Instigator / Con
35
1565
rating
6
debates
83.33%
won
Topic
#755

Is Israel a good ally?

Status
Finished

The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics
Better arguments
15
3
Better sources
10
8
Better legibility
5
4
Better conduct
5
0

After 5 votes and with 20 points ahead, the winner is...

bmdrocks21
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
4
Time for argument
Two days
Max argument characters
30,000
Voting period
Two weeks
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Contender / Pro
15
1702
rating
574
debates
67.86%
won
Description

My opponent must argue that Israel is a good ally that deserves our support.

Round 1
Con
#1
I will be arguing that Israel is currently and has always been a terrible "ally" to the United States. An alliance with them is certainly not worth millions of dollars every day. Now, state your position, and round two will be arguments.
Pro
#2
Warning violence (body-to-body mainly): Intro music and theme 

My angles will be severely defensive, there's a right time to debate cowardly and this is just that.

The alliance is strong, has purpose and Israel has indeed done horrific things but when you start to realise that Hamas is blackmailing PLO such that the Palestinian people are forced to be under Israeli nationality due to Hamas' insane aims to annihilate Israel at any cost, you will later realise that all the offensive points against Israel are about 'fighting a monster by being a more benevolent one' (ironically, Hamas and PLO will say the very same thing back to Israel meaning they are the better monster, so this will be a major area of debate involving in-depth analysis of what human shields are and who is truly responsible for their deaths).

I will not play the card of 'my enemy is supporting t*r**ists' as his angle will be that I support a t*r**ist state (I don't want to use that word in my formal debates, I have my reasons for not enjoying typing that word apart from in very strict environments and want to say hi NSA I respect you).

Anyway, the alliance has a few benefits that are pretty solid but they're all based on 'why lose it' rather than 'oh so massive gain'. I will explain more as the debate unfolds and despite being Pro will be the more 'destructive' one of my opponent's angles as opposed to creating many fruitful ones myself. This always has been my style in debating and has, at times, lost me debates but it's a style and I rock it well and it enables me to debate many at once so do I want to be a super artistic debater who does tons of research? Well, not really and Googling a lot about this conflict is a sure way to end on the wrong kind of radar. I am going to make this interesting, eye-opening and treat my opponent with respect. 

I hope we both appreciate how the other paints the other side as evil and understand that this is a debate, not necessarily entirely true opinions.


Round 2
Con
#3
One of my main complaints with our continued "alliance" is that it seems that they will do nearly anything they can in order to use America as a club against its enemies. They seem to only care about their own interests, even if it means we have to go to war for them. The first example of this would be in 1967 during the Six-Day War in which Israel sank our spy ship known as the USS Liberty. They initially stated they didn't know it was our ship. However, recently it has been uncovered that they knew it was our ship over two hours before the attack and expressed frustration that it wasn't sinking. They wished to destroy the evidence that they attacked it and blame it on the Egyptians so that we would become involved in their conflict and fight the neighboring Arab nations for them. 

This theme has continued to modern times. Netanyahu declared before congress that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction based on evidence that they had gathered. He said that taking down Saddam Hussein would have "positive reverberations" in the region. There were no WMDs, and based on threats such as ISIS that had arisen since that war, I think we can both agree that that was also a lie.

Israel also has far too much influence over American politics. Pro-Israel groups such as AIPAC have given millions of dollars to many politicians in the past eight years. A quote by a former AIPAC employee states “Everything AIPAC does is focused on influencing congress, you can’t influence the President of the United States directly but the congress can,”. Ex-congressman Jim Moran said that "If you have AIPAC's support, more often than not you're going to win". These organizations have caused a huge shift in policy that often supports Israel over American. One such instance is our reluctance to pay for a wall, yet we pay for security for Israel. Another was an email from Hillary Clinton exposed on WikiLeaks that said the best way to help Israel is to topple Assad in Syria (the war theme shows up a lot). All of this is in addition to the fact that Israel spies on us constantly, as AIPAC even funded the Canary Mission, which doxxes US college students by labeling them racist, anti-semitic, etc. 

Finally, Israel sent military technology to China that is used in the production of military equipment such as missiles. Iran has been trying to buy military technology from China for years. The hope may be that Israel gets weapons and the US will come in to crush Iran's military to save Israel once again, but this is speculation. 

So, going forward in this debate, I would like to ask my opponent: Why should we be giving billions of dollars to a country that creates so many enemies for us in the Middle East, spies on us, and leads to the deaths of thousands of brave Americans by having us fight ceaseless conflicts with its neighbors?
Pro
#4
Forfeited
Round 3
Con
#5
While you did not rebut my arguments, I hope that you will be able to in the next round so that we can finish our debate. 

For now, I will clarify my position and answer what you have already posted. My position is not that we should support the local terrorist groups. I think that we should neither give aid to them, nor should we support the state of Israel. Their conflict will not end until one group is annihilated due to their diametrically opposed ideologies. We will not gain anything from helping either side through their unending wars. You mentioned that there are a few benefits to our alliance, but didn't list any of them. Your position is "why lose it?" in terms of the alliance. My answer: $38 billion over the next ten years. That money could have funded the wall or many other projects. We have a national debt that exceeds our GDP right now, so I don't think that we can afford to give that amount of money to a foreign power. This is especially the case, as my points prove their unworthiness of aid. They are the wealthiest nation in the region with an advanced military, and they are capable of defending themselves from terrorist rebels with nearly no funding. It is not our duty or in our interest to help Israel.


Pro
#6
Though this was 3 days whatever I will enjoy getting to #4-5 on leaderboard and working my way up.
Round 4
Con
#7
In the absence of points offered by my opponent, I would like to encourage viewers to vote for me. 

Thank you! :D
Pro
#8
This site has suddenly become infested with toxic voters. It doesn't matter how good I debate they use any reason to knock me.off my pedestal.
We ha e a multi accounted on Sparrow and Type1 able to roam freely despite me giving irrefutable proof to mods from PM and we have complete newjoiners that are frankly bad at debating so severely that they think each other are good.

For a long time I looked desperately for reason enough to loathe this site and online debating in general. I finally realise that there's an issue deeper than moderation at play; humans are shit at debating overall.

If you think Israel is a bad ally, try befriending Iran or try befriending noone in the middle East. Do you even know how useful Mossad has been to the CIA? You know only your surface level "money money" shit that they say Israel is guilty of having the attitude of.

Hamas is a mafia who rule Palestine and don't allow them to negotiate with Israel. Until you learn to thoroughly loathe this, you won't understand the other side.

Hamas is also Palestine only legal UN representation, so don't think that this is some kind of "Israel rules them against their will" shit, it's way way deeper than that with layers to the game and Hamas as a true villain to both sides.

I don't care about debating online anymore. I genuinely am too good at it for voters to comprehend my greatness at this stage. I'll take a break after my current batch is over and may end up bottom of the leaderboard for all I fucking care.