No. of Recommendations: 1
It has been SOP, for years, for people running for POTUS to make their pilgrimage to AIPAC, to pledge fealty to Israel.
If we're going to talk seriously about Israel, it's a lot more complicated than that. Israel is our only -albeit not entirely reliable- ally in the region. That is both a help, and also a source of problems. As long as we support Israel, the current regimes in the region will be antagonistic towards us. But even if we stopped our support, would that change much? Our history in the region isn't great (e.g. Mossaddegh and the Shah). The region would have to change fundamentally before we would be accepted, regardless of our support of Israel. Which could happen. But it's not there yet, and the bellicose rhetoric from Bibi isn't helping matters.
And I don't pretend to be an expert. It's likely even more complicated than I know about.
Israel is in an existential conflict. Multiple actors want to "drive them into the sea". You can't expect them not to protect themselves. And they are one of the few democracies in the region, which we claim to support (though our history would say otherwise...see Mossaddegh again, or Allende). As someone looking in from the outside, I say genocide is bad. Yet they can't seem to coexist. It seems there are no good solutions.
