Angry Israel/Palestine Ranting Thread.

How likely it is to --instead of trying to strike a potentially uneasy deal-- convince some MK(s) to switch allegiance to another party, one that'd be easier to make coalition with? Pulling someone from the centre to the right or the orthodox, e.g. (and for that matter, vice versa)

Lum, just curious, but how (and why) do you have such an in-depth knowledge of Israeli politics? This stuff makes my head swim.

One of my friends mentioned this the other day, do you have a source? It struck him (he's Jewish, if it matters) as common knowledge, but I had never heard it before.

It sorta depends on how you define welfare, I guess? There's a stipend for studying Torah/Talmud, for example; that counts as welfare to some people but not to others.

Here's a question, do Israeli university students who study more practical things like anthropology or nuclear science get the same level of benefits?

They can get the draft deferred for a while, but they have to serve more time when they go in, IIRC. It's also only for specialized degrees that the army would be interested in. (A friend's son did a degree in computer science, then served an extra year).

The whole question of Orthodox men serving in the army is a little bit more complex than a simple bribe.

It was originally a plain & simple bribe to support the state, back in Ben-Gurion's day. Now, though, there are two things that are a bit in conflict, partly because of the nature of the Israeli army.

One thing which most people don't realize is that the Israeli army is actually too big. There are swathes of people who only have two hours' work to fill up a whole day ("jobniks"). But the army has a secondary function, which is that it's supposed to be a melting pot. In theory, when Russian immigrants have to serve alongside sephardim who have to serve alongside Ethiopians, etc, then everyone gets to see and accept the diversity of other groups. (Practice is different, but what can you do). In addition, of course, although the army is too big, a volunteer army would be too small, so it's been decided that too big is OK.

So the problem is that the Ultra-Orthodox aren't particularly useful in the army -- they won't perform combat roles, and the army is already over-stuffed with jobniks -- so the generals don't really want them. But there's a societal feeling that they should serve, because everyone else does. I think it's likely that we'll see some sort of mandatory public service in the near future.

I appreciate the reply but my question was more in the vein of the level of economic support for students rather than draft eligibility. Like, can a university student get through his education without loans in Israel.

Where does sherut leumi fit into that, Gav? I don't even know if it's changed in the years since I was in Israel, but if I remember right, all of my instructors for the MDA courses were individuals so serving.

Sorry about that. Yes, public universities (which are very good) are subsidized, so that tuition tends to be on the order of $2-3000 per year.

Sherut le'umi (national service) is an option, but right now it's not mandatory. (My very Orthodox niece did a couple of years).

IMHO, the only viable way to solve the ultra-Orthodox/army problem is to assign them to some sort of national service period. (I mean in terms of serious proposals that I've seen circulating the political sphere). This solves two problems -- it doesn't feel so much like they're shirking something everyone else has to do, and it gets in that mixing I mentioned above, since there are non-ultra-orthodox who do the service now. In addition, Israel could really use the extra hands to do some of the national service work.

(caveat: It's been a while since I lived there, too, so anything I say could be out of date).

Do the Orthodox themselves tend to share the belief that they should be forced to contribute equally? (i.e. "We're all in this together") Or are they indifferent or resistant to the idea?

It's all over the map. There are national-religious Orthodox, who serve in a combat capacity. There are some black-hat types who serve in the army in a non-combat capacity (I think that Lubavitchers tend to do this, but my memory is hazy). There are others who do national service.

There are actually some who genuinely believe that it's a good idea for everyone to serve in some capacity, but that being a talmud student is a kind of legitimate service.

There are some who think that it's theoretically a good idea, but not practical. (If they serve, they'll be exposed to women, shock/horror). These ones especially annoy me, even more than the bunch in the previous category.

There are some who don't even think there should be an army (or a state), so of course they don't want to serve.

And I suspect the majority don't really think about it one way or the other. Most Israelis don't, except for a while every few years when the topic happens to come up. (That is, they may have an opinion, but it's not usually vociferous, except when, say, housing subsidies are cut, or a lot of soldiers are deployed in combat, or something like that).

But I don't know if there's any polling data.

Keep in mind too that the Orthodox population of Israel is exploding, especially compared to the (mostly secular) Jewish demographics when the country was founded. The rules in place for Orthodox Jews were created when they were a tiny minority who often didn't accept the existence of Israel. It's a radically different situation today. It doesn't bode well for secularism in Israel when the part of the Jewish population which is still expanding holds views on religion in society which are closer to the Muslim Brotherhood than to what used to be considered Zionism.

So anyone seen this yet?

Holy shit.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the Israeli government is also into eugenics. :-(

Holy fucking shit.

Well, this is around nine orders of "not okay" magnitude.

Fuck their holy shit.

I saw that earlier today; that's truly monstrous.

Good call.

I'm not a big follower of Israeli type news: did this revelation come out of the blue? Or has it been something that's been rumored for a while?

It was surprising like the Tuskegee experiments and the Catholic Church molestation scandal, which is to say, not. Although we might be acting shocked and horrified, sterilizing women in secret based on race is one hundred percent par for the course and anyone with a passing familiarity would so easily accept it that it almost seems like a hoax. It isn't that we did or did not expect them to do it, it's more like we expected them to do it but we also expected better from them. It's like an uncle that keeps going to prison. The specific what flabbergasts you, but the that is kind of like, well yeah, it's not like any of us thought he had his shit together, but really, a brat truck full of decommissioned literary erotica? Come on, Jerry. I mean, come the fuck on.

Crazy story, though at least once the cover was blown the authorities at least had shame enough to order that the process be immediately stopped. These days you half expect the Israeli government to double down on even the most lunatic shit.

I originally saw this in Tyler Cowen's Marginal Revolution blog. Check out this Israeli defender in the comments section:

And of course the correct response that someone posted:

A pedantic nitpick, because I'm just like that: Describing this as sterilization is inaccurate. The horrific part, to me, isn't so much the specific act in and of itself; it's the violation of informed consent and bodily autonomy, the complete lack of medical ethics involved.

It's certainly worth making a difference between sterilization and secret contraception injections, even though the loathsome aims are similar to the sterilization programmes of countries like Sweden and the US in the 20th century (and indeed, contraception rather than sterilization may well just have been chosen because they thought they could get away with it), I imagine it makes a world of difference to the women affected that they will actually be able to conceive in the future.

Depo can also have some nasty side effects in women - at least - I know a few women who had a marked decline in health after their shots. No doubt some women were afflicted without any idea of why or any recourse to stop taking the drug. Chronic pain, inflicted by the government. Nice.

Oh, it's mild as eugenics programs go (e.g. in the US), but it's still eugenics and merely less sickening than it could have been.

And honestly, who thinks they showed any "restraint" out of ethical concerns?

Normally I'd nerdrage all over a pseudo-homonym screwup of an an idiom like tone-deaf to tonedeath, but in this case I think the expression as written is accurate on its own.

Haaretetz says "nuh-uh!" in regards to secret birth control. Too lazy to check other sources.

Fuck paywalls.