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Originally Posted by Ducimus
Who knows. Personnaly im a little tired of it all, and i often wonder how we got dragged into it. Near as i can figure out, they started cursing the US sometime after israel kicked their asses during the 7day war. If documentaries ive seen on it are to beleived, it was such a stunning victory, the arabs needed a scape goat. (Heavy sarchasm here, from a supposed arab point of reference) "So the great big satin, MUST have been helping israel because there's just no way those dirty jews could have beaten an Arab nation on their own"! (end sarchasm)
I figure im probably misinformed, but thats as near as i can figure out how we first got dragged into this. The thing is, the whole conflict there seems to be the wellspring from which everything else follows. From what i can understand, it all starts there and then snowballs into other things.
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You are misinformed, and you were never "dragged into it". The US became a willing participant in the conflict (which began long before the Six Day war by the way) beginning with Truman, and continuing to this day with its annual $5 billion/year Israeli subsidy and preferrential arms sales (note that this is merely stating a fact, and not an opinion on the "rightness" or "wrongness" of it).
But back to Truman:
"Secondly, [the holocaust] evoked a world-wide feeling of sympathy with the Jewish people, mingled with guilt that more had not been done to deter Hitler's aggressions before the war, or to help Jews escape from Europe during its course. This was particularly the case in the United States, whose federal government had halted Jewish immigration during the war. Among those who became strong supporters of the Zionist ideal was President
Harry S. Truman, who overrode considerable opposition in his
State Department and used the great power of his position to mobilise support at the
United Nations for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, although he expressed very negative views of Jews in his diaries, and had, in a letter written years before he entered the
White House, referred to
New York City as "
kike town".
[10][11] Since Britain was desperate to withdraw from Palestine, Truman's efforts were the crucial factor in the creation of Israel."
That's an exerpt from a very intersting article about the long history of the political movement to create a Jewish homeland ("Zionism") in what is now modern Israel. Its a good read, with a lot of links to other Wiki entries that detail other related events during Isreal's evolution from idea to established fact.
Recommended reading for anyone with an interest in this conflict and its roots (at least as a starting point; it is not the definitive account of the entire history surrounding this):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism