> I'm not sure if a state-level analysis is the best way to go, here.
> Suppose the jokes were formalized and Israel actually were the 51st
> state. What would change? A lot would change, obviously, but I'm not
> sure any of the important things would. We (and Europe) have a lot of
> economic, cultural, and genealogical links to Israel. If California
> were an independent republic under seige by indigenous terrorist
> groups, is there any doubt that the Western 47 would support them?
> Israelis live and look like us and Palestinians don't.
>
> It may very well be that most policy analysts are smart enough to
> recognize that the mere presence of "bearded, bomb-wielding fanatics
> who scream anti-American slogans" doesn't equate to American
> interests, but I don't think either that most policy analysts are
> die-hard realists! They have moral commitments beyond the strength of
> the state they got born into. And so it the West, or industrial
> capitalism, or the white race, but for most Americans there's a We
> that's under attack that transcends state borders, which is why
> pro-Israeli commentators use the language of civilization and
> barbarism by default. It's totally irrelevant to national interest
> that Hamas subscribes to a misogynistic ideology, but it seems to be
> pertinent to what Americans care about, or it wouldn't be mentioned so
> often. IIRC, other than Arabs, the only US demographic that claims to
> sympathize more with the Palestinians than Israelis are Blacks (and
> they're a pretty evangelical lot!)
>
Exactly. This was really the point behind my point.
SA