[KSteffensen]

I don't understand how a tiny country like Israel has become so important in global politics. By population Rwanda is ~30% larger than Israel.

[PaulHoule]

They've worked really hard at it.

Israel for instance has a special relationship with Germany because of remorse for the 1940s. This incident in the 1970s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_massacre

further gives Germany a reason to crack down on pro-Palestinian protestors. Although supporters of the Palestinians have not staged international attacks for a long time the history of this in the 1970s explains why my Uni suddenly instituted a clear bag policy at sports games a few weeks after the lid blew off in Gaza last year. (When I started doing sports photography at the beginning of the semester I could pack a big camera bag and even take extra lenses)

Also Israel has a high GDP and involvement in international trade, academia, etc. Israel has 50x the GDP per head of Rwanda so they have a large impact in terms of Intel's Haifa office, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Sodastream, etc. My thesis advisor traveled to Tel Aviv a lot to work with collaborators.

[phantompeace]

Not to mention Israel has been receiving absolutely immense amounts of financial, military and political support from the USA for decades, to the tunes of billions.

[maccard]

They’re a western bastion in very close proximity to the Middle East, with a cultural and religious tie to a not insignificant number of Americans. It’s also a wealthy country.

[runako]

> very close proximity to the Middle East

Israel is in the Middle East.

[hn-throw]

The Scofield Bible created ardent Christian zionists in the South among evangelicals.

Israel basically uses them to manipulate DC, whilst its allies in media ensure that Christians getting spat at in Jerusalem isn't widely reported.

[ignoramous]

> don't understand how a tiny country like Israel has become so important in global politics

The simple reason is that global politics (at the UN) led to the partition of the Mandate, against the will of entire regions, which, right now, represent 30% of world's population. Besides, anti-Muslim racism and anti-Semitism always rears its very ugly head during this conflict, especially in the US.

Subsequently, the lack of stability in the Middle East did Israel no favours in how it is perceived, even if it may not be solely its fault (it isn't).

Plus, the silencing of voices (particularly against patently unfounded claims such as, "the most moral army", "anti-Israelism is anti-Semitism", "the only democracy in the middle east") themselves come with their own Streisand Effect.

Also, socio-culturally, after Tibet & Cuba, it is one of the last/few remaining geo-political global movements with the added disadvantage of cutting through all 3 major Abrahamic religions.

[mr_toad]

> The simple reason is that global politics (at the UN) led to the partition of the Mandate

That was a piece of paper which changed nothing.

The Arab and Jewish populations had been in an escalating conflict for years, culminating in an all-out civil war. The Israeli population would have declared independence as soon as the British left regardless of what the UN said. Similarly the Arab states had no intention of letting Israel exist, and attacked as soon as the British left.

[jrochkind1]

> I don't understand how a tiny country like Israel has become so important in global politics.

Here are some of my favorite sources on that! These are all leftist and pro-Palestinian sources, but they are academic and studied. These are about why Israel is important to the "interests of the USA" (ie, what those with power to decide national interests think).

* “Framing Palestine: Israel, the Gulf states, and American power in the Middle East" by Adam Hanieh https://www.tni.org/en/article/framing-palestine

* The first chapter of "Palestine: A Socialist Introduction", “How Israel Became the Watchdog State: US Imperialism and the Middle East" by Shireen Akram-Boshar. The publisher Haymarket is giving away the ebook for free. https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1558-palestine-a-social...

* "No, the US Doesn’t Back Israel Because of AIPAC" by Joseph Massad https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/no-the-us-doesnt-back-israe...

[jrochkind1]

(Odd to me that I'm getting downvoted for suggesting the US support for Israel has to do with US interests, and providing sources going into detail on that, and people are getting upvoted for saying it's because Jews have a lot of influence! It's really not mostly because Jews have a lot of influence.)

[sekai]

> I don't understand how a tiny country like Israel has become so important in global politics. By population Rwanda is ~30% larger than Israel.

Iran and basically the rest of the Middle East, US needs an ally to keep the region in check.

[dwater]

Many scholars argue that the US uses Israel to destabilize the region so that all other countries besides Israel are unable to form a bloc and resist US hegemony, but perhaps that's what you meant by "keep the region in check".

[xenospn]

Israel and Iran used to be BFFs.

[CapricornNoble]

> Iran and basically the rest of the Middle East, US needs an ally to keep the region in check.

The US (and also UK/France/Germany) have been bending over backwards to prop up Israel since LONG before Iran switched to an anti-US theocratic government.

[csomar]

Think about the crusader states[!] and Taiwan. You'll see a pattern there. Israel was important for the British, now the Americans and will be important for the next hegemon. It's a very old strategy used by empires to control whole regions. Having a whole "country" beats having a military base or an air-craft carrier by orders of magnitudes.

!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaNVTvZm8JI&t

[jumping_frog]

According to Sachs, Israel has masterfully manipulated US influence to extend its global reach, primarily through AIPAC's incredibly efficient lobbying - spending just hundreds of millions to secure billions in aid and trillions in military spending. Netanyahu's strategy has been particularly clever, pushing the US to overthrow Middle Eastern governments that oppose Israeli policies, as seen with Iraq, Syria, and Libya. Through campaign financing, Israel has basically bought out Congress for surprisingly little money, ensuring the US consistently backs them internationally - like vetoing UN resolutions that favor Palestinians. This US shield is so strong that when the UN voted on Palestinian self-determination, only the US, Israel, and a couple other countries opposed it. Even when Biden sets boundaries for Israeli actions, they just ignore them without consequences. The whole system's genius lies in how Israel's managed to maintain its policies despite global opposition, though Sachs thinks this might backfire by making Israel too isolated and blocking any chance of a two-state solution.

[derektank]

Because members of the largest religious faith in the world identify with one party to the conflict and the global hegemon supports the other

[Hikikomori]

Some of them work extra hard.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/10/09/opinion/gaza-...

[guerrilla]

Everyone else is stupid and lazy? Stop it.

[sofixa]

Equating GDP per capita with the quality of humans is... a tad inhumane. Individual influence to GDP per capita is non-existant for the vast majority of people, even in the richest countries.

[xenospn]

History.

[cwkoss]

Israel is a colony of US imperialism and functions as the US attack dog in the middle east, taking actions and expressing rhetoric in support of US hegemony that are politically infeasible.

[beng-nl]

From my weak understanding, it’s the only ally the west (USA) has in the Middle East, so they’re important strategically - for military bases and other reasons I don’t really understand, and so are propped up by financial aid and weapons and other help (intelligence etc?) beyond what would normally happen to a similar country.

[derektank]

The US has several allies in the middle east. Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar all have major non-NATO ally status with the US, the same status as Israel. Jordan in particular is a very close US partner.

I should add, none of these countries are treaty allies of the US, i.e. none of them have a mutual defense treaty with the US. The one country that is a treaty ally of the US in the region is Turkey, though that relationship has been strained in the last couple of decades

[sofixa]

> From my weak understanding, it’s the only ally the west (USA) has in the Middle East, so they’re important strategically

Nope, the US has bases in Qatar, UAE, Bahrain, Djibouti and is friendly with the regimes in Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

[toyg]

That strategic relevance has long gone.

The current relevance is strictly dictated by internal political and demographic balances in the United States.

[neom]

Given Israel is the motherland for many Jewish people, plus almost 2.5% of the USA is Jewish, plus there are almost 16 million Jewish people globally, I would imagine that.