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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.
Lately, I've seen a meme on X about "Japan A" and "Japan B". The Japan A is the one we think of when we think of Japan. But there is also a Japan B: vulgar, rural, bad-food eating, modded-car driving, high school dropouts, etc...
Almost every country has a B side. There is a France B, Italy B, as well as the much more famous England B and United States B.
In any case, Israel B is hilarious. It's like 9 million Bronze Age tribespeople and shtetl dwellers attached to 1 million of the most high agency, high IQ people on Earth. They hitched their wagon to a very bright star, but the load gets heavier every year.
Israel's fundamental weakness is that Judaism is not a proselytizing religion, meaning they are unable to absorb or subjugate their defeated enemies quickly. Instead, they are forced to integrate Sephardi and Mizrahi to bolster their numbers, diluting the purity of their Ashkenazi brain trust. The permanent welfare handouts for the Haredi, though, is what really dims Israel's future. I expect the Ashkenazi to flee Israel in significant numbers to the US as soon as the Haredi obtain primary leadership within a governing coalition.
How these future "refugee" Ashkenazi integrate politically in the US will be interesting.
Is anyone capable of absorbing/subjugating their defeated enemies anymore? Outside the occasional Islamic takeover of some middle eastern or African village, it seems the days of mass conversions to avoid the jizya tax are long behind us. It's not like the Christian nations of the world are doing a great job proselytzing to the waves of refugees they're seeing. Even the Muslim countries don't seem to be putting much effort into forcing assimilation (the Gulf countries are famous for doing the exact opposite)
Born again Protestant Christians in the US have traditionally made outreach and conversion attempts to immigrant communities. Same with Mormons. I think both groups have been less successful recently, though I'm not sure where to find data on that. Immigrants aren't subjugated enemies though.
China has made more forceful attempts to deislamize Uyghurs. I think they have at least some success with that. More importantly for China, they're able to subjugate and deislamize Uyghurs while maintaining at least neutral or better relations with most Islamic countries. Strictly speaking though, it's not conversion to another religion, unless socialism with Chinese characteristics counts as a religion.
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