Israel General Discussion: Annus Horribilis

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

Rumors that Netanyahu is going to keep the one-seat Noam out of the coalition. Like I thought, they got Avi Maoz to say outrageous homophobic stuff to scare the LGBT community and then pretend to protect us by keeping him out, while giving the worst activist homophobes from the Otzma and RZ list a ton of unchecked powers on issues of health and rights, and gutting the ability of the courts to protect us

Classic Israeli pink washing. Maoz will be out, Ohana will get the Foreign Office, and internally the government could repress minorities but host a pompous pride parade in Tel Aviv.

That's the best description of Israel 2009-2021

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

Israeli Youth Lead Turn to the Far Right as Violence Increases

Of course. I've called this for a decade now.

In most countries the youth lean left, but in Israel they are reactionary religious conservatives. It won't be long before gay rights are rolled back there too making Israel even more indistinguishable from the neighbors it constantly claims moral superiority over.

Any evidence on the LGBTQ rights part?

Israel is unique politically on the matter, with those on the left actually less accepting of gay people than those in the center. I would assume part of this is similar to Reagan nostalgia in that older Israelis remember the old leftist governments.

Younger Israelis lean more to the right in terms of hating Palestinians, but the idea that most of them have Iranian-level takes on LGBTQ rights is comical.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

Israeli Youth Lead Turn to the Far Right as Violence Increases

Of course. I've called this for a decade now.

In most countries the youth lean left, but in Israel they are reactionary religious conservatives. It won't be long before gay rights are rolled back there too making Israel even more indistinguishable from the neighbors it constantly claims moral superiority over.

Any evidence on the LGBTQ rights part?

Israel is unique politically on the matter, with those on the left actually less accepting of gay people than those in the center. I would assume part of this is similar to Reagan nostalgia in that older Israelis remember the old leftist governments.

Younger Israelis lean more to the right in terms of hating Palestinians, but the idea that most of them have Iranian-level takes on LGBTQ rights is comical.

Well, we will see I suppose.

Though you would surely agree that theocrats aren't terribly well disposed to gay rights on the whole.

Naturally, although a lot of young Israelis are more of the secular nationalist types not to dissimilar from the younger MAGA base.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

Israeli Youth Lead Turn to the Far Right as Violence Increases

Of course. I've called this for a decade now.

In most countries the youth lean left, but in Israel they are reactionary religious conservatives. It won't be long before gay rights are rolled back there too making Israel even more indistinguishable from the neighbors it constantly claims moral superiority over.

Any evidence on the LGBTQ rights part?

Israel is unique politically on the matter, with those on the left actually less accepting of gay people than those in the center. I would assume part of this is similar to Reagan nostalgia in that older Israelis remember the old leftist governments.

Younger Israelis lean more to the right in terms of hating Palestinians, but the idea that most of them have Iranian-level takes on LGBTQ rights is comical.

I don’t think the Israeli left is less accepting of gay people than the centre. The centre likes their rich gay men and women but I don’t think you’ll find queer/trans issues penetrate right of Meretz. If by left you mean the Arab parties then yes but it’s not on leftist ground like the Greek communists, and calling them left is a little superficial.

Among some of the veterans (me included) there is sometimes a sense where LGBT topics come instead of the Palestinian issue and turns us into a sectarian bloc instead of offering a more comprehensive ideology that can speak to most Israelis on their terms. And a lot of us have a very leftist objection to funding the commodification of children in the third world so rich Israeli gays could form families.

On that note are positions like Netanyahu's in terms of LGBT rights (support with a mandatory 'we are much better than the Arab countries on this issue' at the end) common?

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

From what I've been reading it seems people think that this government could actually last the whole time it is supposed to last. This seems strange to me since A) the only thing Bibi's government seem to have in common is being utterly atrocious bigoted clowns, and their majority isn't that much bigger than the various 2018-2022 circus governments and B) Israeli politics seems to be generally unstable.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

Out of curiosity, to those more knowledgeable, what happens to the Likud when Netanyahu finally leaves the political scene (either due to old age or death or, less likely, deciding to call it a day in politics), given his complete dominance within the party?

Hard to tell. Most likely a nasty leadership battle follows. I personally don't think the party will remain intact as the Bibist-populist wing drifted very much to the right and has more in common with Otzma et al. There's also a question of the future successor, by killing off all rivals any future heir will find it very hard to unite the party behind him or the public in the polls. People like Dermer\Yossi Cohen who Bibi named as possible heirs will find it hard to win with the membership, but people like Katz\Levine will find it hard with the general public.

I am still of the opinion that one Mr. Herzog will be PM by 2030

Which Herzog?

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

Out of curiosity, to those more knowledgeable, what happens to the Likud when Netanyahu finally leaves the political scene (either due to old age or death or, less likely, deciding to call it a day in politics), given his complete dominance within the party?

Hard to tell. Most likely a nasty leadership battle follows. I personally don't think the party will remain intact as the Bibist-populist wing drifted very much to the right and has more in common with Otzma et al. There's also a question of the future successor, by killing off all rivals any future heir will find it very hard to unite the party behind him or the public in the polls. People like Dermer\Yossi Cohen who Bibi named as possible heirs will find it hard to win with the membership, but people like Katz\Levine will find it hard with the general public.

I am still of the opinion that one Mr. Herzog will be PM by 2030

Which Herzog?

The President. Who else?

The Ambassador to the United States.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

First inauguration poll. Gov down to 58 despite Balad not passing the threshold:

LINK

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

Shocked that Hnv still didn't comment on this legal matter, so I'll have to suffice:

Israeli supreme court ruled that Aryeh Deri can't serve as a Minister because as part of his plea deal he promised to leave politics. Now the ball is in the government's hands - Shas hinted they'll collapse the government if Deri isn't Minister, so this might spiral into a constitutional crisis.

Chief Justice Esther Hayuth made a girlboss move on the government - they didn't just rule it's extremely unreasonable to let Deri back to a Ministry (as expected) but also that he broke his word to the court when he claimed he's leaving politics to get a sweet plea deal and then claimed he didn't actually mean to retire. This means that the government's planned course of action - abolishing the non reasonability cause for supreme court decisions - won't save Deri because they also used a doctrine called "judicial paralysis" which says a person cannot use a legal argument (here- "I never meant to retire") after using a contradicting argument earlier ("I'm leaving politics"). There is pretty much no legal way for the government to keep Deri as Minister now. Game on.

Fine with me. Latest poll from Camil Fuchs has govt at 58 seats.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

As many as 150,000 are protesting in Tel Aviv

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/politics-and-diplomacy/article-733895

So Ben-Gvir removed the police commander of Tel Aviv and is claiming that it was totally pre-planned.

This police commander got attacked by Ben Gvir for not oppressing the protestors hard enough, of course. He wanted to see blood.
Aaand the attorney general now froze this decision, saying it might be illegal or improper. Constitutional crisis getting closer and closer.

According to Haaretz, police chief Shabtai told the Attorney General that Ben Gvir forced his hand on the decision. If true, this should be a gigantic scandal.

It doesn’t really matter anymore. We all know we’re heading to crisis where the court strikes down the reform. This is just the sh**thousry before the storm.

I hope the future military administration will punish Ben Gvir

Future military administration?

Joking(?) about the imminent military coup

What would you place the odds of a military coup at between "Centrist wins in Northern Europe" and "Tuesday in Burkina Faso"?

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/politics-and-diplomacy/article-733895

So Ben-Gvir removed the police commander of Tel Aviv and is claiming that it was totally pre-planned.

This police commander got attacked by Ben Gvir for not oppressing the protestors hard enough, of course. He wanted to see blood.
Aaand the attorney general now froze this decision, saying it might be illegal or improper. Constitutional crisis getting closer and closer.

According to Haaretz, police chief Shabtai told the Attorney General that Ben Gvir forced his hand on the decision. If true, this should be a gigantic scandal.

It doesn’t really matter anymore. We all know we’re heading to crisis where the court strikes down the reform. This is just the sh**thousry before the storm.

I hope the future military administration will punish Ben Gvir

Future military administration?

Joking(?) about the imminent military coup

What would you place the odds of a military coup at between "Centrist wins in Northern Europe" and "Tuesday in Burkina Faso"?

I think I was really from the first people to say it is starting to become a possibility going back to 2019 (I can't be bothered with searching now but my hunch was were heading there after he failed to form a government in May 2019).
The odds kept increasing.

After yesterday I think the odds increased dramatically to 30-40%.

As I see it, he would rather the SC and military stop him and turn him into a martyr then to stop it by himself and lose face with the base. He's just thinking on the best possible collision atm.

So, either way, he probably doesn't make it a full four years?

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

Looking at the reform I don’t get what the massive opposition is given that it would still result in less say by politicians on who gets to be on the judicial branch than here in the US where every judicial appointment is made by the president and then has to be approved by the senate .

Mmmm. like. you. know. maybe. the. US. legal. system. is. like. really. really. bad?

It's a slippery slope to that abysmal abomination you yanks call a justice system, we're not willing to accept even a minor politicization of the judicial branch.

Better horrible courts than no courts, as thousands of Palestinians can attest.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

The interesting thing about Israel is that while the Netanyahu coalition has the allegiance of half the electorate, more or less, much of that electorate does not participate in Israeli civil society, which is to say that a clear majority of that society is opposed to him. It's not just that the government is trying to radically transform society with the barest popular mandate—the Kahanist militia that the government intends to create is obviously totally incompatible with existing Israeli society—it's that it's doing so without the acquiescence of, really, any of the productive sector of society.

And it will only get worse. The Haredim are predicted to make up a fifth of the Israeli population by 2040 and a third by 2065 thanks to their insanely high birth rate. Imagine a third of the population that does not pay taxes, participate in the labor market or serve in the armed forces but demands the productive parts of the nation live according their rules and fund their lifestyles. Such society would be untenable. At least the Arabs work!

Honestly I don't get it. Secular, Reform, Conservative, and even Orthodox Jews have laid down their lives so that the Haredim (or, as I call them, the Jewish Taliban) can continue destroying Judaism and society writ large.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

Fun new polling tidbits-

-Netanyahu's approval rating has fallen from -12 to -43 since the beginning of the month.

-In head-to-head polling, we've gone from Bibi +16 over Lapid to Lapid +1, while Netanyahu has gone from leading Gantz by over 10 points to losing by seven.

Netanyahu is at 25% approval, so presumably Smotrich and Bin Gvir are even lower. And since Haredi don't serve, it's entirely possible he's at French President numbers with the IDF, and quite possibly below 10% in the IAF.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

IMO Israel should restrict voting rights to those who served in the IDF, otherwise the Haredim will multiply and take control.

Maybe another idea is imposing a punitive tax on ultra-orthodox Jews, who aren't that much different than the Taliban.

If Israel has a democratic future it needs to be majority Secular/Reform/Conservative.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

There's one weird trick that would politically disempower the Haredim forever while also striking an unprecedented blow for democracy: acknowledge that Gaza and the West Bank are fully Israeli, granting all residents full citizenship and the right to vote. The likes of OY would be politically irrelevant  in such a country.

The actual residents of those territories are deeply opposed to Israeli annexation, as is the international community. (Also, the Gaza Strip is under the control of a regime strongly opposed to the Israeli state; it would need to be reconquered first, by force. At that point you might as well include Egypt).

My guess is that very eventually there will be a successful voting rights/annexation movement among Palestinians in the West Bank, as I've written elsewhere; the long-term demographic trend, without Gaza, is that the area is getting more Jewish and eventually the independence of the remaining area will not be a realistic demand. But I think this is still very far away, and this projection is dependent on the sort of demographic analyses that have been wrong in the past; between 1995 and 2015 everybody, including the Israeli right, thought that the long-term trend of the region was to become more Palestinian.

At this point keeping the fiction of a "Israel-Palestine conflict", or sham "two-state solutions", is an insult to intelligence. This is not a matter of self-determination, but a constant abuse of the basic human rights of 1/2 of the population under Israeli control. The state of Israel rules everything between the Jordan and the Sea and will never withdraw from the West Bank, let alone East Jerusalem. The only way to ensure the Jewish character of the existing state is through the disenfranchisement of most Palestinians. This political regime, based on on the privileged status and the supremacy of one ethnic or religious group over another, is not a democracy. Israel-Palestine will never be a democratic state until everyone living in that country has the same legal status and is protected from abuse by the same set of laws.

It is usually right-wing parties in Israel who favor extending an offer of citizenship to Palestinians in the West Bank (Bennett -- still probably Israel's next PM in the near future -- wants to do it specifically for residents of Area C, it was the Likud that extended an offer of citizenship to East Jerusalem Arabs in 1981). Left-wing parties are uniformly opposed. The thing that stops this from happening -- besides international pressure -- is the existence of the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian independence declaration of 1988, and the Israeli government's agreement to cede some control within the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority.

Given 21st-century demographic trends it would not be especially threatening today to the Jewish character of the state to annex the West Bank and give citizenship to every Arab who lives there. It will be even less threatening in 20 years.

What would be threatening is incorporating Gaza: Gaza is a huge Arab city with a sky-high fertility rate and if you include it in "between the Jordan and the Sea" then a Jewish demographic majority is impossible. But there is no reason for Gaza to be part of that state (and as the June 2007 civil conflict showed, Gaza does not even really seem that interested in being part of a state with the West Bank); its history, political preferences, and economy are completely different. Nor is there any particular reason for Israeli ultranationalists to want it, which is why it was easier to withdraw from 2004 than the religiously significant West Bank. There is no reason that, when a government arises there that chooses peace, Gaza couldn't be a prosperous independent port (with extensive natural gas reserves) separate from both Israel and Egypt. Some argument might exist that Israel would have to pay Gaza reparations to apologize for bombing it repeatedly instead of just unilaterally ending the terror of the al-Qassam Brigades.

This is probably the only form of the two-state solution that would work; anything based on modern ethnic borders in the West Bank really does start to look like a bantustan. Ultimately, the first step on the road to peace will be when the Palestinian Authority (and the Israeli state) acknowledge that people in Yatta and Tulkarm, not just al-Quds, deserve the option to have Israeli citizenship.

~~~~

IMO Israel should restrict voting rights to those who served in the IDF, otherwise the Haredim will multiply and take control.

Maybe another idea is imposing a punitive tax on ultra-orthodox Jews, who aren't that much different than the Taliban.

If Israel has a democratic future it needs to be majority Secular/Reform/Conservative.

How come some poor people deserve welfare, and others deserve disenfranchisement?

Haredim are the Jewish equivalent of the Taliban.

"How come some poor people deserve welfare, and the Taliban doesn't?" is your question.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

Haredim are the Jewish equivalent of the Taliban.

"How come some poor people deserve welfare, and the Taliban doesn't?" is your question.

Right, right. So, how are we going to determine if someone is officially Haredi? We're going to need some official government procedures for this. Are we going to go by appearance? Perhaps smell? Blood quantum? Do they get welfare if they vote the correct way?

(Are there any other groups that should be excluded for political/racial/religious grounds? Heck, I live in the Cleveland area, and there's an Afghan-American community here; sometimes I encounter a father with two sons on a hiking trail by my home. Do we need to make sure none of them have Taliban sympathies?)

Heck, maybe we should think about privileges besides voting. Should these people really be allowed professional licenses? Citizenship? Fair trials? (You wouldn't let someone in the Taliban have a fair trial, would you?)

Haredim are a small sect of Judaism. Al Qaeda/the Taliban are a small sect of Afghans. Most members of either group would self-identify as such (if not with that same term).

I'm a Conservative Jew, actually, so this is quite like one of those Afghan-Americans saying that people who self-identify as a member of Taliban shouldn't get voting rights. Nobody would have an objection.

In fact, if this was said by another one of our more bigoted posters, the response would be much less severe. Haredim who actually pay taxes/don't live in the settlements should get full voting rights (and even those who don't should get full individual rights)

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

Channel 14 Direct Polls- the only firm to show the government above 60 seats since mid-February- has finally fallen below the threshold. Channel 14's final non-exit poll showed Likud at two more seats than they ended up getting.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

The government is expected to agree on a 1.5% budget cut for all government ministries (including Defense, Education and Health) in order to increase Ben Gvir's budget for establishing his personal militia.

I really doubt this national guard nonsense could take shape so fast, and public officials have ways of delaying undesired policy.

But if they agree a 1.5% general cuts the Haredi are going to find out they can’t afford all the things they’ve demanded…

Ben Gvir is the key for taking down this government

Complaining that you can't get exclusive perks after demanding money be spent on the oppression of Palestinians is the most Haredi thing ever.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

Best fit for PM:
Bibi 32%
Lapid 32%


Bibi 31%
Gantz 38%


Chanel 12 poll. Unprecedented

Do you think that if the election was held today Likud could even come in third?

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

https://twitter.com/IDF/status/1644786618673381376?s=20

Will Bin Gvir and co try to fire whoever made the decision to follow policy?

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

I think the problem of hyper-religious subgroups out-reproducing the rest of society is a problem that will eventually come for all First World societies, and Israel is simply ahead of the curve of the rest of us.

I don't see it. What groups in Christendom are really like the Haredim? The obvious examples are the Mennonites and Jehovah's Witnesses. Maybe you can make a case for Calvinists in the Netherlands, but I don't know to what extent they segregate themselves from broader society. There are pietistic Lutherans in Finland but they are a very small group.

Besides Laestadians in Finland (and actually also the US), other groups I was thinking of would include fundamentalist Mormons, certain Old Believers, subgroups within the Amish world (Swartzentrubers), and Old Order Mennonites (who actually have lots of colonies in Latin America) as examples of groups like this. (I don't know that Jehovah's Witnesses actually have remarkable fertility in the way that other groups like this do). Haredim are a much larger fraction of Israeli society than these other groups are of their societies, but as long as high fertility rates are sustainable they will become a large fraction of society eventually, and given the continuously falling fertility rates of mainstream society probably faster than we think.

I'm not familiar with groups like this within Islam, but then I'd imagine you would have much more knowledge than I would there.  

Presumably there are other groups in other countries that I can't name, but I am comfortable in saying that none of them are significant. Evangelicals in Brazil and elsewhere don't count because they are part of broader society. The same is true of Mormons. I know you said the First World specifically, but I will also add here that I'm not aware of any groups like this in the Islamic world.

I agree with this, but at least within the US conservatives have noticeably more children and have them at younger ages, and the gap between conservatives and liberals has been gradually growing in size since ~1990, before which it didn't exist. There are conflicting surveys on just how heritable political preferences are, so it remains something of an open question how much this will end up affecting American society. (There really isn't evidence for a gap like this in Europe, but I wonder about Latin America; Santiago, Chile, is supposed to be the metropolitan area with the lowest fertility rate in the Americas, while I've purely anecdotally noticed that conservative Chileans -- both politicians and just people I met when I visited that country -- tended to have large families, belying the country's low fertility overall. This is entirely a guess, though.)

It seems self-evident that religious people are more fertile than irreligious people, and perhaps in the long run this will lead to increased religiosity in society. Groups like the Haredim being the beneficiaries appears to be a specifically Jewish phenomenon.

I think the Haredim being so politically organized, both in Israel and the US, is a specifically Jewish phenomenon; you don't really see Amish bloc-voting in ways deliberately meant to position their community as kingmakers. (On reflection, many of these groups -- including Haredim -- seem to be particularly strong within the US, as opposed to other parts of the First World, and perhaps in some deep way to be the result of a specifically-American memetic environment). But "persistent closed-off ultra-religious high-fertility subgroup" does not seem to be a specifically Jewish phenomenon.

All of these groups participate in the labour market. Haredi participation is exceptionally low and if you deduct the faux jobs in their educational system male employment sinks to around 30%. there's nothing really like them

Drug addicts probably have better employment participation rates.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

The abysmal polling sent Ben Gvir and Otzma on a tantrum. They stopped voting with the coalition until the government adopts "a real right wing policy to Gaza". Likud threatened to fire Ben Gvir, Ben Gvir told them to fire him if they want.

Now I don't think either side really wants it atm, but this sort of things can spiral out of control rapidly

Any idea on the updated coup/government collapse odds by the end of the year?

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

If the judicial reform wasn't enough the next budget is basically robbing the public to fund Haredi and religious towns. They're even hurting Likud leaning cities in the "college belt".

Next election is going to be a bloodbath

Haredi are basically the Jewish Taliban.