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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).
While I am sure that there are cases of genuine antisemitism in the Democratic Party, I think that the median case of what gets called antisemitism is simply hostility or neutrality towards Israel.
There are two groups who claim that Israel and the Jews are one and the same: right wing Israelis and Neonazis (sometimes in personal union). They are wrong.
I think it is fair to suppose that the ~7 million Jews who are US citizens are staying in the US by choice rather than because they have not gotten around to buying plane tickets to Tel Aviv yet. If I had to speculate, I would say that their motive might be that murdering and getting murdered in some god-forsaken desert is probably not their idea of a good time. I know I would feel the same.
Do you think that president AOC will proceed to put them into camps, starting with Bernie Sanders? For that matter, do you think Bernie feels betrayed by the Democrats over their lack of support for Israel?
For mostly secular Ashkenazim, I think the left remains a reasonable option for politics. Sure, Jews are officially not considered a disadvantaged demographic on the woke totem pole, but neither are they tracked as a specific demographic, instead they are mostly considered white, which prevents a lot of headaches with regard to Ashkenazim being over-represented (due to HBD reasons). They have thrived in a multi-ethnic society for a long time, it seems not terrible unreasonable to suppose that they will continue to do so?
Donald Trump has been great for Netanyahu, but has he been great for the median Jew in New York? Did the tariffs boost her shop's revenue? Does she feel NY is safer from nuclear attacks by Iran? Is she happy about the immigration enforcement?
The culture war is a divide between the urban and the rural, blue-collar workers and white-collar workers. I do not think that most US Jews would naturally lean towards the red tribe.
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My hope for a president AOC would be that the US-Israeli relations would become similar to the US-Uzbek relations. That instead of actively (or proactively) defending Israeli interests and selling them the latest military technology, the US would simply opt to treat them as yet another uninteresting country with a dubious human rights records. Let them buy their military tech from Russia or China. Slap them with trade sanctions if they are especially bad, ease the sanctions if they behave themselves for a while.
And no, this would not make the US any more antisemitic than their current foreign policy stance on Uzbekistan makes them anti-Turkish.
Of course not. And I hope that you wouldn't imply that from anything I said.
Really, the biggest change I'd expect is Jews to be shut out of more positions of power due to their ethnicity. Previously, Jews were a strong beneficiary of a lot of ethnic spoils because, unlike other whites, they were allowed to organize for their own benefit. Now they have to slum it with the rest of us whites in the category of people actively discriminated against. I won't feel too bad about it.
I'd also expect slightly more anarcho-terrorism type things with lots of nuisance attacks against synagogues, maybe a few get burned down, maybe a few random Jews get hate-killed here and there and the FBI won't be assed to care. This isn't just a fake problem either. Synagogues already need security and it's because they get threatened constantly.
Overall, quality of life for Jews in US will remain far higher than in Israel.
This is starting to sound like the El-Sayed messaging. Here's what I would have to say about that. Don't vote for people who hate you. It's as simple as that. They don't care about you, they won't protect you, and any 0.1% increase in GDP they promise in exchange for your soul will never materialize anyway.
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