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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?
I think people won't care. Or rather, leftists who visibly care will discredit themselves. Like, there's talk of international opinion, but what do you do concretely? Do you sanction Israel for what Azerbaijan just violently did with no provocation and at no cost, after naked Jewish women have been paraded, raped and murdered in the streets by savages? And while a true ethnic cleansing is not out of the question, more realistically they'll simply permanently occupy Gaza and turn it into an actual open air prison, whether after the hostages are recovered or after the stream of atrocities decreases the public tolerance for giving in to hostage tactics.
These events certainly drive home the point that Hamas is the best Palestinian ruling party that Israeli hawks could have had, to the point that intel leaks leading to this disaster should be investigated with an eye for 4D chess (nothing will be found though). This obviates the conflict over judicial reform, demonstrates to Haredim the necessity of cooperation with the secula authority and the military, builds up the momentum for war with Iran, generally accelerates the mode collapse into a far right ethnonationalist society.
From the more mainstream Palestinian side (such as there is), I think escalation now is motivated by the ongoing legitimization of Israel in the rest of the Arab world. They don't have much time left for this silliness.
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.
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.
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