Quote:please feel free to elaborate any time.

Long story short (and staying within the confines of the CoC), Israel should not exist. Its formation was the result of almost four decades of bungling the Middle East by Britain and France, followed by a great regret by the United Nations (particularly the United States) about how World War II had played out and a desire to "make amends" for it. In order to do so, they almost completely ignored the wishes and protestations of those who were already there, and when a force that we would consider today to be terrorist unilaterally declared that they were the rightful government of a new nation, the US quickly drove a knife into the stomach of the Arab world (i.e., the rest of the Middle East at the time) by recognizing the claims of that terrorist group. It then spent the next 50+ years slowly twisting the knife by offering financial and military support to Israel and paving the way for it to hold 80-ish nuclear weapons for use against the rest of the Middle East's zero.

 

That's the very short version. As long as the US throws support at Israel, we will not be able to build any bridges with the majority of the Middle East. I believe firmly that support to Israel should be cut off, and they should be left to their own devices. They're more than capable of defending themselves with the massive military complex they've amassed, not least of all because they hold 80 of the ultimate trump card, and could turn all of Iran into a glow-in-the-dark parking lot if they so chose. I think that a deal with the rest of the Middle East that normalizes relations and limits military growth of those nations in exchange for the US drawing down (and eventually ending) support for Israel, along with recognition of the Palestinian state that emerged in very similar fashion to the modern Israel's birth, would go a long way towards stabilizing the Middle East and US relations with countries there. Israel, imo, is the single biggest hurdle to normalized relations with the Middle East, not ideology, and our continued support of it blocks any real chance of normalized relations and concerted efforts to dislodge ISIS.

---