> The idea that sending weapons to Israel is some sort of economic or military advantage to the U.S. is sophistry. We could simply take those same weapons and add them to our own inventory and use them in ways that actually benefit the U.S.

A huge number of US politicians disagree. It's fashionable to claim that they are all stupid but the fact is that this just isn't true. Looking at Israels success in missile defense and similar technologies it shows where the R&D collaboration with the US has made both more successful.

If the US won't send weapons Israel would just make its own and in the past made fantastic weapons. Including great fighter jets that were approaching F16 level in the 80s.

> One is as a carrot to continue the peace process.

That is true too.

> The second reason is that a lot of people that support Israel live in the U.S. and they vote.

That is also true. Today that's mostly the evangelicals though.

> If Israel no longer desires peace, the first reason doesn't exist.

This isn't true. First it assumes Israel doesn't want peace which is detached from reality. Peace exists with Egypt, Jordan etc. Israel returned territory it captured at war and signed a peace deal. All sides abide and this works well.

It can very well be argued that the current war is because of peace pressure against Israel. Israel left Gaza under US pressure to do so with no deal. Despite repeated attacks from Hamas it didn't go back in and maintained status quo. US pressure worked but created a powder-keg in Gaza that blew up eventually.

US pressure using the weapons as incentive worked very well, but you can't just wish peace to happen and force it on some people.

> Yes, Netanyahu stopped the settlements in Gaza, but again, sophistry.

Netanyahu has one ideal: Netanyahu. He has no morals, no backbone and no principals.

> While the settlements in Gaza were dismantled, the settlements in the West Bank were being expanded, as they continue to be.

As you can see from my other answers here I 100% agree that this is indeed a huge problem. The right-wing used the violence of Hamas as a means to attack the Palestinian authority for the past 3 decades. To be fair the Palestinian authority isn't great (e.g. lynching Israelis by tearing them limb from limb) but I agree that this is awful. The only way to solve this is to remove the two zero-sum entities: Hamas and the current government of Israel. The latter might not be removed in the next election, but the pendulum will eventually swing back...

Without Hamas things would hopefully calm down for a while.

> It very much is a "both sides" scenario.

No. The fact that there are bad people on both sides is true. But that simplifies the situation. Israel wants a Palestinian state and tries to achieve that. Yes, it has some lunatics but unlike Hamas even in the current government they can't do anything.

Hamas just wants to kill all Israelis. No law other than Sharia law. No civilian differentiation.

But the real horrible thing about Hamas is that they don't care how many Palestinians die as part of their Jihad. They consider the death of their own children as a bonus, they would go to heaven as they die heroes. Israel has never been like that. If Hamas had the firepower of Israel there would be no Israeli left. The reverse isn't true despite everything.

> If Israel wants to turn Gaza into rubble, leave millions of people homeless, and year after year take more land in the West Bank, I suppose we can't practically stop this, but personally I don't want want any part of it.

The thing is that Israel can do it and doesn't.

Furthermore, once the war is over it will help rebuild Gaza as it did in the past. The war isn't against the people of Gaza, it's against Hamas whose an enemy of the people of Gaza. It's a terrible organization that murders gays, believes domestic violence isn't a crime and brainwashes children to commit suicide bombings.

Yes, the war is terrible and violent. But what's the alternative?

Leaving the hostages to die?

Letting Hamas regain power and do another round of the same thing?

Violence is terrible. Always. But sometimes the avoidance of violence doesn't work. It just shoves it into a pressure cooker; it will be worse later on. We saw that with the 2005 deal. Israel left Gaza and tried to mostly ignore Hamas, that didn't work out well for anyone.