fact hardly solves the decades-long Arab-Israeli conflict, but it ought to be the starting point for what Americans should debate--not Israel's policy toward its Palestinian subjects but America's policy toward Israel. 

I've wondered about this for a while, including HERE.

Meanwhile, we can't get anyone to agree on healthcare, or education, or Social Security. We can't even get everyone on the same page when it comes to SAVING THE PLANET. Yet Israel, for some reason, is not open to debate. All of our leadership is pro-Israel, yet I don't really know anybody who knows or cares about it's goings-on. And I live in Brooklyn. Yes, I'm sure there are many people who DO care, but how many times have you heard "gee, I hope they work things out over there" vs. "oh, let's let everybody blow themselves off the planet over there"? Yet from coast to coast, we kind of numbly nod along "oh sure, Israel, of course we're on their side." The adamancy of Congress about this issue is in almost inverse proportion to the public's interest or sentiment, but nobody seems to really work up a sweat about it.

My guess at this point is that people have been trained for so long to parrot "We have no greater friend than Israel!"that those least informed are the loudest, as per usual.  Anyone with a single thought in their pretty little heads are correct in wondering "gee, why DO we claim to be so tight with Israel?," and anyone who doesn't is not a serious person to being with.  The fact that it has become as de riguer for politicians to claim to love Israel as much as they love baseball and apple pie should be a red flag, but stupid people are stupid people and can be easily trained, so.