Zionuts

[Loki]

Former Soviet Union. Large numbers from Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, and Uzbekistan (in addition to Russia). You're also missing Ethiopians.

[Being]

That does not change my observation that the vast majority of immigrants to Israel come from today's Russia. And it appears as though Israel has reason to placate Russia in order to sustain the source as the example below shows.

https://www.reuters.com/world/russia...up-2022-08-18/

According to Israeli government figures, 20,246 Russians emigrated to Israel between January and July 2022, with numbers spiking from around 700 per month in February to over 3,000 in March. By contrast, in the whole of 2019 only 15,930 Russians emigrated to Israel.

In July, the Russian Justice Ministry requested the liquidation of the Moscow branch of the Jewish Agency for Israel, a non-profit organisation that helps foreign Jews looking to move to Israel.

Though the cases against the Jewish Agency formally relate to violations of Russian data protection laws, Israeli Diaspora Affairs Minister Nachman Shai in July accused Russia of trying to punish Israel for its position on Ukraine.

[wiggin]

That's a very long way of saying that Shas hasn't been in a government that excluded Likud since 2009 and UTJ since 1999.

How many governments since 2009 have not included Likud? One, and it lasted for 18 months. And in that same time period they were excluded from one Likud led government.

How many governments since 1999 have not included Likud, beyond the aforementioned Lapid-Bennett administration? Well, Barak in '99 is the only real one (and it included Shas and UTJ). The second half of the second Sharon administration kinda counts because he made a new party after the disengagement caused Likud to fracture, but the government included neither Shas or UTJ so I'm not sure how you'll spin it (is it a Likud government or not?) - but Shas/UTJ's exclusion from that government had everything to do with Shinui and nothing to do with whether it was a right or left wing government. And, of course, the Olmert government with Kadima (not Likud) and which included Shas but not UTJ.

You're grasping for a signal that does not exist. It's hard to tell with such sparse data of course because Likud has been a factor in almost every government of the last 25 years. But it doesn't take a genius to watch Israeli politics and realize that Shas and UTJ are not on the typical right-left divide among major Israeli parties. They're religiously conservative, yes, but their issues have little to do with broader security issues, the Palestinian situation, or anything else. On economic issues, they want to make sure welfare payments and support for yeshivas continue (not exactly right wing fodder). On settlements, they only care about cheap housing - so they'll fight tooth and nail for e.g. Modiin Illit but couldn't care less about Ariel - or some ideological hilltop settlement. They want to preserve Haredi exemption from military service, which is also not exactly red blooded right wing rhetoric.

Do you know what the biggest issue animating the Haredi parties was, recently? Disposable dishes/cutlery. The last government wanted to put in various rules and incentives to phase out the use of disposable dishes/utensils for environmental reasons, but the Haredim revolted because their sector uses a lot of super cheap disposable stuff and they viewed it as an attack on them. They only care about such parochial issues (as well as religion/state issues) but will sell their votes on everything else.

Like I said, the majority is either hostile to the rule of law or doesn't deem it a priority. If this was untrue, Netanyahu wouldn't be prime minister.

I will agree that the majority of current MKs in the Knesset are willing to suborn the checks and balances currently built into Israeli democracy for their political objectives. I think the likes of Ben Gvir and Smotrich view the Israeli Supreme Court as a wildly radical and activist, guilty of judicial overreach on a grand scale and legislating from the bench. They want to tear it down. Netanyahu just wants a get out of jail free card and damn the consequences; his party members are a mix of ideologues like Smotrich, those who have convinced themselves that this is actually 'pro democracy' by taking power out of the hands of unelected judges, and those who are just along for the ride. Shas and UTJ don't care much for the Supreme Court either way (though they aren't fans of the Supreme Court butting into religion/state issues) but will let Netanyahu get his way if they have their needs met. But that doesn't mean that a majority are 'hostile' to the rule of law, just that a sufficiently loud minority has convinced other people to go along for political expediency. It's really really bad, agreed, but not the same as your original claims about the median Israeli voter.

Which parties will defect over rule of law issues? The ones with far right leaders? The ultra-orthodox? Or Likud? Because those are the only parties in the coalition.

I never said they would defect over rule of law issues. I think the coalition will fall apart by centrifugal forces because it's clearly an alliance of convenience with no powerful figure who can actually hold it together. Netanyahu normally has an iron grip on his coalitions, but he clearly is barely keeping some semblance of control here.

It is my understanding that the vast majority of post 1960 immigrants to Israel come from Russia.

As Loki already said, this is incorrect. Yes, there were a large number of immigrants who came to Israel from the FSU (including Russia but far from exclusively) in the 1990s, that has moderated in the last two decades. Now roughly similar numbers come from Russia and other Eastern European countries, with Ukraine being (I believe) the largest contributor of the latter group. I should also note that a substantial portion of these immigrants are not considered Jewish by the Israeli government, they just qualify for citizenship based on Jewish ancestry.

Of course, there are other major sources of immigrants - in the 1960s a huge chunk came from N. Africa (Morocco et al), there have been substantial numbers from Ethiopia since the 1980s, and there are steady but smaller numbers from Western Europe (mostly France) and North America.

All of these details aside, though, your fundamental assertion is laughable. Israel's Jewish population is sustained by the large part by birth rate, not immigration. Roughly 125,000 Jewish Israelis are born each year, and aliyah accounts for ~30,000 or less (in pre-Covid times; this dropped since 2020 and is only now coming back up). This is also balanced by somewhere around 5-15k Jewish Israelis who leave the country each year (there's some shuffling back and forth and I couldn't find solid numbers in a cursory google of the Israeli CBS). The point is that the net contribution of Jewish immigration to Jewish population growth is much smaller than natural birth rate. There's only a few hundred thousand aliyah eligible Jews left in Russia OR Ukraine, so even if all of them moved to Israel today it wouldn't dramatically change the demographic situation in Israel. The biggest reservoir of Jews left in the diaspora, by a huge margin, is in the United States. And getting those Jews to move to Israel in more than a trickle (a few thousand a year) is quite difficult because the US is, well, the US.

That does not change my observation that the vast majority of immigrants to Israel come from today's Russia. And it appears as though Israel has reason to placate Russia in order to sustain the source as the example below shows.

https://www.reuters.com/world/russia...up-2022-08-18/

All of my points above taken into consideration, it's obvious that Israel is interested in maintaining reasonably good relations with any country that has a substantial Jewish (and, for that matter, expatriate Israeli) population. Israel feels a sense of responsibility towards all Jews around the world, even those that are not (yet) citizens, and acts accordingly. But that applies to Russia and Ukraine equally. History has shown, however, that Israel is very willing to adopt a confrontational attitude towards Russia in service of its aspirations to protect the Jewish population of Russia - first off, they fought many wars with Soviet client states during the time of the USSR, and secondly they worked very hard to pressure the USSR in every way possible to allow Jewish emigration, especially from the mid-60s onward as more and more restrictions were placed on Soviet Jewry. Israel is not afraid to adopt a confrontational, rather than conciliatory attitude wrt Russia on the issue of Jewish immigration (and, frankly, it gets a lot of international sympathy).

I doubt that they would tiptoe quite as much around Russia if they didn't have a much more salient issue driving their calculus, namely Russian controlled airspace on their northern border with growing presence of Iranian troops and proxy militias.

[Dreadnaught]

That does not change my observation that the vast majority of immigrants to Israel come from today's Russia. And it appears as though Israel has reason to placate Russia in order to sustain the source as the example below shows.

https://www.reuters.com/world/russia...up-2022-08-18/

"Sustain the source" makes it sound like Russian Jews are some kind of water source

The former Soviet Jews don't have a uniformly favorable relationship with Russia.

As Wiggin mentions it's mostly about international relations, less about some kind of phantom domestic pro-Russian opinion.

[Loki]

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/26/w...arliament.html

On the one hand, this doesn't bode well for Netanyahu's survival. On the other hand, the Israeli public elected a corrupt wannabe autocrat.

[wiggin]

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/26/w...arliament.html

On the one hand, this doesn't bode well for Netanyahu's survival. On the other hand, the Israeli public elected a corrupt wannabe autocrat.

This was significant in that until now there has been essentially no debate or discussion of the judicial overhaul inside the party - certainly not dissent, and certainly not from the defense minister and a former Major General. It is likely that his actions are more likely to stoke further dissent and internal strife than his silencing will keep other MKs in line. I think the most compelling issue facing the rightist MKs is the deep concerns in the military wrt the effects of this legislation on reservist no shows and general readiness.

A friend of mine had an interesting piece before Gallant spoke up on the sad state of Likud: https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-im...-ruling-party/

I am still not all that hopeful that the coalition will fall apart before the judicial overhaul is passed, but I would not give this government a long half life.

[Loki]

https://twitter.com/Nadav_Eyal/statu...10174554783745

And now both the main trade union and several industry groups are calling for a general strike. This is the last opportunity for Israeli civil society to prevent a collapse in the rule of law.

[wiggin]

I think the overhaul as currently written is now dead in the water. Multiple MKs in the majority voicing support for freezing it and reevaluating, a bunch of unverified press reports suggesting Netanyahu, Shas, and UTJ are in favor of this approach. Not clear where Smoteixh stands but a hugely influential religious Zionist rabbi has voiced a similar preference.

I don't think this means changes to the judiciary are off the table, but it's likely the most odious bits - like a ridiculously easy legislative override - will be scrapped. I'm not entirely opposed to some of the other mooted changes (eg how judges on the supreme court are chosen, which is currently not exactly democratic) but we'll have to see what kind of compromise bill gets proposed. Given that Herzog's initial compromise was rejected, I'm not super optimistic the coalition's next move will be acceptable, but it might at least be less bad.

[Aimless]

writers just knocking it outta the park every week this season

Twitter Link

Moscow Times

[Dreadnaught]

But these protests were Good.

[Loki]

Why am I not surprised you support Netanyahu's attempts to destroy the rule of law?

[Aimless]

Why am I not surprised you support Netanyahu's attempts to destroy the rule of law?

Because you remember the photos of him posing with guns

[Being]

Because you remember the photos of him posing with guns

Which he still denies to this day.

[Aimless]

Which he still denies to this day.

I don't blame him, those photos are cringe a f

[Aimless]

On a related note:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/ben-gv...-crime-terror/

[Aimless]

Hamas olives find no quarter:

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...n-five-months/

[Aimless]

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-b2352930.html

He referred to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky as “sweaty and rat-like”, “a persecutor of Christians”, and in bed with American investment bankers.

Call Tucker what he is

[Aimless]

uh-oh
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...f-fbaf00500000

[Loki]

Trumpists being Trumpists:

Twitter Link

[Loki]

Palestinian leaders can always be counted on to discredit their own cause:

In a recent speech, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas repeated a number of antisemitic canards he has made over the years, including unfounded claims about the the origins of Ashkenazi Jews and that Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler had Jews slaughtered because of their “social role” as moneylenders, not because of enmity toward Judaism.

Speaking last month at his Fatah party’s Revolutionary Council, Abbas outlined the baseless theory that Ashkenazi Jews are not descended from ancient Israelites but an ancient Turkish people known as the Khazars, who according to a discredited theory converted to Judaism en masse.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/abbas-...r-social-role/

[Loki]

The far left and far right working toward a common cause:

Twitter Link

[Dreadnaught]

I mean, gotta have these events on September 11 for points.

[GGT]

Please, please, could everyone here just stop posting links to Twitter or X?! Thanks

[Loki]

Not that there's much chance of this happening, but I hope Israeli settlers and their supporters look at what's happening in Karabakh and realize that those who live by the sword die by the sword. When diplomacy ceases to be an option, don't be surprised when the other side relies entirely on force. And one day they might be stronger than you.

[wiggin]

While I am not a fan of the violent wing of the settler enterprise, I'm not really sure the situations are all that comparable?

[Loki]

Oppressed minority conquers land from weaker but more numerous neighbors? Creates a lot of ill will through expulsions and other unsavory behavior. Relies on support from major power to maintain upper hand.

[wiggin]

I won't bother litigating this but I think even the surface level comparison is pretty flawed.

[Loki]

Let me put it like this: if the Palestinians won a war against Israel right now, the results would be pretty damn similar. And Israel's behavior ensures that war is the only method for changing the unacceptable status quo.

[wiggin]

Oh the results would be far bloodier. And I think there's ample evidence that alternatives are available.

[Dreadnaught]

Let me put it like this: if the Palestinians won a war against Israel right now, the results would be pretty damn similar. And Israel's behavior ensures that war is the only method for changing the unacceptable status quo.

Has the Arab Israeli conflict not been defined by major warfare from the start?