Politicians are terrified of the protests, but they are even more terrified by the prospect that the protests could continue past the end of the school year, spilling over the bounds of the campus and into a long, hot, summer. It is the responsibility of anyone trying to stop this genocide to ensure that their nightmare becomes a reality.

  • ClimateChangeAnxiety [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    7 months ago

    The US needs Israel as a strategic partner to maintain a foothold in the Middle East; universities rely on funding from and research relationships with the military, arms manufacturers, and Zionists.

    Eh, honestly I don’t believe this. Despite this weird as fuck claim that both politicians and people who hate them always repeat, I genuinely don’t believe that Israel is that useful or important. I think the United States could’ve said “fuck off we’re not helping you with this” and things would’ve continued fine, with our imperial control over the Middle East unchanged. If anything supporting Israel risks us losing what control we had over the region.

    We put in a guard dog to watch over the region, but now the dog has rabies and we’re refusing to do anything about it, and the region is like “Hey America what the fuck do something about your rabid dog” and rightfully blames us for the rabid dog problem. If we want to keep hegemony over the Middle East the good move would be to bomb the Knesset, invade Israel, execute its leaders, and say “Look guys, we took care of the rabid dog problem!”

    • MolotovHalfEmpty [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      7 months ago

      Politcally, you’re probably right.

      But Israel isn’t the golden goose, it’s treatment of Palestine (specifically Gaza, but also the difference between Gaza and the West Bank) is. It’s not a symptom of unconditional support, it’s one of the reasons for unconditional support. Palestine, for the US, is a labratory in the same way that different aspects of South America were in the last century.

      The US tech space is great at big data, broad spectrum surveillence tech. It’s shit at targeted, specific tracking / facial recognition etc, especially when targets aren’t American and white. Israel (whether it’s provided or not) fills that gap. Israel is a testing ground of missle defence. It’s a lab for targeted communications interception. It’s a ‘high intensity’ test bed for border control and everything that entails from fences to automated weaponry. There’s a reason riot cops and death squads in all but name in ‘western liberal democracies’ get training from the IDF and Israel. It’s less talked about and surface level, but Israel’s ongoing, illegal, and not additment ownership of nukes offers insight into how to hide, move, and set up nuclear capacity. And of course, it’s also a lab for public policy when it comes to how much militarisation, blood abroad, propaganda tactics etc that the imperial core willl tolerate (although this last point has diminished as Israel got increasingly high on their own supply).

      The importance of Israel isn’t that it’s a friendly airbase in the middle east (although that helps). It’s that it’s the perfect testing chamber for the West’s most fascist domestic instincts, from surveillence to policing to torture to counter-insurgency.

      • Iwishiwasntthisway [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        7 months ago

        That level of conscription would be far too destabilizing in the imperial core. I think that they have been successfully psyopped to be a garrison in a way that a multiethnic society without the same conditions or history would struggle with. Perhaps the most successful radicalization project the west has ever undertaken. As the ROI starts to drop you can probably keep enough people there to bleed Iran in one last crap shoot. The ones from North Africa and West Asia would probably have a harder time fleeing than Ukranians at this point.

    • Iwishiwasntthisway [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      7 months ago

      Israel is a stable revenue generator for the military industrial complex. The iron dome is basically a SaaS model for arms. “Support” for Israel that isn’t money staying within US shores is basically debt. Now that they are world pariahs, they will make excellent serfs. Also the Jewish members of the blob will get to live like Saudi Princes there under this model.

      I agree most of the tech is probably a grift, but so is everything else.

    • newmou [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      7 months ago

      Well I think it’s no doubt important politically and strategically for the US as an eventual way to try and take over Iran. But Israel is also a powerhouse headquarters for regional Western spy networks. The Mossad doing shit on behalf of the West is obviously huge, but having that sort of base to run your operations from for a variety of Western countries is critical to Western control over not just the Middle East but projecting power even farther Westward as well.

      • PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml
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        7 months ago

        Mossad is a boogieman. You destroy Israel, and stop funding them, “mossad” ends up being executed by Hamas when the members try to play out their tom Cruise Mission Impossible fantasies.

    • Zodiark [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      7 months ago

      There was a thread about this a few weeks ago, icr, but Israel isn’t just a hub for vendors but a proxy meant to disorient and attack states in West Asia if they don’t fall in line with US foreign and energy policy. I think, though I can’t know for sure as it’s been a long time since I looked into it, that the US dollar is based on the transaction of oil in that currency. Which is why the US can employ MMT (Modern Monetary Theory) to print unlimited money for its hegemony.