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Israel had its first general election since 2022 on Tuesday. Israel is an experiment in ethnonationalism, but it is also an experiment in proportional representation. Every conceivable minority group or special interest has their own political party. There is a party for Russian immigrants, a party for Ashkenazi Haredim, and a separate party for Mizrahi Haredim. Arabs of course vote for entirely separate parties from Jews (by custom, not law).
Israel is the most right-wing democracy in the world. In Israel, you can vote for the racist party (Likud), the extremely racist party (Religious Zionism), or the racism über alles party (Otzma Yehudit, literally "Jewish Power"). You can even vote for the pro-racism but anti-Netanyahu party (Together), or the pretending-not-to-be-racist party (Yashar). If you feel like sticking it to the man, there is at least one viable actually-not-racist party (The Democrats). Some would argue the Arab parties (Joint List and Ra'am) are non-racist, but others would say that they are just as racist but in the opposite direction.
The Knesset has 120 seats, so 61 seats are needed for a majority to form a government. Most of the results are in, and it's looking like deadlock.
Estimated seats by bloc
Netanyahu Bloc - 53
"Change" Bloc - 48
Arab Bloc - 19
In European legislatures, is is customary to have a cordon sanitaire against parties perceived as far-right. In Israel, there is a cordon sanitaire against the Arab parties. The Netanyahu bloc has lost its majority, but there is no clear opposition bloc large enough to form a government. Israeli Arab turnout was through the roof.* Bedouin nomads rode into town on camels to vote. The conventional wisdom seems to be that forming a coalition with any of the Arab parties post-October 7th is political suicide. If no one can form a majority, there could be another election as soon as next year.
*Netanyahu is accusing the Arabs of voter fraud. I have no idea if this means anything.
I thought about posting this as a top level comment, but this seems like as good a place.
What do people think the consequences of Jews leaving the Democratic party will be? Prior to like 5 minutes ago, Jews were up there with blacks as the most left-wing group in America, with something like 80-90% supporting Democrats over Republicans. However as Third Worldism has become the dominant ideology within the Democrat party, Jews are being shown the door. Jewish politicians and operatives who refuse to bend the knee on Palestine are being made to feel very uncomfortable. And the party is starting to nominate anti-Semitic politicians like Abdul El-Sayed to major positions. It's become common knowledge that, regardless of their position on Israel, a Jewish politician could never win the Democratic nomination for President. The Josh Shapiro fantasy lasted all of 2 minutes.
And, contra their reputation for self-loathing, Jews are actually starting to flip parties. According to one recent poll, 64% of Jewish voters will support the Republicans over Democrats this cycle.
Personally, despite being a Gentile, I've always felt a degree of connectedness to Jews to the point where many of my best friends are Jews. I also believe that Ashkenazi Jews are easily the most intelligent ethnic group on the planet. This is reflected in their vast contributions in the scientific and creative fields. Something like 40% of all Nobel Prizes in the sciences have been awarded to Jews. But I also believe that the political influence of Jews over time has been so incredibly negative overall that it undoes all the good things. (Communism is doing a lot of work here).
So for 100 years, you had this small but incredibly smart, creative, rich, and politically active group has pointed like a gun at the Republican party. And now.. it's not. I don't think we'll see the gun turned around and used in the other direction, but this feels big.
A huge decline in Democratic Party organizational ability as ideologically-motivated Jews are replaced with corruption-motivated Third Worlders
A possible easing of the extreme pro-left bias in the legal profession
Less fundraising for Democrats
Of course, this is also not a great place to be for Jews. They paid the Danegeld to the Democratic Party and have been repaid with contempt. But any anti-semitism they feel now will be trivial compared to what they experience when President AOC leads a Democratic trifecta.
Whoever thought the Republicans would be the best best for Jews? We're only 10 years away from this Tweet by Matt Yglesias (often called the worst tweet of all time).
There is no strong Jewish identity outside Zionism other than in actual Haredi Judaism, which is mostly apathetic on this question but which really has nothing to do with the political left and sees the entire secular world, Jewish and gentile, as corrupt and degenerate.
Most liberal American Jews will and are abandoning Zionism. They are doing it perhaps slower than the left would like, but faster than one might have anticipated given half these people literally went on birthright. In the end it’s a relatively small price to pay, because Western Jews never sacrificed or lost anything for supporting Israel. There was never any cost to it, it’s on the other side of the world from America, and America is too racially, religiously and culturally diverse for extreme, violent antisemitism to become likely as state policy.
What, an unholy alliance of hotep black nationalists, 74% indigenous Mexican Catholics, Arabs, trans leftists and racist Irish and Italian Ellis Island people are going to commit some kind of inquisition against Jewish-Americans for supporting Israel? That seems about the least stable political coalition of all time and one that probably wouldn’t agree on anything except that one issue. Antisemitism is rising, and will probably continue to from the nadir of the 1990s (although I don’t think we’re close to mid-century levels yet, let alone something that would imply actual physical risk), but there are a lot of other kinds of medium sized ethnic animosity in America.
My guess is that two thirds of American Jews, already secularizing fast, will abandon any remaining Zionist aspect of their identities and remain generic progressive libs. The remaining third will be split into the fast growing Haredi populations which with the exception of Chabad might swear neutrality in the even of any serious state anti-Israel sentiment, but probably will just stay out of it, and the Modern Orthodox / Religious Zionist / maybe some more right wing conservative Jews, who will remain Zionist, and who will increasingly just come to be seen as the ‘Israeli diaspora’.
I think it depends, a lot of the current zeitgeist on the left is absolutely hostile to Judaism, even if right now they’re still pretending that it’s all about Palestinians. The alliance was basically one of parasitism— other ethnic minorities who are part of the DNC alliance had very little wealthy people to donate to the cause, so they needed the Jews to bankroll the party. But the same minorities, especially with the growing Arab population, don’t like Jews and they’re increasingly given microphones with which to speak their minds.
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