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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 2, 2023

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It's not technically culture war, but Hamas has just attacked Israel en-masse, overwhelming the Iron Dome with 5000 rockets and even sending raiding parties into Israel. It looks like Haman and/or Shabak haven't done their job at all, and Israel has been caught with its pants down.

For the culture war angle, I think the biggest question is of retribution. On one hand, Israeli public will now demand a reaction that makes the ongoing Hamas attack pale in comparison. On the other hand, what can Israel do to a very densely populated Gaza strip that won't be branded as a war crime or ethnic cleansing?

The best thing Israel could do for the Palestinian people is to straight up occupy Gaza and the West Bank and declare them to be parts of Israel and their inhabitants citizens. Then punish the attackers as common violent criminals.

Also this really doesn't look good for Mossad. I expected better from them...

This would result in the Palestinian people losing their homeland forever. A one-state solution would mean the eventual replacement of all Palestinians because of Israel’s soft privileging of Jews and the extreme birth rates of the Hasidim. Given that the Palestinians seem earnestly to value their culture and peoplehood, this simply isn’t viable.

Israel is running into the problem France had in Algeria and the whites had in South Africa. Once the minority becomes too numerous they can't be controlled. Had there been a million Iraqis the US would have won. With a booming population they simply couldn't. France controlled Algeria relatively well when their population was small. With the economic benefits of being a part of France their population boomed and it just became impossible for France to police that many Algerians. Apartheid South Africa would have been hard to maintain with a 4% white population. The Palestinian population is increasing rapidly and is getting to the size where counter insurgency is hard.

Palestinian birth rates are decreasing, whereas Israel’s is stable + 20% have extremely high birth rates which will overshadow Palestine in 60 years

Palestine has a younger population and a high birth rate. That religious fundamentalists with unimpressive average Iqs and dysfunctional ways of living are reproducing at a high rate is a problem for Israel, not a feature.

Do the Chareidim have unimpressive IQs? By 2019, Jewish fertility exceeded Arab fertility in Israel.