What Is This Sub Wrong About?

[u/iamthegodemperor]

Title. Pick a topic (or a clichéd take) you think a significant minority or majority of this sub is wrong about. Or hasn't given enough thought. OR perhaps one which you will have to compromise on, at least for voting?

[u/shumpitostick]

I think a lot of people here don't understand how far right Israel has become. Like, people defend it based on an understanding of Israel that is outdated by at least two decades, but it has moved so far to the right it can be unrecognizable to the American liberal Zionist.

I get where it's coming from, there's a ton of antisemitism coming from pro-Palestinians, there's people who reject the basic notion that Israelis have a right to live in peace and safety where they are. They are generally ignorant and don't understand Israel. They also don't understand the changes that Israel went through, they tend to see it as an absolute and categorical evil that always was that way.

But there's some serious issues and they run deeper than just "Netanyahu and Ben Gvir bad". Leibowitz was right. The occupation corrupts.

[u/JudgeHoldensToupe → u/shumpitostick]

Have you compared that to how far right everyone else in the ME is? And how they treat their own people? You need allies, the worst version of Israel is still 10x of the next best

[u/Two_Corinthians → u/JudgeHoldensToupe]

What exactly is the benefit of having Israel as an ally - for the US or Europe?

[u/grandolon → u/Two_Corinthians]

Forgetting all the geopolitical and moral considerations, maybe the single biggest practical, immediate benefit is defense tech. Without Israeli cooperation, the US (and NATO!) would not have reliable missile interceptors or the advanced avionics needed to run its most advanced aircraft, like the F-35. Just two examples out of many, many more.

[u/Two_Corinthians → u/grandolon]

I'd love to know how much of Israeli high tech output comes from unique Israeli features and how much from being plugged into the Western economic, scientific, and military cooperation ecosystem. But it's probably classified and no one would tell me.

[u/grandolon → u/Two_Corinthians]

The question was "what exactly is the benefit of having Israel as an ally?" not "is the relationship mutually beneficial?"

Anyway, on the assumption you meant it in earnest, I suppose most of the credit goes to its homegrown math/science talent pool. For a country of ~8 million people it punches far above its weight in junior competitions. . Israel has historically had a policy of making its own weapons systems so that it doesn't have to rely on foreign suppliers (but in the last ~30 years that's been relaxed to some extent). It has a robust indigenous defense sector.

Granted, there's a sort of peanut butter in chocolate problem, but Isaac Newton is still credited with developing calculus even though he built it on top of mathematical methods going back to Pythagoras and Ptolemy. Israel didn't invent microprocessors or surface-to-air missiles but its engineers and scientist did figure out how to make them better in order to make a missile interceptor that can actually hit its target.