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Hezbollah's continued resilience has never ceased to amaze me. I can't even imagine how Israel will look in a century. Israel's mounting domestic challenges hasn't left it in a good place when thinking about the future. Netanyahu's military exemption for religious Jews is going to catch up with the lopsided demographics in virtue of the fact that secular Jews aren't making up the difference in defense in the country. It's left me scratching my head a bit though, since the overwhelming consensus of Israel at the moment supports the war effort against Iran. My understanding was that among the Ultra Orthodox, even in Israel, they were very much against the secular state. I imagine they somehow got co-opted by state politics. Either I'm wrong in some way I don't understand or something else happened somewhere along the way that I haven't been informed of.
It's a fun thought experiment. On the plus side (for them), they are the only developed country with above-replacement fertility, they have tons of very high IQ people, rapidly growing GDP per capita, low (and shrinking) national debt, a strong national-religious identity and an extremely competent military. I can easily see an expansionist Israel annexing Gaza, the West Bank and southern Lebanon and populating them with settlers.
On the other hand, their soon to be largest religious group reject military service, non-religious education and (to some extent) paid work, they are alienating the world with their treatment of the Palestinians, they are an extremely hot country in a heating world and their growing population is limited to a small sliver of land, even if they do annex territory from their neighbours.
The question is whether they can cream off enough of the Haredim to stop them turning the country into a giant yeshiva.
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The Ultra-Orthodox are remarkably simple. They want to maximize the observance and study of Torah. Right now, they assess (correctly) that the State of Israel is capable of defending itself without Ultra-Orthodox soldiers. This means that Torah study and observance is maximized by staying in yeshiva and learning Torah all day. If the Ultra-Orthodox became such a large fraction of Israel’s population that the state needed them to serve in the IDF, then they would enlist/relent to conscription, because getting driven out of the Land of Israel is bad for Torah observance and study.
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