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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).
Republican politicians due to evangelicals loves Israel. Republicans were more more Zionist compared to some Jews! I don’t understand why so many felt republicans hated Jews.
Projection; your general Democratic voting Jew is as pure Blue Tribe as can be, and rural Evangelicals are his quintessential opposite. Accordingly, it must be true that it is the Evangelical that hates him, because to believe otherwise would force him to confront the possibility that it is he who is the bigot, which of course cannot be the case, as he is a Good Fucking Person, while the Evangelical is not.
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Projection. Jews have a net -40 favorability rating of Evangelical Protestants and a net -13 favorability rating of Mormons, against Evangelicals’ net +39 and Mormons’ net +58 favorability rating of Jews. Jews hate the two groups most closely associated with the Republican party and assume the latter must hate them back.
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It's a bizarre love triangle where Republicans love Jews, Jews love Democrats, and Democrats hate Jews.
These are fairly recent events thoug the re-alignment just hasn't shaken out. The Democratic Party does not hate Jews or Israel. Young Democratic voters due.
Also, stupid people don't like Jews.
https://x.com/zagrebbi/status/2115834981797003381
Certainly the recent immigration to the US can't have helped matters in that regard.
It’d be interesting to see such a result split by race, given the obvious potential confound with blacks (and to a lesser extent, latinos) being low in average IQ and reportedly high in anti-semitism.
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Чем меньше женщину мы любим/Тем легче нравимся мы ей?
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