America's support for Israel is mostly a matter of our domestic politics, and in particular domestic political campaign financing.

On the Democratic side, it's estimated that fully half of campaign contributions from individuals come from Jews. Not all Jews care about support for Israel very much, but that fact probably gets glossed over when those that do talk with politicians.

On the Trumpublican side, support for Israel arises largely as something that might draw campaign funds away from Democrats or as an evangelical Christian issue ... and I would bet a lot of money that many of the evangelical Christians who made Israel an issue for their flocks were paid, one way or another, to do so.

The news media is also very pro-Israel. Several years ago some print journalists told me over a beer that the owners of most major newspapers made sure Israel got favorable treatment, and it is readily verifiable that the extent of American aid to Israel -- almost every year our biggest recipient of foreign aid -- very, very rarely gets mentioned. If you only followed American mainstream news media, you would probably believe that America is a neutral outsider in the Israel-Palestine dispute.

And CNN is flatly a pro-Israel news organization.

So while America definitely enables Israel's crimes, it does so in large part because it has been manipulated into it by a relatively small portion of the population.

Who said that democracy is the power of an organised minority over a passive majority? It must have been a wise man.

Things are not good in Europe but not as hopeless as in America.

Israel gives an interesting case study in the evolution of public opinion in a country.

I think it was originally the case that Israelis -- and the Zionists who preceded them -- wanted the success of the Jewish state in Palestine, and dealt with information in whatever way they thought was best suited for their goal. You can think that there were moral problems with their goal, what they did to achieve it, and how they dealt with information in promoting that goal, but I don't think any factual disconnect or even any essential moral disconnect needed to be taken into account in understanding them. You might think European antisemitism was not sufficient grounds for establishing Israel against the interests of the existing population, or you might think that it was wrong of Israel to lie about Palestinian Arabs willingly abandoning their homes in 1948.

But this didn't require thinking that Israelis were either evil or deceived.

I don't think that's any longer the case.

I can only understand the Israeli perspective on the Gazan Genocide if I accept that Israeli public opinion falls into either effectively believing that Palestinians are sub-humans not entitled to any normal human rights, including the right to live, or believing that Israel never did anything wrong to the Palestinians and that therefore it is justified in anything it does to punish them for their actions against Israel.

And I imagine that public opinion in Nazi Germany pretty much paralleled this, although to Israel's credit it took a couple generations to reach this level as opposed to just several years for the Nazis ... but to Israel's discredit, the world has made an immense amount of moral progress since the years when Nazism began.

What is peculiar, though, is that there seems to be a profound lack of self-awareness in Israeli public opinion, and even to a lesser extent in American pro-Israeli public opinion. Even if you think what you're doing is right, you ought to try to keep tabs on what other people think about it ... particularly if, as with Israel, you depend upon outsiders' support to do what you're doing.

Israel seems seriously to have failed in this, and it would be interesting to understand a little about how it reached that point.

It might be a postmortem study that gets some answers about it.

I would bet more Israelis are against Netanyahu (proportionally) than Americans.

No doubt true.

Most Americans don't know who Netanyahu is. Of the rest, many American supporters of Israel, distant from the consequences of it, support Netanyahu and the escalation of the war. Many American supporters of the Palestinian People, including me, consider Netanyahu irrelevant to Israel's aggressions: anyone replacing him would probably be the same or worse.

So it's just a thin slice of the American population that thinks Netanyahu is the problem, probably with a very big overlap with those who think there will eventually be a two state solution.

Both are pretty clearly false.

Meanwhile, probably most Israelis are against Netanyahu because he's corrupt rather than because he keeps escalating violence. And that's a good chunk of the population.

Meanwhile, probably most Israelis are against Netanyahu because he's corrupt rather than because he keeps escalating violence. 

I think both. Meet the Israelis, talk to them, both Palestinians and Jews. Better in Israel than America. Israel is not a country of monsters, AV is not typical.

Meanwhile, probably most Israelis are against Netanyahu because he's corrupt rather than because he keeps escalating violence. 

I think both. Meet the Israelis, talk to them, both Palestinians and Jews. Better in Israel than America. Israel is not a country of monsters, AV is not typical.

Let's get real. You are confounding the issues. 
You can ask them their views on their land-grabbing Apartheid system. For starters.

I get my information from BBC, Al Jazeera, RTE. Not Dutch media.

You were saying, Gamal

On the Democratic side, it's estimated that fully half of campaign contributions from individuals come from Jews. Not all Jews care about support for Israel very much, but that fact probably gets glossed over when those that do talk with politicians.

On the Trumpublican side, support for Israel arises largely as something that might draw campaign funds away from Democrats or as an evangelical Christian issue ... and I would bet a lot of money that many of the evangelical Christians who made Israel an issue for their flocks were paid, one way or another, to do so.

The news media is also very pro-Israel. Several years ago some print journalists told me over a beer that the owners of most major newspapers made sure Israel got favorable treatment, and it is readily verifiable that the extent of American aid to Israel -- almost every year our biggest recipient of foreign aid -- very, very rarely gets mentioned. If you only followed American mainstream news media, you would probably believe that America is a neutral outsider in the Israel-Palestine dispute.

And CNN is flatly a pro-Israel news organization.

So while America definitely enables Israel's crimes,  it does so in large part because it has been manipulated into it by a relatively small portion of the population.

I see, a poor occupied country. I don't mean Gaza, I mean America. I have a lot of sympathy for you, a little less respect.

The typical American is fat, happy, and stupid.

We are ripe for exploitation; the Israeli lobby is only one of many taking advantage.

For a moment I thought you were channeling Dean Wormer, but that would be “fat, drunk and stupid”.

The typical American is fat, happy, and stupid.

We are ripe for exploitation; the Israeli lobby is only one of many taking advantage.

This is not an excuse but an aggravating circumstance. As George Orwell said: People who allow themselves to be duped by corrupt politicians, imposters, thieves and traitors are not their victims but accomplices.