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What’s Israel’s “state religion”?
You may be surprised by the answer. 
In point of fact, Muslims and Christians enjoy full religious freedoms in Israel, which has (for better or worse) adopted the pre-existing Turkish “millet” system, by which each religion is given self-governance rights.
In any event, the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is a very typical ethno-nationalist one. It isn’t per se about “religion”.
Israel is, fairly unusually, one of the few countries where fertility rates are rising, driven by the Ultra-Orthodox. Jewish fertility is higher than Arab fertility within Israel proper, and it’s also higher than Arab fertility within the WB. (Jewish women in the WB have fertility rates equivalent to Afghanistan, last I checked).
That being said, there are some Arab countries (Iraq and to a lesser extent Syria) where fertility rates are higher than you suggest (3-4 children range), but of course those are the highest rates and 6+ in any case is a big exaggeration.
The founding Jewish population of Israel was mostly European, but they got big waves of immigration from non-European, Middle Eastern Jewish diaspora in the 1950s and 1960s.
It is perhaps noteworthy that African nations that got over the bad part and finally instituted rule of law, democracy, and the like have seen rather remarkable increases in GDP. Namibia saw huge development after independence. Botswana was once the poorest country on earth and is now way, way above the African mean. Ghana has done pretty well, way better than its neighbors. What all these countries have in common are stable, rule-of-law respecting, relatively honest government. Well, Namibia is still working on it, but it’s way better than it used to be, obviously.
Any country can be reasonably successful with such a government.
The USA and the ISrael did just fine with Terrorist leaders…
but maybe they are not the right skin color to fit your deep "analysis. "
A serious analysis of the development of the effective economic growth will look at the development of the stable institutional structures and ones that have a degree of the corrective feedback to allow a balancing of the interests.
“Terrorist leaders” is a stupid non analysis - the performance of the South Africa under the first presidencies post-apartheid was very good - as the institutions were adopted and adapted well.
The comparative development of the various African countries following the independence has been in the serious economic study examining the internal frameworks.
The bad performances are also exmainable in the framework of the hand-over of the power and the degree to which the power excercised was extractive and if there were local domestic economic interests with an interest in the economic investment versus the rent extractions.
The case of the Cote d’Ivoire contre the Guineau for example - the bad performance for the last or a Nigeria has not one thing to do with “terrorists” leaders since there is no case of revolutionary struggle for the decolonization but the bad incentives in the economic order. The CdI on the other hand had the positive economic system for the interest in the productive reinvestment. Botswana is a similar case.
Of course for the Israel, the human capital transfer of a large component of the population with both a certain degree of the economic wealth capital and connectoins as well as the human capital and networks to well put into work the access to the investment capital networks well developed and accessible via the ethnic routes in a very time tested fashion for the case of immigration, this is a very powerful boost.
It is of course nonsense to compare this to populations under the military occupation and subject to the expropriation or the security risk - it is like comparing the ability of the coloured south africa to accumulate capital with the English south african immigrant…
oh shit it is a zombie and I did not notice…
Yes, altho natural resources and such really help. Note that Israel has few, however.
But yeah, if Palestine had decent leaders it wouldnt be in such a bad state. iT’s not the people, it’s the leadership.
Interestingly, that may not be the case any more … very recent discoveries of natural gas may well make Israel relatively “resource-rich”. Though, obviously, that has had little impact yet.
Culture as in Democracy and better leadership for sure. And yes better entrepreneurial culture.
Compared to Western Europe, Israel is hardly rich:
Maybe someone will say that the higher effective per capita purchasing power in dozens of other countries is accounted for by low income of Israeli non-Jews. But other countries also have minorities with lower income that would need to be taken into account. And the Jewish-only income of Israel would still be significantly less than that of everyone in Germany, Australia, or Taiwan.
So I’d reframe this as to why Israel is on the high side of middle income, and the West Bank is on the high side of low income (about same as Ghana), and Gaza is plain low income.
And yet the Palestinian diaspora is quite successful in the entrepreneurship… out side of the occupation zones
I shall quote from above
Very good point. Where there is good governance, yes, Palestinians have high income – often higher than Jews.
Is Gaza an occupation zone?
You’ll probably say yes – but it is clear, at least to me, that Gaza isn’t anywhere near as much of an occupation zone as the West Bank. And yet the purchasing power parity per capita income of Gaza is about half of that of the West Bank.
So there are multiple factors. One factor is occupation zone on the West Bank. Another factor is the aggressive military stance against Israel by Gaza resulting in Israel, as self-defense, closing the Gaza airport, etc.
Weirdly enough, the above quote is me not Aldiboronti.
I’m not sure there was terribly good governance in Kuwait prior to the Iraqi invasion. If anything it was characterized by corruption and inefficiency. After the invasion they were expelled, or at the least encouraged rather forcefully to leave but prior to this there was a sizable Palestinian community there which did quite well.
There are also many Latin American countries with sizable Palestinian communities which aren’t first World countries. In fact, in Chile there are more Palestinian Christians than in Palestine itself.
Of course it is.
Who controls its borders and controls literally every in and out movement of the goods and bans free flows?
The Israel
Whatever the reasons (and yes the Hamas generates many of its own), it remains an occuption in the same way that the Warsaw ghettoe was an occupation.
Yes, this tends to happen when you have what is in effect the prison colony economy where there is zero free flow of goods and the economy subsists very much on fucking tunnels dug into Egypt. Tunnels.
Of course the Hamas are complete cretins in government, but this does not change that a small parcel of land with zero viability in the terms of self sufficiency that is under a goods embargoe (and not benefitting as does the West Bank from massive outside aide) will be poorer.
It is the economics 101.
Ibn Warraq has replied to the other asserted observation.
Odd why it quoted that way, it was the board software and not me.
Gaza isn’t occupied, it’s besieged.
Occupied = troops on the inside.
Besieged = troops on the outside.
That’s not a value judgement - just semantics.
This is a DEEPLY offensive statement. Please stop and think about it for a minute.
Your statement is also illogical.
The Jews were herded into a ghetto against their will.They were imprisoned with the purpose of transporting them to murder camps. The Jews had no options, no freedom to negotiate with their captors.
Gaza has plenty of choices.
(Unfortunately, they chose terrorism.)
Ramira, you’ve made a lot of good posts in the past. This statement is, I hope, an honest mistake.
But it crosses the line of good taste.
Gaza does not have plenty of choices. Be offended as you want with the selective preciousness.
Comparing the Israelis to the Nazis is never any sort of mistake (honest or otherwise) in these sorts of debates. It’s a pointed and purposeful comparison.