Both the United States and Israel were shaped by political systems built alongside racial hierarchy and contested citizenship.
Each proclaimed democratic ideals while simultaneously managing populations excluded from the full promise of those ideals.
They are both profoundly unfree and racially riven societies..
That shared history matters.
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#iran #history #histodons #israel #blackmastodon
Image: Benjamin Netanyahu hugs Joe Biden at Ben Guirion Airport on October 18, 2023. AFP.
The United States declared universal liberty in 1776 while sustaining a massive system of racial slavery.
After emancipation, the system reorganized itself through Jim Crow—disenfranchisement, segregation, and racial terror.
For nearly a century, American democracy functioned fully for some citizens and only partially for others.
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Image: Each time word of a lynching reached the NAACP, a simple, somber flag flew outside the group’s offices at 69 Fifth Avenue in NYC. (Library of Congress).
Israel’s political structure emerged from a different history but a similarly unresolved conflict over land and sovereignty.
The creation of Israel in 1948 produced a Jewish national state alongside the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
Today Israelis and Palestinians live on the same land under profoundly unequal legal and political systems.
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Image: Cover of the 1st edition, showing part of The Snake Charmer by Jean-Léon Gérôme, Clark Art Institute.
In both societies, the language of democracy operates beside enduring structures of hierarchy.
Those shared contradictions shape how each country understands security, territory, and political control.
That parallel history does not fully explain the alliance.
But it helps explain why the two states often recognize themselves in one another.
it.
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Video: Ex-Marine Brian McGinnis is removed as he shouts, “No one wants to fight for Israel.” USA Today.
Dr. D. Elisabeth Glassco
Richard Paul
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