A fact that underlies the mindset of many Israelis I think. A tiny minority in another country is a fragile place. A tiny country surrounded by larger ones is a fragile place. In the first case there is little to do about it. Hope tides of hate don’t rise too high? Keep fingers crossed? In the second case it motivates being the baddest mofo in the neighborhood as a rational response. Be the badass that no one dares mess with, even though they are larger. Not endorsing the perspective but I do get it.
I have zero desire to live in Israel.
But the comparison under discussion is to history, to the Pale of Settlement and many other similar circumstances.
Relative to that past, yeah, even with threats from external enemies and the possibly more existential threats within from what this outsider views as an unholy alliance between the ultranationalist and the ultra religious, it is a relative paradise.
OK, but people today need to worry about what is viable today, not what is a relative paradise compared to whatever historical example one might bring. Nobody can predict the future, but is Israel in the moderate term more stable than X or Y or Z?
Really? I think of “early modern” as going up to somewhere in the 18th century CE.
Then you’ll have to let me know where Jews (as a group, there were always exceptional individuals like the aforementioned vizier of Andalusia) were “thriving” in the 1700s. Certainly not in most of Europe, or in the Ottoman Empire. In the Americas, maybe? But you’ll find that only a small minority of Jews at that time lived in the Americas.
So, at this point I’m not quite sure what argument you’re trying to support with these endless nitpicks about chronological detail. Are you in fact disagreeing with the rough quantitative estimate that I formulated back in post #187?
If so, that’s fine: then what’s your own suggestion for a more accurate quantitative comparison between those two categories? I’m happy to ponder your alternative quantitative-history model if you’ve got one to propose, and if the mods and OP let us get away with the continued hijack.
But I don’t want to go down yet another rabbit hole of your incessantly quibbling about debatable secondary details rather than directly engaging with the fundamental claim that I made.
My point is that I don’t think Jews really thrived much until very recently. Your point about numbers doesn’t really mean much, because it is trivially true that Jewish emancipation happened to coincide with the vast increase in human population brought about by modern medicine and food production practices. Well, it wasn’t exactly a coincidence; both were brought about by the widespread adoption of rationalist ideologies.
It would be nice to believe that this shift towards rationalism is a permenant one, and that nation-states are no longer necessary to keep an ethnic group safe. I certainly hope so. But I like to hedge my bets.
A perfectly reasonable view. And my point, as I said, is that much of that Jewish thriving has taken place in non-Jewish-majority societies. So the argument that Jews need the existence of a Jewish-majority state to ensure their safety is not persuasive. That’s all I was getting at.
Does that mean that I think there shouldn’t or mustn’t be a Jewish-majority state? No.
Does that mean that I think Jews can count on always remaining safe as a tiny minority in (currently) nonsectarian non-Jewish-majority democracies? No.
But the fundamental larger issue, as I replied to DSeid in post #192, is that Jews can’t count on always remaining safe as a Jewish-majority society in a tiny state, either. If and/or when Jews stop being able to live in reasonable peace and freedom in modern nonsectarian democracies with non-Jewish majorities, it’ll be in a world where they can’t do so in Israel either. There won’t be an Israel in that world.
Like I said, tiny minorities are fundamentally vulnerable, whether as tiny demographics in larger societies or as tiny states in larger regions. And as DSeid perceptively replied to me in post #201, that awareness on some level influences the strategic mindsets of a lot of Israelis and Jewish advocates for Israel elsewhere. It’s tempting to believe that as long as we’re the ones in control of the state, we can strongarm our way out of tininess and vulnerability.
I don’t buy it, though. There is no route to true inviolable safety for us as a tiny minority. Not by living in liberal democracies, not by having a Jewish state, not by extending the Jewish state over all the Palestinian territories, not by being rich, not by being educated and successful, not by nuking Iran, not nohow.
Size matters. We can be a tiny and vulnerable set of responsible citizens of the world, or we can be a tiny and vulnerable set of paranoid sociopaths, or some other flavor combo of a tiny and vulnerable population, but that’s the extent of our choices. Realistically speaking, we do not have a way out of tininess and vulnerability.
There are a lot of Jews in Israel who are not religious fundamentalists (or religious at all), even without getting into the gay community or whatever we could bring up, who have no reason to count on remaining safe in Israel, or living in reasonable peace and freedom, in the moderate term.
I am not predicting Israel will actually collapse within however many years, but I do not see what makes it inherently stable or what makes people thrive better there than elsewhere.
And most of Jewish suffering has.
Which of course makes sense as very little of Jewish history has occurred in Jewish majority societies. Most of Jewish history is Diaspora, a culture connected across other cultures, a minority, an “other”, everywhere. Always at risk of being the other blamed for things not being right. Even most of all when some have been thriving. As you state: fundamentally vulnerable.
I will disagree with you that tiny is tiny, no different being tiny and vulnerable and other within a culture looking for an other to blame for whatever, and tiny as a country strong enough to fight back hard if attacked.
In any case what we know is that the former has resulted in many centuries of periodic spasms suppressions oppressions expulsions and genocides. Maybe having a single small country where that identity is a majority will do the people no better, but we don’t yet know that, not with going back a pretty damn long time.
Mind you I think Israel still has its greatest true existential crisis just delayed by the attack and subsequent war: the drive by Netanyahu’s coalition to push the country to theocracy is a battle just put off now. That battle is to my mind the biggest threat to Israel, more than any external one, even a nuclear armed Iran.
Well, as I said in post #192, we do in fact know quite a bit about the fates of earlier small countries with majority populations that identified as what we would now call “Jewish”, and they all turned out pretty crappy. Sacked by the Egyptians in the 10th c. BCE, conquered by the Neo-Assyrians in the 8th c., destroyed by the Neo-Babylonians in the 6th c., and that was pretty much it for any recognizable cohesive “Jewish state” in antiquity. If we count the Second Temple period as some form of Jewish political independence, we’ve got domination by the Persians in the 5th century, Seleucids in the 4th through 2nd, and Romans in the 1st BCE-1st CE, culminating with destruction of the Temple. If Talmudic-era Jewish communities also count as some form of Jewish political independence (very iffy, IMHO), that’s pretty thoroughly trashed by the end of the 3rd c. And then we’ve got the aforementioned medieval Christendom, in which, as discussed above, I think it’s fair to say that there’s no substantive Jewish autonomy or “thriving”. (Possible brief and/or minuscule exceptions are interesting to consider—the Himyarites? 7th-c. Galilee? the Khazarate?—but as I said, in the big picture I’m fine with just throwing out the whole thing.)
Now admittedly, most of the shit that went down for the Jews in antiquity happened to a lot of other small states too. The ancient world was a tough place in general. It may be that modernity will be kinder to the survival of a Jewish-majority state.
But as I said, I think the fundamental point is that it’s very unlikely to be intrinsically better for a Jewish-majority state than for Jewish minorities in liberal democracies. If modernity can’t sustain peace and freedom for Jews in non-Jewish-majority nonsectarian democracies, it won’t be able to sustain them in Israel either. And that’s not even counting the risks from internal crises that you rightly point out.
Yup. And, of course, all such intra-Israel struggles just make things worse for the Palestinians under Israeli control. Netanyahu has fewer incentives to halt armed conflict when it’s prolonging his political dominance.
Yeah I wouldn’t undersell the relevance of the times being unkind to the survival of small states in general. That was not a Jewish majority state being targeted; it was just empires building and falling. A time that Putin waxes nostalgic for but one that otherwise occurs more explicitly with transnational corporations instead of states …. Modernity may be kinder to to smaller states in general.
I see the possibility of rising Jew hatred leading to more attacks against Jews, targeted for being Jews, across the world, including in America, as a very real and increasing risk. Unlike you I do not see that correlating with any world desire to target Israel for destruction.
Yes and no on the internal crises impact on Israeli government.
Yes Netanyahu becomes more and more obsequious to the Jewish fundamentalist faction and the nabobs of ultra nationalism. But it is very clear that his incompetence allowed the Hamas attack and diverting resources from the basic social contracts with the general citizenry in favor of continued special treatment for the fundies will not give him enough support to stay in power long. And he can’t prolong the emergency forever.
That doesn’t justify your oppression of the Palestinians nor give you the right to deny them their right in Palestine. The oppression you’ve suffered doesn’t justify your oppression of the Palestinian peoples. You are well on your way to effecting change in Palestine over cold dead bodies that would be detrimental to everyone there before the situation can even begin to be beneficial for all the people in Palestine.
Yeah, but revolting against the Roman Empire in that time period, at the hight of its power? Not a wise move.
Oh it was worse!
The Hasmoneans (famous as the Maccabees of Chanukah) became awful rulers and by a few generations two brothers were so at odds with each other that they and the Rabbis apparently each made secret deals to invite the Romans in promised to get help putting the other one in his place.
Yeah that worked well.
Is this a good sign, or not?
The U.S. is near a deal with the Palestinian Authority to end its contentious “martyr payments” for people who commit acts of violence against Israel, two Biden administration officials said.
That would be a key win for the multifaceted U.S. push to reform the PA — from instituting anti-corruption measures to improving basic services — so that it can take over governance of the Gaza Strip whenever the Israel-Hamas war ends… The “martyr payments” program financially supports Palestinians and their families if they are wounded, imprisoned or killed while carrying out acts of violence against Israel. It has long infuriated Israelis who say it incentivizes terrorism and call it “pay for slay.” Many Palestinians say it provides crucial support for people standing up to an oppressive Israeli occupation.
Drafts of the PA payments reform plans seen by U.S. officials indicate that Palestinian leaders will replace the current scheme with a general welfare program. Further specifics were not immediately available.
Sounds like maybe a good step forward?