If we smarten up and stop trying to control the events in every corner of the world, then we should stop giving aid to Israel and extricate ourselves. This also means we should stop running interference for them in the United Nations.

If we want to be humanitarians, we should offer to accept any and all immigrants from the occupied territories and Israel proper, which is the same offer we should extend to Iraqis.

It will be interesting to see what happens next, as obviously we can't afford this kind of largess in the future. Of course, since we don't pay our bills anyway, it is our children who get to suffer the cost as a part of the $12 trillion debt we have obligated them for. They will also have the burden of repairs and upgrades to the national infrastructure we have neglected all these years we were building the Israeli infrastructure (and that of Afghanistan and Iraq) and our bloated military. Man, are we ever good at spending money we don't have.

. The USA's role in this war can be traced to a single incident. When Israel invaded Southern Lebanon in 1982, we parked a destroyer off the coast and lobbed shells into Lebanon to help Israel.

Try 1973, if it had not been for Operation Nickel Grass, Israel would have probably lost the war.

Economist tallies swelling cost of Israel to US

Since 1973, Israel has cost the United States about $1.6 trillion. If divided by today's population, that is more than $5,700 per person.

This is an estimate by Thomas Stauffer, a consulting economist in Washington. For decades, his analyses of the Middle East scene have made him a frequent thorn in the side of the Israel lobby.

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Is U.S backing of Israel worth it?

For the first time in many years, Mr. Stauffer has tallied the total cost to the US of its backing of Israel in its drawn-out, violent dispute with the Palestinians. So far, he figures, the bill adds up to more than twice the cost of the Vietnam War.

It would have been cheaper too take a chunk of Texas, transfer the Israeli Jews there and call it New Israel.

The Palestinian people have been around since basically forever and have never had a homeland. They were the ones that had a full independence movement going and then near its tipping point Israel was formed all of a sudden.

None of the other Arab groups like the Palestinians. They've always been subjugated and now those countries just use them as a political wedge to keep Israel busy. In an amazing interview I heard a few years ago, one of the princes of Jordan even admitted as much. He said that he thought the Arab countries were far more culpable for the Palestinian crisis than Israel because they like the current situation, don't want there to be Palestine for the fear that their own Palestinian populations will get uppity, and generally treat those people like crap. I remember reading something from Michael Totten where he was explaining how deep the ethnic hatred was in that region and he was going down the list to the effect of “the Persians hate the Turks and Arabs and Jews, the Turks like the Jews but hate the Arabs and Persians, the Kurds love the Jews and hate the Turks and Persians, the Arabs dislike everyone but the Turks and EVERYONE hates the Palestinians.”

So basically a large part of what's going on is that external influences are manipulating thousands of years of resentment so it's easier for them to control their own populaces. We'd be fools not to realize this, and that they also don't mind the backlash it creates against the United States as well, because that makes us double down and provide the governments even more support. Of course the longer this goes on, the more backlash there is and the more radicalization there is…but it's important to look at it as a regional problem.

Overall I agree completely with Dave Schuler that the vast majority of our foreign policy problems are just a result of be the world's superpower and thus inherently a colonial power. If China does supersede us, everyone will be going after them. It is just impossible to have so much power and not be a target of scorn, envy, etc. and not make major mistakes. Personally this is why I think the US should voluntarily give up power and stop trying to dominate world discourse so much. Sure things would get a bit more expensive for us and our consumerism wouldn't be supported, but I think that's a small price to pay.

The truck bomb against the US base in Lebanon was the direct result of the hatred born of that decision by the US. I believe had we limited our support to supplying arms to Israel but keeping our own military out of it, we would not have become the “great Satan” to the Muslim extremists.

As for who's “right” in this battle, neither are. It's time for Israel to grow up and realize that they will NEVER have peace in Gaza or the West Bank. They need to get the F* out and give it to the Palestinians, in return for an end to the conflict. And Palestinians have to wake up to the fact that they will NEVER destroy Israel. They have to learn to live with Israel right next door.

BTW, interesting take on the situation from Naomi Klein, who argues that Israel was once dependent on cheap Palestinian labor. With the fall of the Soviet Union, millions of poor Russian Jews took over that role and Israel lost any incentive to resolve the conflict. That cheap labor helped Israel become a giant in dot-com tech industries of the 90s. When that ended, Israel was in trouble. Until 9/11, when the “war on terror” suddenly handed them a new bonanza. Their fight with Palestinians and Arab states gave them a perception of ultimate experience in dealing with “terrorism”. The security-state industry of Israel has now taken the place of those lost dot-com dollars. Peace with the Muslims no longer serves Israel's commercial interests.

Oh thats rich. The muslims have been screaming nothing but exterminate the Jews from the get-go and its the Jews who are the ethnic racists. Typical propal crap. If the palestinian leadership could quit ranting about destroying Israel and stop bombing civilians for 10 seconds they might actually get a lick of peace in. However, they have at EVERY SINGLE OPPORTUNITY chosen war when peace was an option and this has cost them their nation and continues to increase their misery. Jazz has it right, not until Israel's neighbors let go their hatred will it stop. And that isn't ever going to happen.

And your solution is laughable. Just let them fight it out and if Israel goes the way of Prussia, what the heck. And if Saudi Arabia goes the way of Hiroshima, I suppose that doesn't matter either. I mean it's not as if the Saudis were sitting on top of some natural resource that the rest of the world requires. We can all go solar I suppose?

They hate us because they hate Israel, and we remain Israel’s eternal big brother on the playground.

Whether or not that's true, I doubt that the converse is true: whoever “they” are they won't stop hating us if we stop supporting Israel. Rather I think that rightly or wrongly we're seen as the current face of colonialism and we won't be any more popular than the British or the French were in their times. Or the Turks for that matter.

What is going on in Gaza is a massacre. A continuation of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians which began in 1948.

And we are all subsidizing it with our tax money. Remember that on April the 15th!

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I will not argue that our backing of Israel is not at the root of our problems with much of the Middle East and it was certainly why the Palestinians were dancing in the street immediately after 9-11. However, Hamas and AQ are two different groups. I really think that if we ceased all support of Israel, AQ would still find a reason to attack us if they have the ability to do so.