Israel Bias: Fact or Fiction (Part I)

I was watching the Daily Show with John Stewart yesterday and it was his first show of the new year and in 3 weeks. Naturally, being a political satirist, he mentioned the Gaza Strip crises quite a few times in the beginning of the show.

John later welcomed his guest, the new moderator of "Meet the Press" David Gregory replacing the late Tim Russert. Once he and David started talking about the Gaza crises, John asked "Why can't any American politician criticize Israel in any way for their behavior?" Which got me thinking, does America have a natural biased towards Israel or does Israel's actions, and those of its enemies, depict America's attitude of the situation?

Interestingly enough, both Stewart and Gregory are of the Jewish faith but perhaps that does not really matter. In order to investigate this matter, we need to establish a few things. First of which is that we are searching for the cause of America's constant and unwavering support of Israel for the past 50 years, and not whether such support actually exists. We also need to agree that such support, while varied between American administrations, never swayed over to the Palestinian/Lebanese/Egyptian/Syrian side. Furthermore, such support has existed since the declaration of the state of Israel in 1948 and more importantly eons before 2001.

Now according to the WRMEA (Washington Report on Middle East Affairs) the United States has given over 84 Billion dollars of financial support to Israel. Other sources claim that figure is a gross underestimate if you include Military weapons the U.S. donated to Israel. The reason I bring the money issue into the discussion is so we can exclude financial reasons, meaning Israel is financially indebted to the U.S. and not the other way around.

Check out my blog Israel Biased: Fact or Fiction (Part II) where I highlight the remains of my argument.