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This looks plausible when youre only looking at that one question, less so otherwise. For example, the pattern of jewish overrepresentation in certain jobs and the majority getting mad at it is found broadly in space and time, which cant be explained by Ashkenazi selection in the middle ages. And the state of Israel, while certainly better than its neighbours, doesnt seem especially impressive compared to other western countries.
Jews were barred (by Christians!) from a whole bunch of things in the past. That means they'd have to be over-represented in other things. Christians also barred themselves for some things, which left Jews over-represented there.
Its per-capita GDP (nominal) puts it between Finland and Germany, #12 and #11 in Europe. Above the UK, France, Italy, and Spain. Pretty good for having the handicap of being located in the Middle East. And having all those non-Ashkenazim around too.
The phenomenon is not limited to christian lands. And many peoples have been barred from many things; most of them do not become the jews.
It also seems like you agree with me that the early versions of the pattern where not caused by intelligence; I think this suggests the later versions, seemingly following a very similar script, also werent. You seems to think youve countered my argument if the jews werent at fault, thats not the point.
Yeah, I dont think it works like that. For all the attention given to their security issues, they seem to have it pretty well under control, and money spent on it counts to GDP anyway. And the rest of the West has plenty bad demographics at this point, and the non-ashkenazi jews are still comparable to europeans. This should be more or less proportional. You can also see it in other measures, eg nobel prices to diaspora vs israelis vs born israelis - which would even be less affected by the lower percentiles, still collapse.
Early versions of the pattern were part of what resulted in selecting for intelligence.
They do not follow a similar script. The Christians who wouldn't engage in moneylending might well have hated the Jews for being moneylenders (especially if they were in debt), but they didn't hate them because they were somehow preventing Christians from being moneylenders.
I dont think that plays such a role in the latter ones either. I think very few of the people complaining about (((bankers))) and (((Hollywood))) where interested in careers there. And even if it did play a role, they are still clearly similar to each other relative to the full range of prosecutions experienced by ethnic groups in general, and the breadth in time and space of those prosecutions remains unusual. It would be a strange coincidence for these not to have a common mechanism, and just proposing that the first mechanism caused the second does not by itself reduce the coincidence. The evidential bar for this is a lot higher than "can tell a reasonable just so story", and data on jewish intelligence only supports one step.
Also, as a general rule, "Were worse off because were better than everyone else" is copium, doubly so if its "better" in a pragmatic sense.
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Arab Jews have the same relative advantage in the Middle East that European Jews did in European lands. 95 IQ in a land of 84s is as much an advantage as 112 is in a land of 100s.
For a contemporary example, see the Lebanese who dominate commercial life in large parts of West Africa. In much of the West (outside of America which got the most elite Maronites), these are not hugely impressive immigrants - in Australia many are considered a underclass! - but in West Africa they are a market dominant minority, sometimes to a scarcely believable extent in places like Liberia, but to a great extent even in the larger nations.
Sephardic Jewry’s outperformance in European lands (where the differential was less) was more contingent. They did well enough for a time under the Arabs as a middle man minority, and restrictions on usury meant many adopted roles in finance / lending too, and therefore were early to the shipping and capital markets boom in the mercantile age in Amsterdam, but the advantage was less than it was in either Ashkenazi or Mizrachi lands.
In a way, that arguably led to less antisemitism, which while certainly prevalent in the inquisition etc, was probably still substantially less violent than the Jewish experience during the crusades in Western and Central Europe or in Eastern Europe later in the millennium, or the Jewish experience in Persia, which alternated between semi-tolerance and what European Jewish visitors in the 17th and 18th centuries often considered the worst persecution they had encountered.
Fair, for some reason the other jews are usually compared to western populations also. Still, the versions of selection Ive heard for central/eastern europe kick in late relative to the history of persecution - often, with parts of that persecution as a cause. And I would guess the MENA version went similarly.
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