Why is Israel such a big talking point in American politics?

Because America was settled by the dumbest and brainless of us Europeans...and the Jews

Israel is a Rorschach test for people's views about things like race, religion, national security, and foreign affairs.

The US started backing them during the Cold War as a counterweight to Soviet backing of the Arabs in the region.

In the late 70s the US won a bidding war with the Soviet Union and bought the Arabs as well, and now it pays Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan to be its friends and not go to war with one another.

Also, Arab leaders use Israel to deflect from the endemic failure of governments in the region to provide services.

>>3063779
Well like most countries, around the 1950's america and canada held their embassy in the old capital of isreal.

Is it? Support for Israel is taken for granted. All the good goyim from flyover states donate money to to it via evangelical organizations and sign up to die for it in droves. Yet the jews hate the white working class the most.

Makes you think.

>>3063779
Check out he Thirty Two Billion Dollar Bargain, even if it is a bit dated, the fundamental logic of the U.S.-Israeli alliance still holds.

Basically, and I'm skipping over a lot of analysis here

>The U.S. wants the Middle-East to at least be as quiet as possible.
>For domestic reasons, Washington cannot get too buddy buddy with either secular Arab dictatorships or with Islamic theocracies, both are too far away from Western notions of a proper, legitimate state to be getting cozy to.
>Therefore, U.S. foreign diplomacy cannot use the full array of statecraft tools to influence these Arab regimes, and must resort to more coercive methods.
>However, while U.S. military power is overwhelmingly strong, America is pretty war-averse, especially over minor shit, and there is a very reasonable fear that threat of American sanctions will not be believed and cannot be carried out.
>Enter Israel; Israel isn't nearly as strong as the U.S., but they're pretty much always looking for an excuse to crack their neighbors heads.
>And the U.S. can funnel quite a bit of aid to Israel, should it wish.
>The threat (And execution) of loosening Israel's leash and giving them more shit is often more effective than directly threatening Arab and other ME regimes directly.

>want to build base in completely hostile muslim territory
>only thing close to western in the region are the jew

that's why