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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 13, 2024

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I don’t think Americans are under any moral obligation to ‘support Israel’ (monetarily, militarily, or merely ideologically). It’s not a hugely interesting conflict in that it’s the kind of situation that happens all over the world, all the time. Its unique popularity as a topic of political discussion is entirely for two reasons: the first being the unique success of Jews as intelligent market dominant minorities in Western countries, and the second being the growing centrality of the conflict to global Islamic identity and in particular, in recent decades, to the extensive global propaganda effort the Iranian Shia movement has attached to its support for the Palestinian cause with the global ummah. So you have two billion Muslims, some of whom are involved in fighting their own proxy conflict, against a small but very wealthy, influential and intelligent population who see the conflict as an existential war (something few non-Palestinian Muslims do). This elevates a run of the mill tribal conflict to something of greater interest for many people. Then there are secondary factors which are not mostly responsible for people caring but which add intrigue like nuclear weapons, Christian views on Israel and Jewish eschatology, US-Russia-China great power conflict in the wider region and so on.

Well, I'm not American, but as a matter of fact Americans are currently made to support Israel in those three ways (same e.g. for Germany, whose citizenship I have), and the argument fielded for it is primarily moral. (I haven't seen convincing materialistic arguments, and that doesn't seem to be a domain a great deal of effort is poured into by anyone.) It's not like I'm not aware of all these factors you mention, but I get the sense that they would not withstand the load that they would have to bear if the moral pillar disappeared (soft power of "the only democracy in the Middle East" is discredited, geopolitical implications are lazily reasoned, millenarianism is no longer as influential as it was during the Bush years and anyhow they'd actually cheer the war if you convinced them Iran/Palestine is Gog and Magog...).

I think different American groups would still take sides, no differently to how they have over Russia. Israel would not collapse or be immediately destroyed if the US decided to treat it as a neutral third country.