Why Israel is still considered a "strategical ally" of the USA

Dachs · Jul 9, 2011

innonimatu said:
Wait, what? I want to hear about that one!

Excellent! Something worth talking about!

So basically, prewar Australian military policy was basically "we are ****ing terrified of the Japanese and will build many ships to fight them". Since the New Zealanders were similarly terrified of relying on the Australians for naval defense instead of the Royal Navy on the grounds that it would give the Aussies undue leverage over them, they also promised to fund not one, but two Dreadnoughts, which spurred the Australians to build their own (they had previously been focusing on a destroyer navy to the ire of Jacky Fisher et al.). Then the Australians started building their own battle cruisers. Well and good.

The fact that the construction was based on divergent aims was ignored in the prewar period by everybody involved. The British knew full well the Australians wanted to use their navy against the Japanese, but the Admiralty decided that that was okay, because they needed as many ships in the water as possible to deal with the East Asiatic Squadron in the event of war. The Australians knew that the British weren't interested in fighting the Japanese, obviously, what with the whole alliance and all, but at the same time assumed that in the event of war with Germany, the Australians would get the spoils, because hey, it's not as though the Foreign Office was actually going to bring Japan into the war, if it happened, right? (For what it's worth, even the British didn't think they would be getting the Japanese into the fight. This was not because the British did not want the Japanese in the fight, but because it was deemed too difficult to get the Japanese into the war for too little gain.)

On 1 August 1914, the British informed the Japanese that they weren't likely to invoke the 1902 alliance against Germany. The Japanese were only supposed to come into the fight in the event of an "unprovoked attack" on Britain's Asiatic possessions. Grey himself only thought that he'd have to send for the Japanese if the Germans attacked Hong Kong or Weihaiwei, neither of which seemed particularly likely. Three days later, Japanese neutrality was affirmed. But at the same time, the British Admiralty was in an unholy mess. The near-complete lack of any preparations or groundwork for the war with which they were now confronted, combined with the general disorganization at the Admiralty itself, produced a rather rampant fear of what the German East Asiatic Squadron would do. The Royal Navy declared that it needed the Japanese Navy to blockade German Qingdao and hunt down both Spee and Germany's armed merchantmen - according to the Admiralty, the British, even with the Australians and New Zealanders, could not do it alone.

So on 6 August, Grey found himself going back to the Japanese asking for the support of the Japanese against the German armed merchantmen and no more. Kato Takaaki, the Japanese foreign minister and the dominant figure in the cabinet, had other ideas; he managed to unify the army and the navy behind him in favor of all-out war on Germany by promising to take Qingdao and the German Pacific islands in the war - a course that appealed to both the army's continentalism and the navy's Pacific expansion plans. Kato promptly informed the British that Japan would declare war on Germany because the Germans had activated the Anglo-Japanese alliance (nonsense, but it permitted Japan the greatest freedom of action; the only ties it had to deal with were its British ones, and there was no question of similar agreements with Russia or France as there might have been otherwise).

Grey and the others were aghast - not at the Pacific islands proposal, but at Qingdao (the British were fine with messing around with the Australians, but Qingdao threatened Weihaiwei and the "open door") - but Britain's hand sucked. Kato played on British fears by noting that he couldn't back down from the program to take Qingdao because of sentiments in Tokyo (also nonsense, since what little anti-Germanism erupted was much later than this and of a rather contrived nature). Grey was confronted with the same dilemma Bethmann Hollweg had faced a few weeks before: if Japan was not supported in its wider war aims, he stood to risk losing the Japanese alliance, and with it the best chance of security for British possessions in Asia. What if Japan were to side with Germany instead if the Germans gave the Japanese a better deal over China? So he gave in, so long as the Japanese military accepted limits on its operating area to placate the Australians (which were summarily ignored as a mutual informal understanding between the Royal Navy and the Japanese). Even the Japanese ultimatum on 15 August completely ignored the British alliance, which had become nothing more than a cloak for Japan's annexationist aims.

So within ten days (1-11 August 1914) the British ended up bringing Japan into the war and completely overturning the understanding under which the Australians had constructed their fleet. Within a few months of that, the British were openly acquiescing to Japanese invasions even outside the area that had been theoretically delineated for them. Japan seized the Micronesian islands and the Marshall and Caroline chains by mid-October while Australian forces were still working on capturing Samoa and the Solomon islands. The Australians and New Zealanders were then (very temporarily - they promptly resumed screaming about the Yellow Threat at Versailles) bought off in 1916-7 by the British with the colonies they had seized - annexations, which hadn't been contemplated early in the war, were approved in order to provide both Australia and New Zealand with a strategic shield against Japanese annexations.

On a side note, it should be said that Kato's political maneuvering during early August was brilliant - within ten days, he played the British, the Australians, the Germans, the Japanese army and navy, the genro, and Japan's own public opinion off against each other and got exactly what he wanted. It's a run worthy of a Bismarck. Kato, of course, fell victim to Japan's divided politics soon enough. It's rather remarkable that even after his fall, Japan managed a unified and consistent foreign policy despite being riven by repeated cabinet reshuffles and instability that the European powers never did. If any state made the First World War's course and fruits conform to its goals, Japan did. Of course, the kind of person who writes diplomatic hagiographies wouldn't do one for the Japanese, because that kind of person is generally Eurocentric. Shame.

Cannae · Jul 9, 2011

kochman said:
Hahah, that was trying to put history in account? Try again. The history is, those lands were once "Muslim", therefore, they are targets of Jihad until they are once again Muslim, per the Koran.

The same thing could be said about the Christians with the crusades or with the Jews now. All those religions want the same area and at one point or another in history was in control of it. The Koran may have sections in it that condone violence but Christianity and Judaism most certainly have similar content. Plus any religion can be taken and warped to fit the desires of a religious leader or leaders personal goals. Even it means going against rules and morals in their holy book(s) .

kochman said:
Palestinian bombers are considered terrorists because by and large they are SPECIFICALLY targetting civilians.

What nation at war doesn't target civilians? Using the definition of terrorism from dictionary.reference.com (see spoiler below) any use of fear can be defined as terrorism. Thus there are no groups that are above the use of terror, and all warfare creates fear, and the creation is fear is terrorism.

Spoiler :

kochman said:
Well, they fought for and won that right, so they do have the right to create the state they want.

That sounds alot like the mindset of the Nazis with the Holocaust. The idea of might makes right.

kochman said:
The Palestinian terrorists CLEARLY target innocent civilians.

Every nation at war does this, it's part of warfare no matter who the conflict involves or what it's about.

GamezRule said:
I don't think there is any solution for Israel, one state or two state.

That maybe the truth but I still think that one Israel (Canaan) would be better. Creating a separate Palestine would do very little good for either Israel or Palestine.

Ajidica said:
The initialy fighting between Israel and the Palestinians was nothing new, it had been going on for the past century.

More correctly some form of conflict or another has always been going on their. (If I recall correctly, the single area with the most battles in history ever was in Israel (don't remember it's location though...))

Ajidica said:
'Spoils of war' does not justify mistreatment of a civilian population.

Yes I'd agree it only rationalizes a retaliation by the other side or sides.

Junius · Jul 9, 2011

Cannae said:
What nation at war doesn't target civilians? Using the definition of terrorism from dictionary.reference.com (see spoiler below) any use of fear can be defined as terrorism. Thus there are no groups that are above the use of terror, and all warfare creates fear, and the creation is fear is terrorism.

Cannae said:
Every nation at war does this, it's part of warfare no matter who the conflict involves or what it's about.

You don't think strapping a bomb to a person and walking into a cafe is a little unique? Regardless of what side you support in this conflict it should be very clear that behavior can't be condoned which is exactly what you are doing.

NickyJ · Jul 9, 2011

jojorah said:
Trust me if you where in palestine and your family has been killed they use white phoperus and poisen your water, your starving to death and the IDF keeps on taking land that was once yours, you probably would want to get revenge, suicide would have never seemed viable, untill they came. but where would be the best place to get them?, the oppisition has the best weapons you couldnt kill them, so you come up with a brilliant idea, some of the leaders are meeting at a population center in a few weeks, you strap on bombs and enter the city...

Let me get this straight: You actually support suicide bombings on civilian targets? Really?

we can be lucky palestinians have morals tought to them

Oh yeah. Blowing up school buses is an excellent display of good morals. :rolleyes:

And just think if the Israelis were doing that to Palestinian school buses. People would start breathing fire and calling for Israeli heads. More so than now, anyway.

Ajidica · Jul 9, 2011

Well, Israel has been responsible for assasinations, high seas piracy, blowing up hotels, firing live ammunition at protesters, violating international law, reprisals against civilian population, careless use of weaponry is densely populated areas, shelling of transportation infrastructure, evicting people from their land, failure to obey their end of agreements, and nearly starting a nuclear war.

Finger pointing gets you nowhere.

Tani Coyote · Jul 9, 2011

I mean this in the most polite way possible.

People often justify Palestinian terrorism because their land was taken. Now then...

Does that justify German terrorism against the Poles/Russians? Does that justify indigenous American terrorism against the United States or Canada? And so on?

Where do we set the benchmark for when land is no longer a valid claim to cause violence? (Incoming EU3 jokes)

Traitorfish · Jul 9, 2011

Dachs said:
*fascinating things*

Taniciusfox said:
I mean this in the most polite way possible.

People often justify Palestinian terrorism because their land was taken. Now then...

Does that justify German terrorism against the Poles/Russians? Does that justify indigenous American terrorism against the United States or Canada? And so on?

Where do we set the benchmark for when land is no longer a valid claim to cause violence? (Incoming EU3 jokes)

There's a slight difference between revanchism and resistance to a process of ethnic cleansing which is still underway. Same reason that indigenist terrorism would be invalid today, but was entirely defensible during the time of the American Indian Wars. (Don't want scalped, don't steal Apache land. Easy as that.)

Now, that's not to defend any given act of terrorism as committed by Palestinian groups, but to observe that it's important not to conflate apples with oranges. The old IRA was not the Provisional IRA, the Civil War-era Basque insurgents weren't the ETA, John Brown wasn't the Symbionese Liberation Army, and so on and so forth.

jojorah · Jul 9, 2011

NickyJ said:
Let me get this straight: You actually support suicide bombings on civilian targets? Really?

Oh yeah. Blowing up school buses is an excellent display of good morals. And just think if the Israelis were doing that to Palestinian school buses. People would start breathing fire and calling for Israeli heads. More so than now, anyway.

I never said it was justified to blow up ones self up to kill another, im just saying that there wouldnt be nearly as much palestinian terrorism if israel would stop geniciding palestinians, yes i call it genicide, any questions?

Now part of my family is palestinian, and its a very sencitive issue to me. And before the israeli goverment my dad use to go to there jewish neighbors house and turn on there lights on sabbath. They would live next store to eachother and watch eachothers kids.

Now what do we see?

Personaly it would be insulting to the jewish religion to call zionists jews. How does it benifit jews in anyway to own that land? is it worth it?

jojorah · Jul 9, 2011

Ajidica said:
Well, Israel has been responsible for assasinations, high seas piracy, blowing up hotels, firing live ammunition at protesters, violating international law, reprisals against civilian population, careless use of weaponry is densely populated areas, shelling of transportation infrastructure, evicting people from their land, failure to obey their end of agreements, and nearly starting a nuclear war.

Finger pointing gets you nowhere.

Not to mention being the number one Espionage threat to the united states, being overly nationalistic,oh and the JDF blow up some russian cars in the height of the cold war witch was right next to and american embassy,brain washing the public with a biased media (nothing new to any of the countrys in the world to be fair),not to mention what they do to other countrys indirectly like syria and lebbanon. So theres enough evil to be shared .

innonimatu · Jul 9, 2011

Dachs said:
Excellent! Something worth talking about!
...

Thanks for something very much worth reading! A great example of the diplomatic turns and twists around alliances.
Also, I had not realized that Australia was by the 1900s already setting up its own independent regional policy in the face of conflicting concerns with London's far eastern policies.

kochman · Jul 10, 2011

Cannae said:
The same thing could be said about the Christians with the crusades or with the Jews now. All those religions want the same area and at one point or another in history was in control of it. The Koran may have sections in it that condone violence but Christianity and Judaism most certainly have similar content. Plus any religion can be taken and warped to fit the desires of a religious leader or leaders personal goals. Even it means going against rules and morals in their holy book(s) .

No, it can't.

Cannae said:
What nation at war doesn't target civilians? Using the definition of terrorism from dictionary.reference.com (see spoiler below) any use of fear can be defined as terrorism. Thus there are no groups that are above the use of terror, and all warfare creates fear, and the creation is fear is terrorism.

Cannae said:
Every nation at war does this, it's part of warfare no matter who the conflict involves or what it's about.

MOST western countries, at a minimum, don't target civilians. The USA certainly does not. We spend huge amounts of money to purchase smart bombs specifically to limit civilian casualties as much as possible, as does the UK, France, etc.

AL_DA_GREAT · Jul 10, 2011

It is an ally because AIPAC and similar are the real rulers of the USA.

holy king · Jul 10, 2011

indeed, i saw it in a picture!

Moderator Action: <snip>

Spam, trolling pic removed.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

Formaldehyde · Jul 10, 2011

It never ceases to amaze me how relatively few terrorist acts committed by a handful of individuals in retaliation to decades of oppressive apartheid policies, which have essentially turned Gaza into a massive internment camp, is used as an excuse to vilify an entire group and to actually support and defend these draconian policies. People from both sides have been guilty of committing terrorist acts in the past, and it will likely continue to occur until some outside force eventually intervenes. But the typical Palestinian is no more a terrorist than the typical Israeli is.

And we see the same thing occurring with those who try to condemn an entire mainstream religion on the same basis.

jojorah said:
I never said it was justified to blow up ones self up to kill another, im just saying that there wouldnt be nearly as much palestinian terrorism if israel would stop geniciding palestinians, yes i call it genicide, any questions?

Now part of my family is palestinian, and its a very sencitive issue to me. And before the israeli goverment my dad use to go to there jewish neighbors house and turn on there lights on sabbath. They would live next store to eachother and watch eachothers kids.

Now what do we see?

Personaly it would be insulting to the jewish religion to call zionists jews. How does it benifit jews in anyway to own that land? is it worth it?

Other than the charge of genocide, I couldn't agree more. Jews and Muslims used to live in the same region in relative harmony, and many still do. It is really only the fanatics on both sides who fuel all the hatred and enmity.

I think the recent video that trader/warrior posted in the Youtube thread speaks volumes:

trader/warrior said:
I want to go to Gaza now, going by the first half of this video. Kind of refreshing to view.

Link to video.

The Palestinians are a great people who have been oppressed far too long on their own land. If the same acts were occurring against Jews or Christians, there would be massive moral outrage and demands to intervene, and rightfully so.

RedRalph · Jul 10, 2011

Dachs said:
Spoiler :

Excellent! Something worth talking about!

So basically, prewar Australian military policy was basically "we are ****ing terrified of the Japanese and will build many ships to fight them". Since the New Zealanders were similarly terrified of relying on the Australians for naval defense instead of the Royal Navy on the grounds that it would give the Aussies undue leverage over them, they also promised to fund not one, but two Dreadnoughts, which spurred the Australians to build their own (they had previously been focusing on a destroyer navy to the ire of Jacky Fisher et al.). Then the Australians started building their own battle cruisers. Well and good.

The fact that the construction was based on divergent aims was ignored in the prewar period by everybody involved. The British knew full well the Australians wanted to use their navy against the Japanese, but the Admiralty decided that that was okay, because they needed as many ships in the water as possible to deal with the East Asiatic Squadron in the event of war. The Australians knew that the British weren't interested in fighting the Japanese, obviously, what with the whole alliance and all, but at the same time assumed that in the event of war with Germany, the Australians would get the spoils, because hey, it's not as though the Foreign Office was actually going to bring Japan into the war, if it happened, right? (For what it's worth, even the British didn't think they would be getting the Japanese into the fight. This was not because the British did not want the Japanese in the fight, but because it was deemed too difficult to get the Japanese into the war for too little gain.)

On 1 August 1914, the British informed the Japanese that they weren't likely to invoke the 1902 alliance against Germany. The Japanese were only supposed to come into the fight in the event of an "unprovoked attack" on Britain's Asiatic possessions. Grey himself only thought that he'd have to send for the Japanese if the Germans attacked Hong Kong or Weihaiwei, neither of which seemed particularly likely. Three days later, Japanese neutrality was affirmed. But at the same time, the British Admiralty was in an unholy mess. The near-complete lack of any preparations or groundwork for the war with which they were now confronted, combined with the general disorganization at the Admiralty itself, produced a rather rampant fear of what the German East Asiatic Squadron would do. The Royal Navy declared that it needed the Japanese Navy to blockade German Qingdao and hunt down both Spee and Germany's armed merchantmen - according to the Admiralty, the British, even with the Australians and New Zealanders, could not do it alone.

So on 6 August, Grey found himself going back to the Japanese asking for the support of the Japanese against the German armed merchantmen and no more. Kato Takaaki, the Japanese foreign minister and the dominant figure in the cabinet, had other ideas; he managed to unify the army and the navy behind him in favor of all-out war on Germany by promising to take Qingdao and the German Pacific islands in the war - a course that appealed to both the army's continentalism and the navy's Pacific expansion plans. Kato promptly informed the British that Japan would declare war on Germany because the Germans had activated the Anglo-Japanese alliance (nonsense, but it permitted Japan the greatest freedom of action; the only ties it had to deal with were its British ones, and there was no question of similar agreements with Russia or France as there might have been otherwise).

Grey and the others were aghast - not at the Pacific islands proposal, but at Qingdao (the British were fine with messing around with the Australians, but Qingdao threatened Weihaiwei and the "open door") - but Britain's hand sucked. Kato played on British fears by noting that he couldn't back down from the program to take Qingdao because of sentiments in Tokyo (also nonsense, since what little anti-Germanism erupted was much later than this and of a rather contrived nature). Grey was confronted with the same dilemma Bethmann Hollweg had faced a few weeks before: if Japan was not supported in its wider war aims, he stood to risk losing the Japanese alliance, and with it the best chance of security for British possessions in Asia. What if Japan were to side with Germany instead if the Germans gave the Japanese a better deal over China? So he gave in, so long as the Japanese military accepted limits on its operating area to placate the Australians (which were summarily ignored as a mutual informal understanding between the Royal Navy and the Japanese). Even the Japanese ultimatum on 15 August completely ignored the British alliance, which had become nothing more than a cloak for Japan's annexationist aims.

So within ten days (1-11 August 1914) the British ended up bringing Japan into the war and completely overturning the understanding under which the Australians had constructed their fleet. Within a few months of that, the British were openly acquiescing to Japanese invasions even outside the area that had been theoretically delineated for them. Japan seized the Micronesian islands and the Marshall and Caroline chains by mid-October while Australian forces were still working on capturing Samoa and the Solomon islands. The Australians and New Zealanders were then (very temporarily - they promptly resumed screaming about the Yellow Threat at Versailles) bought off in 1916-7 by the British with the colonies they had seized - annexations, which hadn't been contemplated early in the war, were approved in order to provide both Australia and New Zealand with a strategic shield against Japanese annexations.

On a side note, it should be said that Kato's political maneuvering during early August was brilliant - within ten days, he played the British, the Australians, the Germans, the Japanese army and navy, the genro, and Japan's own public opinion off against each other and got exactly what he wanted. It's a run worthy of a Bismarck. Kato, of course, fell victim to Japan's divided politics soon enough. It's rather remarkable that even after his fall, Japan managed a unified and consistent foreign policy despite being riven by repeated cabinet reshuffles and instability that the European powers never did. If any state made the First World War's course and fruits conform to its goals, Japan did. Of course, the kind of person who writes diplomatic hagiographies wouldn't do one for the Japanese, because that kind of person is generally Eurocentric. Shame.

Bravo, sir.

kochman · Jul 10, 2011

Terrorist attacks in Israel (this is NOT the complete list, but clicking on this link will provide access to the complete list from 1949 thru 2010):

From 2006 thru 2010

Spoiler :

useless · Jul 10, 2011

And how many Palestinians have died as the result of Israel's actions?

kochman · Jul 10, 2011

useless said:
And how many Palestinians have died as the result of Israel's actions?

I'm guessing 3.
Oh, you meant any Palestinians, not just innocent ones.
Not sure. How many times were innocents specifically targeted would be a better question though.

useless · Jul 10, 2011

Source

.

Quackers · Jul 10, 2011

Israel is awesome.
You scratch me, i'll break every bone in your body!

Why Israel is still considered a "strategical ally" of the USA

Hero of the Soviet Union

Philosophy of Poverty

Prince

Retired Narrator

High Quality Person

Son of Huehuecoyotl

The Tighnahulish Kid

Prince

Prince

the resident Cassandra

Deity

amour absinthe révolution

Deity

Both Fair And Balanced

Deity

Deity

Social Justice Rogue

Deity

Social Justice Rogue

The Frog

Similar threads