My Crystal Ball on Israel

Daily Kos has a post on "Imagine a World Without Israel." The posting at Kos is absurd.

However, I have to say that I think Israel in say a generation is going to be a lot different than it has been. I would say the same about Europe, and the United States as well.

Certain things run common in history. One of these is that wealthy countries act as magnets to poorer countries, that wealth is redistributed by revolution (violent or peaceful) when the demographics warrant, and that whenever a country tries to nativize itself against teeming hordes of Others, they have already lost.

I know people like to give the example of the Native Americans. Couple things there. First, there was a lot of intermarriage (my ancestors, among them; South Carolina Cherokee.) Second, there weren't that many, WRT to the territory: density was not an issue.

Another example has to do with genocides or ethnic cleansings. Well, the Armenians are back in Armenia and Germans have been floating back to lands outside of Germany for awhile now, and, thanks to the extension of the EU, will be able to buy the old family farms in another 15-20 years.

Demographically, the US is going to become more Hispanic (heavily Amerind south of the border already, BTW), Europe is going to become more Muslim, and greater Israel (Jordan to Med) will probably have a Pali majority in a few years.

All these people are going to want to be treated as equals by the dominant cultures. They will get it, eventually. That's just the way it goes. In Israel's case, they will never be able to "lock out" the West Bank, or Gaza, or their own Arabs. Although today the Palis are proportionally much poorer and less powerful than their Jewish Israeli counterparts, that will change. It just will.

Meanwhile, Israel is becoming more secular. More Israelis are thinking about living elsewhere; even today probably less than half of world Jewry actually live in Israel, I know several nominal Israelis who live in the Northeast who frankly prefer it here, for various reasons.

Meanwhile, the meme that Israel is unwise to Jews because it concentrates too many in one space, or the meme that Israel causes anti-semitism, are both frequently made by Jewish commentators (Tony Judt, et al.)

So I expect that Israel is going to end up as a binational state, or even a blended state of Jews and Arabs. It will be much stronger for it, too. That's my guess.