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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 2, 2023

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Hamas the best Palestinian ruling party that Israeli hawks could have had

Maybe, but I think that it is not the best Palestinian ruling party that Israel could have had. If Israel does become a far right ethnonationalist society, I think that a lot of its most intelligent people will simply move away from there and it will lose many of the advantages that it previously had relative to its enemies. And, since from what I understand Jews outside of Israel tend to increasingly intermarry a lot, this could actually destroy Jews' entire cultural/genetic advantage over gentiles which they have enjoyed for the last ~200 years as Jews get increasingly assimilated by the much huger populations of non-Jews around them.

Indeed, I think that part of this could happen even Israel does not become a far right ethnonationalist society but Israel's enemies simply somehow manage to hit it with rocket attacks a bit more frequently and regularly than they have managed to do up to this point. Highly skilled people like engineers and scientists can move elsewhere and some of the ones who are less patriotic than the rest would do so in such a scenario.

Israel will weather a minor slump in growth rate just fine and can afford to continue truncation selection on loyalty. The gravitation holding it together (fear of annihilation by gentiles plus feeling of racial, spiritual, essential distinctiveness) cannot be negated by anything so petty as a bunch of disloyal white collar workers scurrying away. Given local Jewish TFR, in a generation those turncoats will be more than adequately replaced by children of those who stayed anyway.

I am merely channeling the sentiment I observe among very level-headed, secular Israelis today – ML professors, staunch liberals, witty SSC readers. A great many of them will accept ethnic cleansing or genocide of Palestinians as a solution; perhaps will participate if a chance presents itself. Israel no longer gives a fuck about Western libshit routines where patriotism is supposed to be definitionally antithetical to intellectualism; it's traversing the path that the West has renounced in the 20th century.

A great many of them will accept ethnic cleansing or genocide of Palestinians as a solution; perhaps will participate if a chance presents itself

Israel would be welcome to try and it would fail. These same "liberals" would also find themselves the targets of Islamic radicals in the West doing revenge attacks for months if not years. Given their embrace of genocidal rhetoric, I certainly wouldn't shed a tear for them.

Islamist attacks in the West (even narrowly targeted at Jews) won’t create more sympathy for the Palestinian cause but the opposite.