Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. “Treat People Like Animals Long Enough They’ll Start Acting like Animals.”
In the interests of the public record I’m going to post the things I have been saying on X in more permanent form here.
(1) Just to be clear: Hamas are terrorist gangsters, pogromists, and supporting them will make you look bad and evil. Israel has a right to kill or apprehend the pogrom perpetrators within the bounds of legality and proportionality. Sadly, this is hardly realistic with respect to a 2 million+ conurbation bristling with arms and fortifications. An Israeli ground offensive will very likely lead to thousands of IDF dead and many tens of thousands of Palestinian dead, perhaps evenly split between fighters and civilians. Supporting this will soon make you look bad and evil, to the extent it hasn’t happened already.
(2) Before long you will be jumping through hoops to rationalize IDF war crimes. There is no way to take partisan positions here and come out looking good.
(3) Taking sides in vicious tribal conflicts is dumb as fuck and is going to boomerang back on you. (I would know, I speak from experience).
(4) The only obviously self-evidently ethical thing to do here is to call for safe corridors for civilians and subsequent evacuation to the UK, the EU, and the US (this is not unreasonable in light of their complicity in this whole mess).
(5) The elites have given the plebs and their right-wing/IDW grifter ringleaders leave to temporarily indulge in their Two Minute Hate against Palestinians.
Zionist propagandists are spouting claims about how Palestinians are a fake nation, rationalizing settler-colonialism and keeping Gazans locked up in an open air prison, levying responsibility for Hamas on Gazans when the last elections were held in 2006 and half the population wasn’t even alive yet.
They cite polls showing that Gazans have genocidal anti-Semitic attitudes, without doing the necessary contextualization in the form of analogous Israeli polls showing that half of Israeli Jews support expelling (aka ethnically cleansing) Arabs from Israel (the country, not the occupied territory), that 79% believe Jews should get preferential treatment in Israel, and that half of Jewish high school children want to deny Arabs the vote. You can claim Israelis are innately much more humane or progressive than Palestinians on ethno-racial tolerance but this only works on low information people who are unaware of the comparative polling.
Amusingly we now see previously taboo HBD arguments related to IQ and cousin marriage wheeled out to demonize Palestinians. If I was a grifter I could doubtless monetize this quite nicely in light of my own past writings on this topic. However, sadly for my wallet and social status, I have no interest in helping legitimate Zionist/Republican pre-genocidal, Gog/Magog type rhetoric.
(6) It is amazing to observe the cynicism and hypocrisy on the part of the IDW grifter set and adjacents as they forget all their “free speech” and “heterodoxy” blather and transition to outright cancelation camps against Leftist pro-Palestinian activists (see my thread partial thread on this). While there are genuine anti-Semites amongst them, there has generally been no attempts to discriminate between them, as if someone like say Yanis Varoufakis has any intersection whatsoever with the Far Right Islamist identitarians and ethnic grievance studies “scholars” who have been harassing Jews. In practice, “anti-Israel” coming from anti-cancel culture people is rarely crude Hamas apologetics of the kind you see from the aforementioned groups, but mostly just war skepticism and refusal to endorse Far Right Zionist narratives.
This reached its self-lampooning apex in their attempts to “cancel” Greta for her anti-Semitic octopus.
A lot of people who like to mock wokists by stating that "words are not violence" are proving that, when the words in question hit close enough to home, they're just as much snowflakes as the most hysterical leftists.
— Philippe Lemoine (@phl43) October 14, 2023
This just all goes to show that for the vast majority of r*ghtoids – and yes, this includes a very solid majority of those into the free speech/heterodoxy/anti-cancel culture grift, not that this was a surprise, I have been writing about their true views for years – it was never about principles, but just seething resentment that it was the other side’s boot in their face.
(7) OK. Have your fun. Just don’t whine when, inevitably, come the likely refugee waves next year, the restrictions on speech and free assembly are weaponized against you. Or when public opinion turns against you for your hypocrisy and celebration of war crimes. (This isn’t 2003, zoomers aren’t buying your strongest ally/Israel First/Gog-Magog demenia-afflicted boomer rants).
Time and time again the r*ghtoids have demonstrated that, like the Bourbons, they learn nothing and forget nothing
Consequently, they lose again and again, and will continue losing, and will never even understand what happened or why.
Twitter Posts
Arranged in chronological order.
Oct 8: Humanitarian Priority is Safe Corridors/Open Borders for Palestinians
Imagine there were open borders with the developed world and Palestine.
Would young Palestinians, seething in not unjustified resentment, still join Hamas? Or emigrate – and take out their frustrations in less (self-)destructive and self-defeating ways? such as poasting.
Immigration restrictionists have blood on their hands. Apart from the global economic benefits, Open Borders will suck up those those who lost the birthplace lottery to places where they can be of more productive use, reducing geopolitical instability and undercutting sovereigntist dictators.
Oct 11: BASIC ISRAEL & GAZA THESES / EHC💯 PEACE PLAN
* Hamas are a gang of evil morons who have sealed their own fate and intend to take 2M Palestinians with them. 🔥🌆
* Zionist fash are happy to take them up on it.
* Western fash – the neocons, the IDW/anti-Woke grifters, the Republican Party and the Alt Right, the Gog/Magog religious freaks, racialist Islamophobes (those who just hate immigrants of Muslim background for identitarian reasons, not /r/exmuslim type legitimate criticism of Muslim society’s problems) – is, knowingly or inadvertently as the case might be, running cover for them.
* The handful of Hamas stans, larpers, and edgelords (massively inflated by Zionist/Alt Right propaganda) are useful idiots for the fash. The sum total of their efforts is to provide materiel to dehumanize Palestinians for the fash, which has an agenda and has no interest in putting this into its proper context (that it’s a very small-scale phenomenon).
* Sieging a 2M densely packed urban agglomeration will result in 10ks deaths in the optimistic scenario and 100ks deaths if no evacuation corridors. Food, fuel, and electricity cutoff + bombing water treatment plants => mass deaths begin within 1-2 weeks. I am not even talking about the practicalities of taking a heavily defended huge city. Let’s just say it’s not going to be a series of SWAT raids that many bozos seem to be envisaging.
* It is reasonable to go easy on Israelis and/or Jews in light of the trauma Israel has just experienced. They are enraged and the actions Israel will take in response are now programmed in a way that those of the US were after 9/11 (though then as now many of them will be stupid and ultimately self-defeating in retrospect).
* However non-Jewish/Israeli onlookers have no such excuse. Goyim currently engaged in dehumanizing Palestinians by association with Hamas, mocking them for not overthrowing Hamas (a terrorist organization that imprisons critics and kills traitors) for the benefit of a polity that keeps them in an open air prison, making bold and contextless claims about their supposedly genocidal anti-Semitism, are looking to be complicit in genocide.
What needs to happen now
Since Israeli military action is programmed (you don’t just call up 300k reservists and move 100s of artillery pieces to the Gazan border and then do nothing), and there’s already a countdown to a humanitarian disaster, the focus needs to be on the following:
(1) Egypt needs to open up evacuation corridors yesterday.
(2) Sisi doesn’t want to do it because he prizes regime stability over complicity in genocide. If Egyptian civil society can’t force him to change his mind before it’s too late, the EU, the UK, and the US need to preempt him by committing to take in Palestinian refugees so that they would not be a security problem for Egypt. This is the least they are obligated to do in light of their own complicity.
(3) Once passions cool down in a year or two, or five, it might be worth looking at how Israel’s obsession with securing illegal settlements in the West Bank diverted its attention from the threat from Hamas – and ask some pointed questions over it. In the ideal scenario for Palestinians, the settlers can be withdrawn, and with Gaza a depopulated husk as likely as not by now, perhaps some kind of deal can be struck in which the Israelis get Gaza while withdrawing fully from the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
After a decade or two, there needs to be a giant joint Israeli-Palestinian gay pride parade 🏳️🌈 in Jerusalem to commemorate the formal dissolution of Israel and Palestine and their tokenization, with all Israelis and Palestinians receiving an NFT entitling them to a 25% share of the profits from economic activity accruing in this territory for the next century, in line with analogous #dismantling processes taking place all over the rest of the world. But this conversation is for a slightly later time.
Oct 13: Taking Sides is Bad. Don’t Do It.
It’s so blindingly obvious. Being a Palestine partisan now makes you look bad & evil. Being an Israel partisan now will make you look bad & evil in 1-2 weeks once the war crimes begin piling up.
The only way to win is to avoid picking sides in vicious tribal conflicts. Not hard.
What is going to happen now is that Israel will commit war crimes on a massive scale and Western governments will say nothing at first, until it gets so bad that it becomes impossible to ignore, at which point they’ll start protesting weakly and only gradually apply pressure.
No, you’re not going to ally with Based Jews to achieve final victory over the Wokes and take back the universities. You will soon be busy jumping through hoops to justify IDF war crimes, or quietly forgetting about this nasty episode and engaging in your next idiot culture war.
In a few months, as likely as not, you’re going to be seething over the refugee waves coming to your country (if you’re in Europe). The anti-free speech and anti-protest laws you’re celebrating now will be invoked against you, and Based Israel won’t have anything to say about it.
Oct 22: OCTOPUSGATE
(1) Very online pro-Zionists portrayed Greta’s octopus toy as an anti-Semitic dogwhistle, despite it being a common trope, both historically and today, used to criticize and demean countries the cartoonist has a peeve about. It has absolutely nothing to do with Jews or anti-Semitism specifically. For my own part, I was aware of this wrt Russia, and discovered it was actually truly universal: https://twitter.com/powerfultakes/status/1715844137507815794
(2) In fact, some even explicitly say that the ends justify the dishonest SJW-like means (I won’t link examples as I like the people I saw engaging in it, but the main Tweets are easy to find). Leaving the cynicism and bad faith aside, I’m very curious how exactly they expect to see this artificial outrage theater on the intellectual level of r*ghtoid obsessions about Schwab’s insect menu, Hunter Biden’s BWC, and Obama’s gay conquests to succeed at “canceling” Greta. When normies are rofling at this whole octopus thing. And when Greta incidentally happens to live in the one significant Western country that officially recognizes Palestine.
(3) We have also learned that the octopus toy Greta has in particular really is widely sold and used by autistic children to express their emotional states. So just optics wise, to say nothing of ethics, it is even worse in that it weaponizes a mental health issue in service of a vicious libel.
(4) Octopuses are great anyway:
Last human-octopus ancestor was a worm like thing 600 million years ago.
Alone in the mollusk family, they independently evolved intelligence, an alien but nonetheless recognizable kind. Incredibly inspiring, and strong evidence evolution of advanced intelligence is programmed. pic.twitter.com/gvpCdnXZMi
— Anatoly Karlin 🧬⏩ (@powerfultakes) October 21, 2023
Cephalopodphobia must end.
(5) I have yet to see any takebacks. They really do seem to think this is their chance to own back the leftists like the leftists did with the OK 👌 sign a few years ago.
For those who don’t know the story, it made them a laughing stock amongst normal, non-politicized people.
Again, to reiterate, to some extent I understand that Israelis, and to a lesser extent Jews in general, are feeling extremely agitated and this is destructive of critical faculties, and some allowance needs to be made for that – though much less so for non-Jews who don’t have an intimately personal stake in the current events. However, it should lead you to downgrade what the people who bought into and pushed the Octopusgate narrative have to say going further on anything pertaining to the Israel vs. Palestine conflict.
Oct 24: Shitpost on how this “based” European SocDem is going to end
So the rightoids are telling me that Europe is going fash and it’s a GOOD thing – the White Man is FINALLY waking up – loser populists; based and redpilled socdems!
OK, I understanding this from people a decade younger than me. You weren’t here for this:
Angela Merkel: German multiculturalism has ‘utterly failed’
This is how that particular journey into the Basedlands ended: Refugees Welcome!
Geopolitical turmoil 🇸🇾💥 resulted in a refugee wave and all of that insincere pandering about how “multiculturalism has failed” vanished in a puff of riotous smoke.
Those too outspoken against it were deplatformed or went to jail. 🚨🏃🚓👮♀️
Now the relationship between geopolitics and the coming refugee waves are even more obvious but many of you are… actively cheering it on!? LOL. ROFL.
Here’s a spoiler for you, bucko. This story doesn’t have a happy ending, for you. Based Scholz will mumble some based things to dampen the AfD’s appeal and come time it will be back to business as usual. Even the “nationalist populist” types like Meloni got the plot – and you expect anything from mainstream politicians?
As I keep saying there’s just no way to win with r*ghtoids. The Elite Human Capital 💯 won.
R*ghtoid – time to accept your extinction with dignity!
You can spend the next years and decades (conditional on the AI not eating everything) seething about “population replacement” and getting kicked off platforms by SJWs and hating on “apostates” like myself.
Or you can accept the gift I am generously offering you… the cure to your painful, terminal affliction.
Euthanasia. 💉💉💉
Time to embrace your destiny, r*ghtoid! Come, my wayward child, bow as I did before the Elite Human Capital 💯, and join me in the crusade for #dismantlement and Open Borders. For only in unity as part of a global collective can true greatness be achieved. 🌐🌐🌐
Oct 26: Hamas is Bad, m’kay?
Just to be clear, Hamas is very bad and it is legitimate for Israel to seek to destroy it, and to kill or apprehend the pogrom perpetrators (within the scope of legality and proportionality).
Harassing Jewish students is very bad and there are existing anti-harassment laws (let alone university code of conduct regulations) against it. It is reasonable to invoke them where appropriate.
Israel has a right to existence and this outlook is based on international law and common sense, and has nothing to do with Zionism as it is colloquially understood in the present day (Israeli nationalism).
Stanning Hamas is legal (or should be), but is highly distasteful. It is reasonable to socially ostracize their supporters if they continue stanning for them after being explained that Hamas is a terrorist organization that engages in war crimes, and which is negative value added for the cause of Palestinian liberation. (That said, conservative right-wing attempts to link viciously Far Right Islamist ideology to kumbaya lefty stuff is laughable, transparently dishonest, and not the “own” many of them seem to think it is).
Glad to see you back, Karlin. Do you think there is any realistic chance at a resolution of the Israel-Gaza conflict in the near future?
It’s quite interesting how Israeli rightoids have spent the past year provoking a lot of Israelis who don’t share their proclivities (Israeli liberals, Israeli EHC, Israelis of Jewish descent who aren’t halakhically Jewish, et cetera) and yet because they didn’t prepare enough security around Gaza and thus got Israel’s version of 9/11, they are going to need to be calling those Israelis whom they have recently been provoking into helping them put out the Hamas fire.
I don’t share your enthusiasm for the destruction of existing nation-states (rather, I think that all of them, including Israel, should be converted to more inclusive proposition-states like the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, et cetera currently are), but it is quite interesting how Israeli rightoids have chosen some stupid battles over the last year, such as wanting to repeal the Grandchild Clause of Israel’s Law of Return (plans that have apparently now been put on hold indefinitely) even though Israel does not have any serious problems in integrating the grandchildren and even great-grandchildren of halakhic Jews, who BTW in terms of their total ancestry are no less Jewish than some halakhic Jews are (one can be a halakhic Jew and have 1 Jewish grandparent out of 4 or even 1 Jewish great-grandparent out of 8 just so long as it’s the right one). What exactly can you reasonably expect from Israeli rightoids in regards to them severely pissing off people who have a Jewish grandfather and who are already Israeli citizens, such as myself, BTW?
* The story of security around Gaza involves really dumb vacation policies by the IDF where fixing warning systems was delayed ‘after the holiday’, and half the troops got leave.
* All proposition-states required massive genocides (way beyond anything in Israel/Palestine by either side) to be created. It’s not a nice proposition to support.
* The Grandchild clause repeal was scuttled by Likud itself.
“* The story of security around Gaza involves really dumb vacation policies by the IDF where fixing warning systems was delayed ‘after the holiday’, and half the troops got leave.”
Yep, and it also didn’t help that Israel was severely divided as a result of the recent protests against Bibi’s government, with a lot of reservists threatening to refuse to serve, et cetera until after this attack occurred.
“* All proposition-states required massive genocides (way beyond anything in Israel/Palestine by either side) to be created. It’s not a nice proposition to support.”
Well, the countries in Western Europe appear to be converting themselves into proposition-states over the last several decades without any genocide. Though they could have been more selective with their Muslim immigrants. If Israel will ever try encouraging widespread conversion to Judaism throughout the world as a state policy (even for just a couple million people in total), then it could also become closer to a proposition-state, albeit with a heavily Jewish flavor. There was one prominent US Jew who wrote an article about how Israel should open Judaism to refugees:
https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/opinion/232143/israel-should-open-judaism-to-refugees/
FWIW, the African asylum seekers in Israel do appear to have some sympathy with Israel:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/with-memories-of-atrocities-in-africa-still-vivid-asylum-seekers-are-helping-israel/
Though as always, it’s a question of numbers and weeding out the bad apples.
“* The Grandchild clause repeal was scuttled by Likud itself.”
Yes, but they still agreed to a committee to examine this issue. What this committee would have proposed, and whether it would have actually been acted upon, are open questions.
So, Yes, you are correct that Likud scuttled the worst proposal in regards to this (flat-out repeal), but we weren’t fully out of the woods yet and there was still the possibility that some kind of less drastic compromise solution in regards to this issue could have been reached. I don’t know just how high the odds would have been, though, because one would have needed to get almost the entire coalition to support this and almost no one in the opposition (an exception might be someone like Matan Kahana) would have supported such a change. I don’t know if there was any proposal in regards to this that could have gotten nearly unanimous support among the coalition.
>Well, the countries in Western Europe appear to be converting themselves into proposition-states
I’m not yet sure where this process leads to. Is it just assimilation, abolishing the state for the EU, mass internal tensions, extreme-right reaction, or said proposition-state. The result may differ by state. We’ll see.
>Easier conversions…
A good idea, but it clashes with both sides of the political spectrum. There’s a certain anti-clerical edge to some in the Left, and the Orthodox in the right won’t like it. Doable but in the margins – or if the state feels really really threatened (even beyond the current situation).
>Yes, but they [Likud] still agreed to a committee to examine this issue. What this committee would have proposed, and whether it would have actually been acted upon, are open questions.
The committee was supposed to deliver a report within 6 months. I recall it never even had a session. It’s the typical way to bury a thing.
> I’m not yet sure where this process leads to. Is it just assimilation, abolishing the state for the EU, mass internal tensions, extreme-right reaction, or said proposition-state. The result may differ by state. We’ll see.
Yep, it depends on the specific country. As a side note, one can be a nationalist and support the EU if one’s nationalism is of a Pan-European flavor. FWIW, I support the EU because it makes it easier for European countries to achieve greater things when they combine their efforts. It also makes freedom of movement throughout Europe much easier.
The countries in the Anglosphere diaspora appear to have mastered immigrant integration best of all, it appears. In large part, it’s because a lot of the immigrants that they get are cognitive elites, along with of course culturally compatible mostly working-class Christian Latin Americans (of partial European descent) in the US’s case. You can compare data on immigrants here:
https://jsmp.dk/posts/2019-09-26-braindrain/immigration.html
> A good idea, but it clashes with both sides of the political spectrum. There’s a certain anti-clerical edge to some in the Left, and the Orthodox in the right won’t like it. Doable but in the margins – or if the state feels really really threatened (even beyond the current situation).
Well, another alternative is to simply create two Jewish communities in Israel, Jewish Jews and non-Jewish Jews, and to have them coexist harmoniously side-by-side, similar to what this Open Orthodox rabbi is proposing:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/solving-the-conversion-crisis/
https://www.cardozoacademy.org/thoughtstoponder/solving-the-conversion-crisis-and-global-judaism-part-2-ttp-216/
> The committee was supposed to deliver a report within 6 months. I recall it never even had a session. It’s the typical way to bury a thing.
This committee likely would have eventually had sessions had it not been for Israel’s version of 9/11. I do wonder what kind of report it would have eventually come up with and whether the current Israeli government would have actually accepted the conclusions of this report, though.
Do you think that when this Likud minister was keeping the door open to changes in the Law of Return, he was merely trying to please his more right-wing coalition partners?
https://www.timesofisrael.com/chikli-tells-diaspora-hes-listening-but-doesnt-rule-out-change-to-law-of-return/
https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/amichai-chikli-on-amending-the-law-of-return-weve-got-to-do-it-slow/
As a side note, it looks like the issue of amending the Law of Return should become dead for the next 10 years or so. Israel can’t afford to alienate any of its potential supporters at a time like this, and too many people, both in Israel and abroad, will interpret any significant restrictive changes to the Grandchild Clause as being a spit in the face towards them, or towards their friends and/or relatives. And in 10 years, most of the remaining Law of Return-eligible people in the former USSR who will want to move to Israel would likely have already done so, which will increase the costs of amending the Law of Return relative to the potential benefits (since immigration to Israel from outside of the former USSR generally consists of halakhic Jews and will in the future, short of truly radical anti-Semitic developments in the West).
FWIW, I would personally be willing to support a compromise in regards to the Law of Return where the Grandchild Clause is kept as it is but Israel is also willing to accept immigrants of patrilineal Jewish descent for an unlimited number of generations, similar to immigrants of matrilineal Jewish descent (if a German had a maternal-line Jewish ancestor who converted to Christianity around 1800 and this German can prove it and declares himself to be an atheist, then AFAIK, he can move to Israel due to him being considered halakhically Jewish even though his family’s connection to the Jewish people didn’t exist over the last 200 years; patrilineal Jews should get the same privilege). In exchange, rather than being given immediate citizenship, all immigrants to Israel, including those who are halakhic Jews, will be required to pass a Jewish knowledge test (Jewish history, Jewish law, Israeli history, Hebrew fluency, et cetera) before they would actually be allowed to become Israeli citizens. They would still be allowed to immigrate to Israel and become Israeli permanent residents automatically, of course. Unfortunately, I don’t see this proposal of mine actually being adopted. 🙁 But I’m very open to keeping the existing status quo in regards to immigration in Israel.
* As for immigration and proposition-state, I think we’ve agreed to wait and see. I don’t think however an Israel that accepted your changes would be less of a Jewish State though and I don’t think its opponents would grant it being a ‘proposition state’.
* I don’t believe the committee would have opened anytime soon if ever. Israel was reeling from the judicial overhaul issue, and no way the coalition would have wanted to open this subject which is far from the most important for its members.
* As far the Law of Return is concerned, a simple compromise would be to keep it as it is, but make full citizenship take a number of years rather than immediate. This change makes sense anyway.
> * As for immigration and proposition-state, I think we’ve agreed to wait and see. I don’t think however an Israel that accepted your changes would be less of a Jewish State though and I don’t think its opponents would grant it being a ‘proposition state’.
That wasn’t the change that would make Israel a proposition-state. Rather, having Israel actively encourage mass conversions to Judaism throughout the world (excluding in heavily Muslim countries, obviously) is what I was thinking of when I said that Israel should become a proposition-state. Not very politically realistic, of course, because unfortunately Judaism has historically shunned conversions even of a voluntary nature unless they’re for marriage or something like that, but I honestly do think that it would be desirable for Judaism’s views on conversions to change. Also wouldn’t hurt having Israel have a separate (on top of its existing Law of Return) merit-based immigration policy for smart and talented gentiles, similar to, say, Canada or Australia or New Zealand.
As a side note, I really do wish that Israel would join the EU so that I could have EU citizenship alongside my existing Israeli and US citizenships, but unfortunately I know that it’s unfeasible for so long as Israel will remain in a state of war/conflict. I can’t apply for EU citizenship through family ties because my paternal line Jewish great-grandfather was kidnapped from Sarny, Poland during the Polish-Soviet War and brought over to the Soviet Union because he was literate and the Bolsheviks needed literate people, which ironically ended up saving his (and his family’s) life from the subsequent Holocaust but which I think makes me ineligible for Polish citizenship (not to mention that acquiring all of the necessary documents would likely be difficult by now). My Jewish ancestors lived in the Ukrainian SSR until 1941, when they fled eastwards due to Operation Barbarossa and then remained in the Russian SSR until the USSR’s collapse, during which point they intermarried with Eastern Slavs for a couple of generations. My parents (my dad had a fully Jewish father, who BTW himself stayed in Russia before dying of a heart attack several years later at the age of 68 in July 1997) moved to Israel in December 1991 and we moved to the US in March 2001. I don’t think that I’m eligible for Ukrainian citizenship either, though personally I would very much hesitate to take it due to the risk of getting killed in this or a future war with Russia.
> * I don’t believe the committee would have opened anytime soon if ever. Israel was reeling from the judicial overhaul issue, and no way the coalition would have wanted to open this subject which is far from the most important for its members.
TBH, I suspect that people like Smotrich and Maoz really do place a big deal on this. Maybe the rest of the coalition would not have shared their views on this, but people such as Smotrich and Maoz really do appear to lack much nuance in the fact that halakha isn’t the only way nowadays to claim a Jewish identity. I do agree that the judicial overhaul is more important, but if it would have succeeded, would the coalition have simply given up on the rest of their agenda?
> * As far the Law of Return is concerned, a simple compromise would be to keep it as it is, but make full citizenship take a number of years rather than immediate. This change makes sense anyway.
That’s fair enough as far as it goes, but I would still like a sweetener to go along with this, such as allowing people who aren’t eligible for the Law of Return but who nevertheless have a Jewish last name (and at least don’t practice any other religion, if absolutely necessary, though one can still have a strong Jewish identity even if one does practice another religion, like this guy: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/im-a-catholic-friar-and-also-a-jew-the-law-of-return-should-work-for-me/ ) to immigrate to Israel. For instance, people like this guy, with a Jewish last name and a Jewish great-grandfather: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Edelman Those people are probably significantly likelier to suffer from anti-Semitism relative to people without Jewish last names, after all.
As a side note, did this piggish (for a lack of a better word) behavior by Israel’s Interior Ministry ever get changed? https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2022-06-07/ty-article/.highlight/ukrainian-widows-keep-getting-barred-from-israel-despite-court-ruling/00000181-3e25-df72-a5cb-beff6d020000 The Interior Ministry has apparently been defying a High Court of Justice ruling in regards to this, one that is very sensible to boot: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/high-court-rules-law-of-return-extends-to-widows-of-those-eligible-678167
Finally, I think that right-wing Israelis who still support changing Israel’s Law of Return even right now (probably fewer of them right now, thankfully) should try finding and talking to some people, especially Israelis, who are of Jewish descent but not halakhically Jewish. I suspect that they have a lot of inaccurate beliefs about this population.
* Israel will NEVER join the EU. It’s not even a question of borders/peace. It’s that the country is by self-conception not European. Any attempt at joining will alienate Mizrachi and Arabs and validate the colony narrative. That’s an identity issue and I’ll definitely be out in the streets if anyone ever thought about it seriously (let’s not even start with other issues like Schnegen).
* Smotrich is much more concerned with settlements. Maoz has no real political power (his separate party had less than 10,000 votes), he’s an effective bureaucrat with a single MK and that’s it.
* The Interior ministry is still smarting over Bagatz’s handling of the migrant issues. The Right has made sure to keep the office since the minister could hand citizenships to anyone almost at will. Also, it’s one of the most important ministries for municipalities so keeping it just makes political sense. All this has a significant institutional effect on how the ministry acts. I think in practice the Interior minister is far more important and powerful than the Foreign-affairs minister who always has to defer to the PM. A reform where the Interior minister had less power would do a lot to defang sensitivity (some people have suggested a government arrangement of ‘High ministers’ supervising ‘Low ministers’, so we’d have a High Interior minister supervising a municipal minister and an immigration minister etc.).
> * Israel will NEVER join the EU. It’s not even a question of borders/peace. It’s that the country is by self-conception not European. Any attempt at joining will alienate Mizrachi and Arabs and validate the colony narrative. That’s an identity issue and I’ll definitely be out in the streets if anyone ever thought about it seriously (let’s not even start with other issues like Schnegen).
Don’t some Israeli Mizrahi Jews already have European citizenship if they have French citizenship, though? They don’t see a conflict between that and their own Mizrahi identity, now do they?
I am also a recovering R***oid, and ex-Zionist, so please take this in the spirit it is intended:
1) While it may well be hypocritical to wheel out otherwise taboo HBD arguments, there is a genuine point. The pro- 2 state solution argument is that if there are two prosperous states side by then extremists on the Palestinian side will gradually lose influence. But what if a prosperous Palestinian State is actually literally impossible because of a mixture of culture, genetics, and cousin marriage? Even if you want to say Gaza is still occupied, it’s still the case that the *less* occupied Palestinians are by Israel, the worse things get. What logic dictates that further de-occupation won’t just make it even worse?
2) Have you been to Israel? I don’t want to sound like a h***barist, but I am literally looking across the road now at the very large house owned by a successful Arab businessman (he runs the local water cooler supply). Yesterday he came over and helped my wife change the tire on her bike. I just don’t recognise the reality you portray.
Even though the Palestinians are pretty dull on average, there isn’t any reason that their future state, if it will ever actually become independent, viable, and non-hostile, can’t become as wealthy as Bulgaria or Mexico with sufficient investment, which can come from the West as well as from other Muslim countries and perhaps other places such as China. Bulgaria and Mexico are also both pretty dull on average and yet they nevertheless have a comfortable standard of living by global standards. It would likely take the Palestinians decades to reach Bulgarian and Mexican living standards, though.
There’s no reason other than culture/genetics/whatever reason the entire Arab world sucks except places with oil. And that the geography is getting too small for their population (even not including Right of Return). And the constant inevitable interference by many many external actors* funding terrorist organizations to fight Israel – which would happen even if our would-be state would be against said interference, as many of said actors are much stronger than the state could ever be. And of course an entire historical narrative built on revanchism which would eventually lead them to elect nasty revanchist parties – also backed by same external actors.
You’d need an absolute dictatorship funded by external aid just to keep the peace, except this entire setup is extremely bad for development**, assumes that the dictator would play ball, and assumes the West could keep it up before ‘human rights’ advocates undermine said external aid. You’ll need some external force to keep said dictator in power for his highly unpopular policies. So our ‘solution’ looks suspiciously very much like the current wonderful situation in the West Bank.
We even have historical examples: Arafat (decided to fight Israel), Abbas (Murderous Holocaust denier but is in check because weak. Only kept in place by Israeli bayonets), and Hamas leadership in Gaza (Which Israel thought could keep the peace. Right).
The only maybe-workable option would be to involve Egypt and Jordan in this somehow (Stronger states, already dictatorial, larger amounts of land). This is the one option the international community will never consider, and the King/President hate the very idea with every fiber of their being, and would do _anything_ to avoid it (apparently they think they can’t handle this). Did I mention Egypt is already bankrupt, and Jordan isn’t far behind?
* Iran, Malasya, Turkey on bad days, Syria/Iraq, Jihadists, private wealthy Islamists, rejectionist Palestinians living abroad… The list is almost endless.
** Yes, yes, South Korea – except that path is blocked, and our dictatorship would have to be more like North Korea. Just look at any non-democratic Arab state to see how this ends up.
“You’d need an absolute dictatorship funded by external aid just to keep the peace, except this entire setup is extremely bad for development**”
Morality aside (which is why I obviously would never support this outcome), would a brutal pro-Russian dictatorship in Ukraine have been bad for Ukrainian development? I mean where Russia would have pulled the strings to a much greater extent than it did with Yanukovych in the early 2010s. Something similar to what Russia was aiming for when it invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Ataturk’s Turkey was dictatorial and yet a development success, no? Ditto for the Shah’s Iran, other than for the fact that it eventually descended into revolution.
What about inviting UN forces to monitor any future peace settlement? Or even NATO forces? Israel saying that it’s willing to, say, withdraw to the West Bank barrier and negotiate over the rest later but that it needs solid security guarantees from the international community in order to prevent another 9/11-style attack afterwards.
> would a brutal pro-Russian dictatorship in Ukraine have been bad for Ukrainian development
Definitely. Our host is more knowledgeable, but my impression is that the original reason for Maiden wasn’t nationalist at all. It was that nearly everyone Ukrainian could see Russia was a dead-end economically. A few didn’t care so long as they were rich, but too few.
>Ataturk’s Turkey was dictatorial and yet a development success… eventually descended into revolution
Arguably Erdogan is exactly that same revolution. And Palestinian revanchism is a million times more fierce than Erdo’s ideology. Anyway, that development path (industrialization via cheaper labour) is blocked by automation and soon AI.
>What about inviting UN forces to monitor any future peace settlement? Or even NATO forces?
UNIFIL. UN peacekeepers in the Sinai. The sound of Westerners screaming when they discover the intent to have a large ground force doing counterinsurgency in the Middle East in its most explosive location. Assuming the type of people who demonstrate for ‘Free Palestine from the river to the sea’ won’t also be members of the force. This is 100% untenable by any consideration.
I have a simple test for I/P solutions – are they more tenable and likely than converting just about everyone there to Zen Buddhism? If the answer is ‘No’, they’re not worth discussing.
FWIW, Israel’s bureaucracy is really dysfunctional in a bad way:
https://www.colbonews.co.il/haifa-news/159311/
As for Palestine, why not do what the US did with the Platt Amendment in Cuba, but permanently?
And can’t the Third World import AI with the help of the West to help the Third World develop, at least if the Third World will actually have good relations with the West?
I’ll respond here since the threading is getting out of hand.
>Don’t some Israeli Mizrahi Jews already have European citizenship if they have French citizenship, though? They don’t see a conflict between that and their own Mizrahi identity, now do they?
Mizrahi aren’t monolithic. There’s a strong difference between Magreb and Levant Jews and also within these groups. For example, note how the Radical Left Mizrachi part is entirely composed of former Baghdadi Jews (often the former communist party), which were the only semi-assimilated community in Arab states (I think there are a lot of parallels between Baghdadi and German Jews, from history to the position of some of the former elite post-WW2). Some Mizrahi will be offended, as well as some Askhenazi Jews. And it’s not as if the EU offers security – just look at Cyprus.
>As for Palestine, why not do what the US did with the Platt Amendment in Cuba, but permanently?
US voters are allergic to permanent ground presence in the Middle East for obvious reasons.
Also, look at the current discussions at what to do with Gaza. There’s a long search for frei.. I mean sucke.. countries which are willing to take over Gaza in a post-Hamas-rule world. The world is divided into states that wisely want to nothing to do with the mess, states that support Hamas and shouldn’t be within 300km of the strip, and Israel that will end up holding the ball at least for a while (No, the PA doesn’t really want to immediately return. They know they’ll just end up being thrown off rooftops again. They need the strip to be so desperate it will welcome them. I think the rooftops are still in their future though).
>can’t the Third World import AI with the help of the West to help the Third World develop
Hm. In general I tend towards pessimism in these matters. No point for a leading AI company to deal with the political mess of the Third World, so all leading AI will be concentrated in the West/China/India. But it’s possible that there are worldwide AI restrictions that would lead companies to base themselves in the badlands. Like Lobotomy Corp in its early stages***. Maybe we should simp for AI safety regulations?
*** a gaming reference.
> US voters are allergic to permanent ground presence in the Middle East for obvious reasons.
I was talking about Israel doing this, not the US. Israel would be to Palestine what the US was to Cuba in the first couple of decades of its independence, except possibly for a much longer time period.
> Also, look at the current discussions at what to do with Gaza. There’s a long search for frei.. I mean sucke.. countries which are willing to take over Gaza in a post-Hamas-rule world. The world is divided into states that wisely want to nothing to do with the mess, states that support Hamas and shouldn’t be within 300km of the strip, and Israel that will end up holding the ball at least for a while (No, the PA doesn’t really want to immediately return. They know they’ll just end up being thrown off rooftops again. They need the strip to be so desperate it will welcome them. I think the rooftops are still in their future though).
PA rule propped up by a permanent Israeli military presence seems like the best option, no? Not ideal for Palestinians, but better than a return of Hamas.
> Hm. In general I tend towards pessimism in these matters. No point for a leading AI company to deal with the political mess of the Third World, so all leading AI will be concentrated in the West/China/India. But it’s possible that there are worldwide AI restrictions that would lead companies to base themselves in the badlands. Like Lobotomy Corp in its early stages***. Maybe we should simp for AI safety regulations?
Not all Third World countries are politically unstable, to my knowledge.
Also, as a side note, do you still expect the Grandchild Clause to remain in place in, say, 2050 and 2100? Because by 2048, a majority of Israeli newborns are projected to be Haredim. Unless they will become significantly more tolerant (and this can include having a lot of them leave the Haredi world, though it doesn’t have to), their intolerance and growing political power is likely to pose a significant problem for those Israelis of Jewish descent who are not halakhically Jewish. The only hope might be that by then immigration from the ex-USSR might be reduced to a relative trickle due to the emptying of the Jewish descent demographic reservoir and thus even an Israel where the Haredim have much more political power would not want to destroy their relations with Diaspora Jewry by repealing a law that by then would have little impact on Israel’s demographics (since the “damage” from this law, from a Haredi perspective, would have already almost completely been done by then).
>I was talking about Israel doing this, not the US. Israel would be to Palestine what the US was to Cuba in the first couple of decades of its independence, except possibly for a much longer time period.
You’re asking Israel to enforce terms. Whose terms? Obviously, a one-sided imposition won’t work (unless it’s utterly brutal). So we need some UN/consensus imprimatur agreed with Israel: “THIS is the solution. No, you won’t get anything better ever if you keep this up. Get used to it”. Do we see a UN willing to give up ‘right of return’ for example? There are a fair number of countries who’d like to keep the conflict going. I’m pretty sure Russia likes using this conflict as an alleged example of hypocrisy by the West.
>Not all Third World countries are politically unstable, to my knowledge.
Politically unstable is only one type of political mess. I never knew just how much organized crime ‘stable’ Uzbekistan has until I got to know some Uzbeks. I think my point stands regardless – for now, it’s in most AI companies’ interest to be in the richest areas.
>Also, as a side note, do you still expect the Grandchild Clause to remain in place in, say, 2050 and 2100? ..Haredim..
Predicting is hard, but given the assumptions of your scenario, I’ll say it will likely stay. The people who really care about the grandchild clause are the Hardali or nationalist types, and their concern is really about demography. In your scenario it’s not that big a issue due to Haredi growth. The typical Haredi leader only cares that the law implies someone is Jewish not by Halacha – but this is a more general problem with the law, and can be worked around with the right phrasing. On the other hand, it would be in everybody’s actual interests to keep the clause or even expand it (Haredi get taxpayers, others get something to balance Haredi with).
The problem with that scenario/prediction is that Haredi society will – must – change given that kind of demographic increase, but it’s very difficult for me to predict how. It’s possible Haredi society will change in a way that is ideologically opposed to this, or it could change the other way. There are hints of greater integration following this war. Well, we’ll see.
Come to think of it, such an Israel where Haredi growth swamps everything might have serious housing issues, and maybe _that_ would lead to restrictions. My point is that the real reason behind this discussion isn’t so much halacha as a certain version of nationalism, and it’s not clear such a version would do well in a Haredi-max future.