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It does not seem to me that the super high IQ Israelis are the same as the super tribalistic Israelis. If we allocate tens of billions into paying and retaining the high IQ portion, then it concretely benefits America and is cheaper than defending Israel.
I can search for the data on this later, because I’m going off memory of what I read here (and by proxy to IQ), Israel’s primary export locomotive has been its high-tech sector. They’re renowned for that achievement all over the world. But something like only 3% (I think; I know it’s less than 5%) of all employee positions in Israel are in those high-tech manufacturing fields; and that accounted for nearly 1/2 of Israel’s entire exports back in 2015.
What this means by implication (and Israeli elites themselves have written about this, and their worry of a brain drain) is they’re very worried about conflicts and political sensitivity to certain issues that could cause Jews who came to Israel to turn around and emigrate out of the country back to the one they came from. In 2023, the presidents of some Israeli universities wrote a warning about the governments plan to weaken the judiciary system could substantially impact academia, resulting in a further brain drain of intellectual talent. And even worse, one of the knock-on effects of this (there are other factors lending themselves to the same problem as well) is that it’s the most educated segments of society that will end up bearing the highest tax burden; which just adds to the economic (and political) polarization. Then add on to that that something like 10% of Israeli citizens have dual citizenship, which makes it easy for them to leave at the first sign of trouble. Israel is in a very precarious situation.
So all Trump needs for political pressure is to allow a special H1B program to fast track immigration of high-tech Israelis to the US, while simultaneously refusing to provide defensive assistance against iran. Unless these israelis are especially patriotic, many would probably prefer US jewish enclaves and/or sunny beaches rather than risking the odds of an iranian ballistic missile slipping through the missile shield.
It’s a real risk Israel worries about.
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