How did Israel get so much influence? How can this be changed or overcome?

What's a huge amount? 5%or 50 %?as far as I recall its almost exclusively Democrats that have dual nationality.

Thanks for your reply. I try to approach problems like the ongoing Palestinian war from an academic point of view, simply to try to take emotions and personal bias out of the picture as much as possible, but I’m not an academic myself. I dropped out of school and have only seen the insides of universities on guided tours, and so I believe it is only fair to preface my more elaborate posts on any topic with a comment stating that a true deep dive would take someone more qualified than myself. Believe me, even the wall of text below barely scratches the surface of this whole topic.

You’re absolutely right when you point out western influence, or great power rivalry in general as one of the reasons why so many of Israel’s neighbours are as unstable as they are, or why the region has been such a powder keg for so long. However, it is important that these rivalries and the coups, regime changes, etc. haven’t happened in a vacuum. The region is riven with ethnic strife and religious tension (Sunni vs. Shia, Druze and Alawite minorities, Maronite Christians, etc.), whilst the rise of an ideology of pan-Arab nationalism in the region from the 1910s onwards has “spiked the ground” with anti-western sentiment that lasts to this day.

Granted, there have been countries that have aligned themselves with the west, I’m primarily thinking of Egypt and Jordan when it comes to Israel’s direct neighbours. But in both cases, this alliance is more of a “marriage of convenience” rather than a true partnership. The events of the Arab Spring in Egypt and the subsequent rise of Mohamed Morsi in 2012 clearly showed how tenuous these pro-western regimes can be and how quickly they can be swept away by ethnically or religiously motivated revolutions. By comparison, Israel is not just a safe bet, it’s also strategically located to strike at and secure one of the world’s key trade pinch points, the Suez Canal, if things in Cairo ever turn south again.

Having said that, I do agree with you that ongoing seemingly unconditional support of Israel is doing more harm than good. The Israel we’re dealing with today is not the one of the late 1990s that signed the Oslo Accords and made limited, but real steps towards a two-state solution. Ever since the resignation of Ehud Barak of the Israeli Labour Party as prime minister in 2001, Israel has moved sharply to the right, with every prime minister since 2001 coming either from centrist parties such as Kadima or right wing parties of varying degrees of extremity, such as Likud. At the same time, Israel’s voting system for the Knesset has a very low electoral threshold of 3.25%, making it easier for radical fringe parties to be elected. The resulting large number of parliamentary factions makes it harder for the winners of any election to form a government, giving the aforementioned radical fringe parties outsize influence as kingmakers. There’s a reason why an extremist party such as Mafdal is part of the current Likud-led government. I don’t believe that this hard right shift has truly been appreciated by many of Israel’s supporters in the west. Those that have recognised it, and its meaning, are often unsure what to do about it.

Then there’s the issue of Benjamin Netanyahu himself. As far as I’m concerned, that man is a psychopath cut out of the same cloth as Donald Trump & JD Vance, Victor Orban or Vladimir Putin, with a fair bit of family trauma mixed in for good measure. His brother, Yonatan, had lead special forces operation in Entebbe, Uganda in 1976 to free the passengers of an Air France flight that had been hiijacked by Palestinian and German terrorists, and he’d been the only Israeli killed in the operation. It is my belief that Benjamin Netanyahu has never truly processed his loss, that he feels guilty for not being on the mission with his brother, given that both were part of the same special forces outfit, Sayeret Matkal, at the same time. In my eyes, his political actions since then have been driven by a desire to atone for this, to punish the Palestinians, whom he holds responsible for his brother’s death, and to position himself as the strong protector of Israel by any means necessary.

Neither of these factors seem to be properly recognised by Israel’s supporters abroad, whose line seems to be that support for Israel must mean support for Netanyahu and his government. And yes, I do agree with you that this attitude is doing more harm than good. It’s one thing for inter-governmental relations to remain cordial even if you can’t stand your counterpart in the other government, that’s just part of politics. However, there needs to be room in the larger public debate, in the media, to point out the real flaws within Israel, its ongoing self-radicalisation, the personal vendetta of its prime minister, and the ongoing atrocities committed in Gaza, southern Lebanon and the West Bank.

Does this also apply to the new Canadian prime minister then, who has irish citizenship, or is is just when they're jewish? Also what's a "huge amount"? As far as I know there is no evidence that any are, so are you just assuming that any jewish politician is also an Israeli citizen and secretly working behind the scenes to advance their interests? These type of theories have been around since the middle ages or earlier. I think there's a word for them?

theres no room for logic in these debates. Israel are Nazi's now so are identical the German Nazi's.

Do a lot of Americans not support Israel based on the fact that those countries that surround them in the Middle East wouldn't be the biggest fans of the USA?

Not quite a case of "my enemy's enemy" but along those kinda lines.

Plus the US sees a lot of those countries as facilitators of terrorism, rightly or wrongly.

As for those European countries turning a blind eye to genocide, well shame on them. They have no excuse.

As we have already seen, it's basically a case of criticise Israel and you are anti semitic. It's black and white, there is no middle ground. The same way if you don't want 150 IPAs coming to a rural village with no facilities, you're a far right racist.

The fact is, fifa and uefa should have already kicked Israel out of all football by now, the IOC should have kicked them out of the Olympics, they should be chased from the Eurovision, and every single supermarket should remove Israeli products from the shelves. They did it with South Africa and eventually it worked. If Israel never feel any pain around the world for their actions, then why would they stop doing what they want?

If all you see in the media is pro- Israel narrative that's because you're choosing to only see that. I would say it's mostly turned against Israel once they started indiscriminate bombing of civilians.

Israel has been formed by its history to be the meanest SOB in its neighborhood. And that extends to using its influence on the States. Hamas has provoked it until it retaliated and this time with the far right in charge it's gone way too far. It's gone from being the victim of it's history to being everything it hated.

As for Palestine it has no friends prepared to defend it, not even among it's neighbours and Arab neighbours. Why I have no idea. Because it has nothing probably.

Everyone else doesn't want to get involved in a conflict that's been going on since the ancient times and few countries have the resources to get involved even if they wanted to.

Not really a puzzle at all.

If that happens, I expect that the US will declare war on whatever country detained him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Protection_Act

There s millions of Jews in America if someone wants to get elected they don't criticize Israel as they will lose the Jewish vote and lose votes. Trump won the election by a few per cent Most politicians are afraid to criticize any minority group or any religious group .Israel is bombing hospitals and refugee camps. And block all food and medical aid to Gaza I can't remember any politican in America criticizing Israel apart from say ng there has to be a peace process and end to the war in Gaza .Both party's rely on donations from rich people including Jewish people to fund political campaigns. Also a lot of actors and media executives are Jews . Democrats and republicans rely on donations from people of all faiths Christians and Jews

It would certainly get interesting if Putin was also arrested. The double standard would be embarrassing. One alleged war criminal deserving of rescue, the other not so much.

"Never again" is supposed to be never again FOR ANYONE.

Not never again, but it's grand when we do it.

If the BBC qualify their news with "according to Hamas" it is for a good reason.

It was nothing short of a disgrace when, early into the conflict, they ran with the news of the Al-Ahli hospital being bombed by Israel with upwards of 500 dead. It turned out it was all lies by Hamas - the blast occurred in a parking lot outside the hospital. Photos and video footage later showed it was caused by a failed rocket, fired by jihadists from the cemetery behind the hospital. The number of casualties had also been hugely overstated.

Whoever ran with that unqualified story probably doesn't work for BBC news anymore. You can't report as fact what you hear from the propaganda wing of a terrorist organisation.

That’s been their attitude all along, at best they are indifferent to Palestinian civilians and at worse want them exterminated. Hamas knew this in the lead up to their attack, did they think this time they would defeat Israel?