Why? What business does the US still have in the Middle East? It’s not the 1970s any more. The US now exports more oil than it imports.

Because oil is still just as important a resource as it was in the 1970's, and so it matters a lot what's happening in that region. It matters globally. It's where critical allies of the U.S. (like Japan and Taiwan) get most of their oil. It's where rivals of the U.S. (like China) get most of their oil. And the oil market is global and fungible. Which means that the U.S. is not insulated from what happens with other oil producers even though we're a net exporter. That's why gas prices are over $4.00 per gallon right now, even though we're a net exporter.

Israel's strategic value to the U.S. has been that it is a large powerful military force in the region that is: i) completely not on Team China or Team Russia; and ii) is wholly against the various Islamic terrorist organizations that have posed threats to the U.S. in the past. IOW, they are the only country in the region that is totally 100% committed entirely to being on Team West. Mostly that's just the way history played out. When the Cold War started after WWII, the various Arab states were very angry with Britain and France and so aligned a lot more with the Sino-Soviet side of the Great Game. Israel was, and still is, the only country in the region that is wholly outside the Sino-Russian sphere of interests. It's incredibly valuable to us for them to be a major military power to block them.

Which is part of why Saudi Arabia isn't a viable replacement. They're somewhat our allies, but they're not nearly as distant from China and Russia as Israel. Plus, you know, there's the matter of them being an absolutist Islamic monarchy where women have restricted rights, being gay is a crime that can be punished by death, journalists are murdered and hacked to pieces on the order of the government, etc. It wasn't so long ago that we were intensely troubled by the role of Wahhabism in Saudi society and the complete absence of any political freedoms. We still care about those things, which is why U.S. support for Saudi Arabia has always been deeply offensive to large swatches of the U.S. Right now these things are not as salient to progressives who are deeply focused on Israel and Gaza, but they also represent a vast obstacle to the U.S. holding Saudi close as an ally. And they also contribute to Saudi Arabia not embracing the U.S. to the degree Israel has, making them less dependable an ally.

These are some of the things that we keep wishing Trump understood: the rest of the world matters, being an oil exporter doesn't insulate you from the importance of global oil markets, a country can still be an important ally even if they aren't obedient to the U.S., etc. That's a big reason why having an extremely strong Israeli military has been a foreign policy tool of the U.S. We want a big military power that is absolutely not on Team China or Team Russia, that isn't an authoritarian Islamic states, and is 100% oriented towards the West. Even if they don't listen to us all the time, they serve the important purpose of thwarting Iranian, Chinese, and Russian ambitions in the area - critical to making sure that such an important part of global oil supply doesn't fall under their control.