In a similarly boring manner, one of the best cases for Zionism's success is that Israel's child mortality rate in the 60s was about 3% whereas even in relatively wealthy Morocco is was about 20% and Yemen was about 35%.
Now that's definitely confounded by the fact that child mortality in Israel was definitely higher among poor immigrants, and in Yemen maybe was lower among Jews, but whichever way you slice it the expulsion of Arab Jewry probably saved hundreds of thousands of children from early death.
But the same argument could be made today for western countries to take in tens of millions immigrants from basket case countries with similarly high child mortality rates. But regardless of whether you think that's a good idea, that would be politically unfeasible.
So I guess the real success of Zionism is that it managed to integrate a large number of poor and uneducated immigrants without jeopardising the stability of the country as a whole.
I don't think anyone would deny that getting out of Yemen was a massive step up (and also, by the way, benefitted Israeli culture), but Morocco is much more complicated, and it has been such a disaster for Judaism.
It wasn't an appeal for people to pay. If you paywall periodically, you get about 5% of the audience on paid, and it's not really worth it to invest much effort in going above that. It was an appeal to bring articles to the attention of big-name accounts because a single share means hundreds of new subscribers, which in due course means a dozen or so will pay. You can share my refreshing takes too.
The Soviet patronage would be here but the degree of absolute lunacy was achieved only due to the Cold War dynamics and the Soviets just shoveling stuff into Syria (have you ever asked yourself what $ value Soviet weapons were relative to the Syrian GDP and with what amount of debt to the Soviets/Russians Syria ended). They didn't trust Palestinians and PLO that much because Arafat was mean to Assad.
Minus Zionism the Jews in Iran would certainly be *much* better off, and, as a rule, obviously, those in western countries do better than those in Israel.
Of course, that has to be balanced against the consideration that, without Zionism, some number would be stuck in Iran in difficult circumstances.
While this is neither a constructive, nor well-thought-through, nor even really legible response, I'll respond as if it was.
The history of Jews in Iran is quite distinct from that of the Ottoman/Arab world. Most obviously, the conversion of Iran to Shi'ism by the insane tyrant Ismail I entailed massive persecution of religious minorities. The most persecuted were Sunnis, but everyone got their share. By the 19th century, persecution of Sunnis was largely over because there weren't many left, and it shifted to a large extent to Jews. The reason for this is that Iran was heavily influenced by Russia which (a) intervened to stop persecution of Christians and (b) promoted persecution of Jews as a superior alternative.
However, the Pahlavi regime tolerated Jews as part of a programme of inclusive secular nationalism, and Jews did very well (except for the immediate aftermath of 1948). This offers a plausible model of what Arab nationalism might have been like in the absence of the conflict with Zionism. After the revolution, the Shiite revolutionary regime has generally tried to avoid the really bad aspects of Safavid Shi'ism (partly because they are somewhat cucked by western ideas). As a rule, they deal somewhat OK with religious minorities. Jews have fared worst, and this is very clearly a result of Zionism. In the absence of Zionism, Iran's foreign policy, and thus many other aspects, would necessarily have been quite different, so it might be a less messed up country generally.
So, compared to Jews in Arab countries, the negative effect of Zionism on Persian Jews has been less, whereas the benefit of offering refuge following events that are (mostly but not wholly)* orthogonal to Zionism has been greater.
*Zionism made the Iranian revolution perhaps 10% more likely, but it probably would have happened anyway.
They would be, and it's obvious that they would be. And the fact that you are Iranian and imbibed folk history doesn't make you better placed to make informed judgments, it makes you worse placed.
There's so much that could be said. But for me the bottom line is this: I think the whole Muslim MENA region was/is on an unavoidable path to becoming crappy dictatorships of one kind or another. All roads seem to lead that way eventually, as Turkey proves.
In the absence of Zionism, some of those countries would have been crappy and dangerous places for Jews to live specifically and some would have just been roughly equally crappy and dangerous for all the people living there.
Israel provided a refuge for those people where the government didn't want to shoot you for your opinions and (eventually) where they got to enjoy some Western style prosperity.
"There's so much that could be said. But for me the bottom line is this: I think the whole Muslim MENA region was/is on an unavoidable path to becoming crappy dictatorships of one kind or another."
This is also a really good argument against Zionism!
This is predicated on the erroneous belief that simply by existing in the hell that is MENA Jews and Muslims/Arabs will end up manifesting their aspirations by similar mechanisms/actions. Well, fortunately, Jews are very much not Muslims/Arabs.
Funnily, a similar argument can be transposed onto Israeli libs who claim that if we don't have pride parades in Jerusalem, we are LICHRALLY IRAN
I dunno. While we're considering all these hypotheticals, it's conceivable that the British *not* drafting the White Paper would have turned Israel into a legitimate refugium for Jews fleeing from mid-century Germany, and potentially have averted the Holocaust. Even if Zionism wasn't primarily motivated by the fear of that particular pogrom (or even pogroms in general), that oughta factor in.
I also wonder if you're over-applying historical determinism to the cultural tendencies of the middle east and not enough to the cultural tendencies of 19th-century jewish populations, which weren't determined by the roll of some dice. (There's also a part of me that's rather tickled by the notion of muslim jihadists beating themselves impotently against an obviously stronger power and I'm not sure that's a net negative in the grand scheme of things.)
On that note- how would you see Hezbollah destroying the IDF, exactly? I could see them (plus Iran) inflicting non-trivial civilian casualties if they launched every rocket at their disposal at once, but the entire country folding as a consequence? I doubt it.
This is something I want to explore. How much sense does it make to explore some counter-factuals and not others. I think, roughly speaking, the more intelligent you are, the more meaningfully you can be said to have free will, but it's certainly complicated.
Exploring counterfactuals is useful when there are not too many parameters involved, such as with regard to this specific question (and unlike the broader question of the trajectory of the ME and its Jews, absent Zionism). So, to attack together with Hamas, Hezbollah should have been informed by Sinwar of the Hamas plan in order to position its forces. If it had, the IDF intelligence would have picked up the preparations, and probably the plan itself, given the level of penetration of Hezbollah. So the outcome would likely have been better for Israel overall.
They did not. By the evening of October 7, thousands of reservists were already in the North. Many paratroopers units decided on their own to mobilize in the morning, well before the paralyzed general staff gave the orders.
We also know in retrospect that the Hezbollah would have been decimated by the booby-trapped walkie talkies.
It depends on how much disarray the IDF was in at the time. I don't think we know without a full inquiry. If they gave the order to fire rockets, large parts of northern Israel would have been rubble before anyone could give the order to use the pagers. Plus the pager option was designed to precede an attack, not counter one, so its impact would be far less than in our timeline.
But, as I said, for it to be an existential threat, Hizballah would have had to go all out and then Iran decided to launch ballistic missiles.
The HQ was in total disarray, the individual units did however react independently.
The pagers were supposed to be a sideshow. The walkie talkies used by the combatants were booby-trapped with a bigger charge and would have been much more deadly. They were in storage, to be distributed to the combatants at when they were mobilized.
This is the correct take. The real tragedy of the modern Middle East is that the British didn't respond to the Arab revolt with a giant fuck you and triple down on support for Zionism.
The Holocaust AND the Nakba might have been averted.
What would motivated the British to do that? I don't know, being based in the eyes of people on the internet decades later?
Churchill might have done it if he was in office.
I didn't say it was realistic, but maybe if the Zionists weren't so hung up on having a state versus just a homeland, it would have happened.
Like if the Brits and Zionists had cut a deal saying they were going back to what the original text of the Balfour declaration kind of implied, that Eretz Yisrael was going to be some kind of Jewish version of Australia that was loyal to Britain and British interests, it might have worked.
Considering the USSR’s initial pro-Zionist stance, its support for the UN Partition Plan, and its early recognition of Israel, why do you treat the Soviet role in Israel’s creation as secondary? What historical or political reasons account for this?
Also, imagine if Israel had chosen Soviet protection instead of American support. I think much of the Arab nationalism that developed after the 1950s might have shifted toward a more convenient form of socialism, and Stalin’s dream of extending Soviet influence over the remnants of the Ottoman Empire might have come true.
Given how extreme, pathological, and largely anti-utilitarian (!) Soviet Anti-Zionism ended up being, I can't really see a world where they'd remain in our corner. Choosing to stay under their aegis or not, they'd have cut bait and we'd end up in the same place but with less F-15's
I agree on the anti-utilitarian logic and on the pathological Judeophobia of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. However, I still think Stalin initially viewed Zionism as ideologically compatible with his theory of nations: secular Labor Zionism fit much better than Arab nationalism or Islamism, which were either transnational or religious. This helps explain early Soviet support for Israel’s creation, including diplomatic recognition et etc indirect military aid etc etc.That said, Stalin did not truly want an independent socialist experiment "outside" Moscow’s control (but under? I think yes; and that is my "what if" proposal here). His support for Zionism was instrumental aimed at weakening British/French influence in the Middle East. Once Israel emerged as a state with strong ties to the Jewish diaspora and openness to the United States, it quickly became unacceptable to the Soviet system. The Jewish Autonomous Oblast in Birobidzhan is still relevant to mention as an example of Stalin’s territorial, non-religious approach to the “Jewish question”: Yiddish-based, anti-Hebrew, and fully subordinated to Soviet power. Its failure shows that Stalin’s goal was administrative control rather than genuine Jewish self-determination.
I guess my overarching problem with this argument is that it's the kind of thing a battered spouse says to justify why they stayed with their abuser. "He didn't want to hurt me, but I made him, because I burned dinner. If only I hadn't burned dinner we'd be in a happy marriage."
I'm not criticizing the argument on moral grounds, mind you, but on the grounds that it's probably a poor way to predict counterfactuals.
If the Jews didn't embrace nationalism, would they be tolerated for their rootless cosmopolitanism or perhaps their commitment to international solidarity? No, that was a reason for persecution too. What if the Jews embraced local nationalist movements, would they be embraced by their gentile compatriots? No, generally, not, if Europe is any guide. Well, OK, that's Europe - maybe in the Middle East and North Africa, Arab nationalism and culture is more tolerant of minority communities? No, not really. Any Arab state with a decent sized minority devolved into sectarian civil wars or ethnic cleansing. Ah but what if the Jews were a rich and educated minority, then they could have influenced the - I'm gonna stop you right there.
I mean look, who can say, counterfactuals are counterfactual but if you believe Zionism was an accurate prescription for the threat that Jews faced in Europe (and I understand you do not) then I don't see what special situation would lead you to believe that the situation for the Jews in the MENA would have been better. Jews before Hitler generally thought Europe (at least Central and Eastern Europe, leave the czar out of it) was a much better place for Jews than MENA, which is why no Jews (except Zionists) moved from Europe to MENA and why Moroccans and North Africans were desperately trying to get French citizenship or to get to the Americas. Now it turns out that Europe was actually a much worse place for unforeseeable reasons but that doesn't mean MENA was actually less precarious than contemporary Jews understood.
"(at least Central and Eastern Europe, leave the czar out of it)"
Around 3/4 of European Jewry were subjects of the Tsar, and this is what Zionism really was: a solution to the problems of a population who had seen a sustained 100-year decline in their living standards, social status and legal protection. People don't understand this because they start by learning about the Dreyfus Affair, but the fact is that Herzlean Zionism was a brief, failed attempt to launch a hostile takeover of the Zionist movement, and that the only surviving Herzleans came to be called Territorialists. The fact is that Zionists simply did not predict anything like the Nazi conquest of Eastern Europe and did not plan for it in any way. The limmud zechus, of course, is that no-one else did either (except Territorialists).
Now, as to the rest. Dispense with counter-factuals, what did Zionism cause?
- Jews went from being another minority, sometimes persecuted (Yemen) and sometimes privileged (Morocco), to being the most hated minority in every Arab and Muslim country without exception, without any historical precedent for this at all.
- Jews were specially hated by both sides of the main political binary in the Arab world (Islamists vs Arab nationalists). Again, unprecedented.
- Almost the entire Jewish population of the Middle East emptied out after thousands of years in slightly more than a decade.
This is a complete catastrophe by any standards whatsoever, and I think it's legitimately retarded to think anything close to this would have happened in the absence of Zionism.
I think it's a much closer question whether Jews in Czarist Russia and Poland were worse off than the average MENA Jews than you do (you'd have to drill down to specific times and places), and I also don't think that Herzlian Zionism was an attempt to take over the Zionist movement. (It's not what Russian Zionists thought they were doing even if Chovevei Zion was operating before.) I continue not to get your love for the Territorialists.
>- Jews went from being another minority, sometimes persecuted (Yemen) and sometimes privileged (Morocco), to being the most hated minority in every Arab and Muslim country without exception, without any historical precedent for this at all.
What is the basis for your belief that Morocco was some paradise for Jews or that Jews were a privileged minority? Yes there was an upper strata of wealthy Jewish families some of whom perhaps enjoyed periodic influence with the royals when they weren't being forced to convert but for the vast majority of Moroccan Jews who lived in slums or the rural Atlas mountains...why is Afula so bad?
>- Jews were specially hated by both sides of the main political binary in the Arab world (Islamists vs Arab nationalists). Again, unprecedented.
But what other minority was present in every such state? MENA is writ large full of sectarian grievances. Islamists vs. nationalists, Shia vs. Sunni, Muslims/Christians, Alawites/everyone else, etc. etc. It's a region of haters! Jews are just the odd man out everywhere. You say it's unprecedented for every main political binary in an area to hate the Jews but is it? What was Europe, where Jews were the bane of Protestants/Catholics, nationalists/bolsheviks, etc. Did Zionism cause all this? Once the Arabs got their hands on industrial means of killing how long before the periodic massacres started doing some real damage?
>- Almost the entire Jewish population of the Middle East emptied out after thousands of years in slightly more than a decade.
Yeah, because the Middle East sucks and Jews had means of getting out unavailable to Jihad Q. Public. Even without Zionism, North African Jews wanted to go to France. And France is no great shakes either. As transoceanic transportation became safer and cheaper people who could left crappy countries to go to less crappy countries. I don't think it's such a tragedy that Moroccan Jews stopped living as a precarious minority in a Casablanca slum or a cave in the Atlas mountains to go live in an apartment complex in Afula.
I don't think you are understanding what I am saying at all. Zionism was a movement *by* Jews in the Russian empire *for* Jews in the Russian empire, and their concerns were those of Jews in the Russian empire. They thought a lot about why a Jew whose grandparents were tax farmers was now scrabbling away in a shitty factory for pennies. They thought a lot about how they really hated their Rosh Yeshiva and would show him who's boss. What they didn't think about, basically, is anyone else at all. They didn't think about Central European Jewry, except to schnorr from them. They didn't think about MENA Jewry at all. The idea that their project might have implications for a Jew in Tunisia was totally beyond their wavelength. Hell, it wasn't really until the 1930s that they put any effort into thinking even about Palestinian Arabs.
After WW2, really shameless revisionist history reimagined Zionism as a gigantic rescue movement from imminent catastrophes with Herzl as the central figure. But the fact is that the Herzleans were marginalised and borderline expelled from the Zionist movement after about 7 years of Herzl failing in all his plans, which they never supported anyway. As an objective matter of fact, the name we use for Herzleans after that is 'Territorialist'. This has nothing to do with whether I like them or not. You can't think at all about the history of Zionism at all without clearing this apologetic clutter from your understanding. And the proof is the literally insane view that Zionism saved MENA Jewry from an imminent catastrophe when *obviously* it caused a catastrophe.
"where Jews were the bane of Protestants/Catholics, nationalists/bolsheviks, etc. Did Zionism cause all this"
You're a smart guy and shouldn't say Jewish day school nonsense like this.
I don't believe in Zionism fairy tales of a grand master strategy that was expertly devised to save every Jew in the Old World, but the fates of Yazidis, Alawites and others do bear out the contention that when mass killing devices reached the Middle East, it was going to be as precarious as Europe was. Yes, at the time( early 1900s), there was not a fool-proof way of anticipating this, but in hindsight, the establishment of Israel does seem to have been better for Middle Eastern Jews. What did the Yazidis do to piss off Muslims?( The Alawites did seize power, to be frank).
The answer is (a) worship the devil and (b) be in the immediate vicinity of ISIS. While I agree that the last 20 years should shift our view of how bad things would have been for Jews in the absence of Zionism somewhat, I do not think that there is any reason to think that this would have been generally representative of the Jewish experience. The fate of Christians in Mosul is more instructive as to how Jews would have been treated. Note that Christians were treated less harshly not only than Yazidis, but also Shia and even Sunni judged to be subject to Takfir. Conversely, in the rare cases that ISIS have captured Jews, they simply killed them. But anyway there is no reason to think that anything of the sort would have happened in Morocco or Tunisia.
I agree that Northwest Africa seems to be culturally and socially different from the Middle East/Egypt. More backward, yet also less rigid-minded and dogmatic.
Arab nationalism is gay, and the fact that the arabs in the Levant are still into it shows the low level IQ which would eventually have led to other problems. Arabs, can’t live with them….
All third world nationalism ended up pro-Soviet, poor, and dysfunctional, so I see no reason to imagine Arab Nationalism (where human capital is even worse than Latin America and comparable to parts of Africa) would have been any different.
I think Arab World human capital has some range, from Lebanon/Syria to Yemen/ Gulf States. Lot of genetic diversity is contained under the term "Arab". Without oil in the Arabian peninsula, Gulf states would've remained at the level of some African countries.
It's incidental but I don't know how much luck was behind 1967. Before the war UK and US intelligence agencies were confident Israel would win in less than a week if they started the war and in less than two weeks if someone else started it.
Yes, the expected outcome was an Israeli victory against Egypt. But if Israel had been as unlucky as it was lucky, it could have been very bad. Perhaps a 15% chance of catastrophe.
The more I think about it, all of this thinking about counterfactuals is asking the wrong question. The alternative timelines you sketch are all plausible enough, but at the end of the day history is messy and unpredictable and we have no idea how things would have gone in reality. No one can possibly know all of the potential second and third order effects of any of the differences you outline (for example would France have been as open to taking in Moroccan Jews if Israel hadn't absorbed most of them?). And there is always a tail risk of some crazy catastrophe, no matter what you do.
So instead of speculating about possible timelines and trying to compare reality with the likely alternative scenario (which we have no way of really knowing), the better approach is to opt for a political setup where you control as much of the situation as possible and have as many tools as possible to deal with whatever unpredictable thing happens. It isn't just that there is more dignity in having your political fate depend on your own decisions rather than on the personal relationship of some unsavory askan with this guy (https://www.economist.com/1843/2023/04/14/the-mystery-of-moroccos-missing-king). Rather having more control, tools and options gives more of an ability to secure a better outcome.
On this approach Zionism wins, it unlocks things like having an army, participating in state-level international diplomacy, economic treaties and all the other capabilities that states have that communities do not. Nothing guarantees that we will use them well or that the outcome will be good, but having these things gives us a range of options we wouldn't have otherwise and increases our level of control over any given situation.
Almost everything in the alternative timelines you outlined without Israel depended on what the Arab Nationalists, the British and the Soviets would do. By contrast pretty much every variable in the alternative Israel timelines was downstream of a Jewish choice. Similarly more or less every bad thing about actual Israel, from the hairstyles in Afula to Oct 7, is downstream of some bad choice we made at some point. We just need to figure out ways to make better ones more consistently. Not easy, but its possible and is up to us. So your conclusion is correct, but IMO its a call to action, not an argument against Zionism either way.
I think all this only works with some kind of nationalist metaphysics. I don't have an army, I don't have international diplomats, I don't have the ability to sign economic treaties. Do I have more ability to access these levers of power because I can vote in an election? Is a state less determined in its actions than a goy?
It doesn't need to be a metaphysical thing, it works on the level of political/sociological analysis. Human beings group themselves into collectives, whether they be tribes, nations, states, corporations, street gangs, whatever. It is possible that all of these things are fake social constructs that only exist in people's heads. But the fact is that once these collectives exist in enough people's heads and they organize their lives accordingly, then they exist in political and social reality and can take actions that are attributable to the collective as a whole.
Different collectives have different capabilities. Usually the individual members don't have much control over how these are used, as these decisions are made by some small subset of leaders/representatives/agents. But especially for core affiliations like being part of the Jewish people, the range of options that are available to that subset ultimately matters a lot for the situation of the individual members as well. You are part of a group that now does have an army and international diplomats at the disposal of some of its decision makers. So I'd claim that you do have these things in an important sense, whether you are happy about it or not, at least more than your great-grandfathers did.
Not sure I understood the last question about state vs. goy.
This is going to be a post one day, but to put the matter simply, a state isn't like a magic stick that allows you to do things you couldn't do before you had it. It comes with its own sets of pressures that determine how it acts in the same way that a council of elders has in a diaspora community. Right now presently, the way that the Israeli government has behaved over the past few years was basically determined by Hamas' success and the general stupidity of the Israeli public. Not only do I as an Israeli Jew have no mechanism to stop the state harming my long-term interests, I would have no way as a diaspora Jew to avoid it. In fact, the entire Jewish people is now hostage to the dumbest half of the dumbest half of the Jewish people indefinitely.
Nothing is ever fully deterministic, both the state and the council of elders always have some range of options of how they respond to their respective sets of pressures along with new sets of capabilities. And yes, having a state brings new sets of pressures and constraints to go along with the new capabilities. On some level all of this is just a matter of deciding which package of pressures and abilities we prefer.
But to say that the way the state and the council of elders act is determined *in the same way* by external pressures seems implausible. The state has a wide range of things it can do and it has much more ability to impact the course of events, it is by nature a more politically powerful entity. The council of elders options to respond to their pressures are much more limited. Donald Trump also has a set of unique external pressures that impact on how he acts, pressures that are probably hard for us to really imagine, does that mean that his actions and yours or mine are equally determined, that we all have the same ability to impact the course of events?
On the last points, without the state you also wouldn't have a mechanism to stop your country from harming your long-term interests, and would be held hostage to the dumbest half of the British, American or Moroccan people. Having more capabilities has the risk of misusing them and creating more harm, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't want to have them at all.
In a similarly boring manner, one of the best cases for Zionism's success is that Israel's child mortality rate in the 60s was about 3% whereas even in relatively wealthy Morocco is was about 20% and Yemen was about 35%.
Now that's definitely confounded by the fact that child mortality in Israel was definitely higher among poor immigrants, and in Yemen maybe was lower among Jews, but whichever way you slice it the expulsion of Arab Jewry probably saved hundreds of thousands of children from early death.
But the same argument could be made today for western countries to take in tens of millions immigrants from basket case countries with similarly high child mortality rates. But regardless of whether you think that's a good idea, that would be politically unfeasible.
So I guess the real success of Zionism is that it managed to integrate a large number of poor and uneducated immigrants without jeopardising the stability of the country as a whole.
I don't think anyone would deny that getting out of Yemen was a massive step up (and also, by the way, benefitted Israeli culture), but Morocco is much more complicated, and it has been such a disaster for Judaism.
Perhaps if the Jews stayed behind they accelerate the build out of medical infrastructure and save more Moroccan and Yemeni lives
These unique, unsentimental offend-everyone curmudgeon takes on Substack are a welcome and refreshing contribution to this general subject matter.
It’s too bad your appeals to get more paid subscribers on chat are only seen by paid subscribers.
It wasn't an appeal for people to pay. If you paywall periodically, you get about 5% of the audience on paid, and it's not really worth it to invest much effort in going above that. It was an appeal to bring articles to the attention of big-name accounts because a single share means hundreds of new subscribers, which in due course means a dozen or so will pay. You can share my refreshing takes too.
The Soviet patronage would be here but the degree of absolute lunacy was achieved only due to the Cold War dynamics and the Soviets just shoveling stuff into Syria (have you ever asked yourself what $ value Soviet weapons were relative to the Syrian GDP and with what amount of debt to the Soviets/Russians Syria ended). They didn't trust Palestinians and PLO that much because Arafat was mean to Assad.
"Mentally ill French pederast", you are being excessively generic here, frankly
Its very nice they all decided to sign a letter with their names thus penning them forever as marked by their disconnexion to reality
Are the Jews who stayed in Iran better off than those who left and went to Los Angeles or Holon?
Minus Zionism the Jews in Iran would certainly be *much* better off, and, as a rule, obviously, those in western countries do better than those in Israel.
Of course, that has to be balanced against the consideration that, without Zionism, some number would be stuck in Iran in difficult circumstances.
While this is neither a constructive, nor well-thought-through, nor even really legible response, I'll respond as if it was.
The history of Jews in Iran is quite distinct from that of the Ottoman/Arab world. Most obviously, the conversion of Iran to Shi'ism by the insane tyrant Ismail I entailed massive persecution of religious minorities. The most persecuted were Sunnis, but everyone got their share. By the 19th century, persecution of Sunnis was largely over because there weren't many left, and it shifted to a large extent to Jews. The reason for this is that Iran was heavily influenced by Russia which (a) intervened to stop persecution of Christians and (b) promoted persecution of Jews as a superior alternative.
However, the Pahlavi regime tolerated Jews as part of a programme of inclusive secular nationalism, and Jews did very well (except for the immediate aftermath of 1948). This offers a plausible model of what Arab nationalism might have been like in the absence of the conflict with Zionism. After the revolution, the Shiite revolutionary regime has generally tried to avoid the really bad aspects of Safavid Shi'ism (partly because they are somewhat cucked by western ideas). As a rule, they deal somewhat OK with religious minorities. Jews have fared worst, and this is very clearly a result of Zionism. In the absence of Zionism, Iran's foreign policy, and thus many other aspects, would necessarily have been quite different, so it might be a less messed up country generally.
So, compared to Jews in Arab countries, the negative effect of Zionism on Persian Jews has been less, whereas the benefit of offering refuge following events that are (mostly but not wholly)* orthogonal to Zionism has been greater.
*Zionism made the Iranian revolution perhaps 10% more likely, but it probably would have happened anyway.
They would be, and it's obvious that they would be. And the fact that you are Iranian and imbibed folk history doesn't make you better placed to make informed judgments, it makes you worse placed.
The point is that whilst Holon requires Zionism, LA does not.
LA often feels like a Zionist project tbh
Why do they stay? They can leave. People vote with their feet.
There's so much that could be said. But for me the bottom line is this: I think the whole Muslim MENA region was/is on an unavoidable path to becoming crappy dictatorships of one kind or another. All roads seem to lead that way eventually, as Turkey proves.
In the absence of Zionism, some of those countries would have been crappy and dangerous places for Jews to live specifically and some would have just been roughly equally crappy and dangerous for all the people living there.
Israel provided a refuge for those people where the government didn't want to shoot you for your opinions and (eventually) where they got to enjoy some Western style prosperity.
I think that’s clearly a good thing.
"There's so much that could be said. But for me the bottom line is this: I think the whole Muslim MENA region was/is on an unavoidable path to becoming crappy dictatorships of one kind or another."
This is also a really good argument against Zionism!
This is predicated on the erroneous belief that simply by existing in the hell that is MENA Jews and Muslims/Arabs will end up manifesting their aspirations by similar mechanisms/actions. Well, fortunately, Jews are very much not Muslims/Arabs.
Funnily, a similar argument can be transposed onto Israeli libs who claim that if we don't have pride parades in Jerusalem, we are LICHRALLY IRAN
I dunno. While we're considering all these hypotheticals, it's conceivable that the British *not* drafting the White Paper would have turned Israel into a legitimate refugium for Jews fleeing from mid-century Germany, and potentially have averted the Holocaust. Even if Zionism wasn't primarily motivated by the fear of that particular pogrom (or even pogroms in general), that oughta factor in.
I also wonder if you're over-applying historical determinism to the cultural tendencies of the middle east and not enough to the cultural tendencies of 19th-century jewish populations, which weren't determined by the roll of some dice. (There's also a part of me that's rather tickled by the notion of muslim jihadists beating themselves impotently against an obviously stronger power and I'm not sure that's a net negative in the grand scheme of things.)
On that note- how would you see Hezbollah destroying the IDF, exactly? I could see them (plus Iran) inflicting non-trivial civilian casualties if they launched every rocket at their disposal at once, but the entire country folding as a consequence? I doubt it.
This is something I want to explore. How much sense does it make to explore some counter-factuals and not others. I think, roughly speaking, the more intelligent you are, the more meaningfully you can be said to have free will, but it's certainly complicated.
A lot of people have speculated on what would have happened if Hizballah had attacked on October 7th. It certainly would have been very bad. https://www.lbcgroup.tv/news/middleeastnews/841140/israels-military-chief-says-hezbollah-could-have-reached-haifa-on-octo/en
Exploring counterfactuals is useful when there are not too many parameters involved, such as with regard to this specific question (and unlike the broader question of the trajectory of the ME and its Jews, absent Zionism). So, to attack together with Hamas, Hezbollah should have been informed by Sinwar of the Hamas plan in order to position its forces. If it had, the IDF intelligence would have picked up the preparations, and probably the plan itself, given the level of penetration of Hezbollah. So the outcome would likely have been better for Israel overall.
They didn't have to coordinate. Hizb'Allah could have just decided to intervene. They had at least 12 hours to decide to do so. Probably more like 24.
They did not. By the evening of October 7, thousands of reservists were already in the North. Many paratroopers units decided on their own to mobilize in the morning, well before the paralyzed general staff gave the orders.
We also know in retrospect that the Hezbollah would have been decimated by the booby-trapped walkie talkies.
It depends on how much disarray the IDF was in at the time. I don't think we know without a full inquiry. If they gave the order to fire rockets, large parts of northern Israel would have been rubble before anyone could give the order to use the pagers. Plus the pager option was designed to precede an attack, not counter one, so its impact would be far less than in our timeline.
But, as I said, for it to be an existential threat, Hizballah would have had to go all out and then Iran decided to launch ballistic missiles.
The HQ was in total disarray, the individual units did however react independently.
The pagers were supposed to be a sideshow. The walkie talkies used by the combatants were booby-trapped with a bigger charge and would have been much more deadly. They were in storage, to be distributed to the combatants at when they were mobilized.
This is the correct take. The real tragedy of the modern Middle East is that the British didn't respond to the Arab revolt with a giant fuck you and triple down on support for Zionism.
The Holocaust AND the Nakba might have been averted.
But what would have been their motivation?
What would motivated the British to do that? I don't know, being based in the eyes of people on the internet decades later?
Churchill might have done it if he was in office.
I didn't say it was realistic, but maybe if the Zionists weren't so hung up on having a state versus just a homeland, it would have happened.
Like if the Brits and Zionists had cut a deal saying they were going back to what the original text of the Balfour declaration kind of implied, that Eretz Yisrael was going to be some kind of Jewish version of Australia that was loyal to Britain and British interests, it might have worked.
I had a different idea which is they never did the Balfour Declaration at all, but rather just lowkey opened up the place to Jewish immigration.
Oh so do Zionism but in secret? See you support actual literal Zionist conspiracies!
Maybe this is the compromise statement we can both get behind.
https://nonzionism.com/p/the-march-of-return-and-the-al-aqsa/comment/149770558?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=2ivicc
Considering the USSR’s initial pro-Zionist stance, its support for the UN Partition Plan, and its early recognition of Israel, why do you treat the Soviet role in Israel’s creation as secondary? What historical or political reasons account for this?
Also, imagine if Israel had chosen Soviet protection instead of American support. I think much of the Arab nationalism that developed after the 1950s might have shifted toward a more convenient form of socialism, and Stalin’s dream of extending Soviet influence over the remnants of the Ottoman Empire might have come true.
So...yes and no...
Given how extreme, pathological, and largely anti-utilitarian (!) Soviet Anti-Zionism ended up being, I can't really see a world where they'd remain in our corner. Choosing to stay under their aegis or not, they'd have cut bait and we'd end up in the same place but with less F-15's
I agree on the anti-utilitarian logic and on the pathological Judeophobia of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. However, I still think Stalin initially viewed Zionism as ideologically compatible with his theory of nations: secular Labor Zionism fit much better than Arab nationalism or Islamism, which were either transnational or religious. This helps explain early Soviet support for Israel’s creation, including diplomatic recognition et etc indirect military aid etc etc.That said, Stalin did not truly want an independent socialist experiment "outside" Moscow’s control (but under? I think yes; and that is my "what if" proposal here). His support for Zionism was instrumental aimed at weakening British/French influence in the Middle East. Once Israel emerged as a state with strong ties to the Jewish diaspora and openness to the United States, it quickly became unacceptable to the Soviet system. The Jewish Autonomous Oblast in Birobidzhan is still relevant to mention as an example of Stalin’s territorial, non-religious approach to the “Jewish question”: Yiddish-based, anti-Hebrew, and fully subordinated to Soviet power. Its failure shows that Stalin’s goal was administrative control rather than genuine Jewish self-determination.
I guess my overarching problem with this argument is that it's the kind of thing a battered spouse says to justify why they stayed with their abuser. "He didn't want to hurt me, but I made him, because I burned dinner. If only I hadn't burned dinner we'd be in a happy marriage."
I'm not criticizing the argument on moral grounds, mind you, but on the grounds that it's probably a poor way to predict counterfactuals.
If the Jews didn't embrace nationalism, would they be tolerated for their rootless cosmopolitanism or perhaps their commitment to international solidarity? No, that was a reason for persecution too. What if the Jews embraced local nationalist movements, would they be embraced by their gentile compatriots? No, generally, not, if Europe is any guide. Well, OK, that's Europe - maybe in the Middle East and North Africa, Arab nationalism and culture is more tolerant of minority communities? No, not really. Any Arab state with a decent sized minority devolved into sectarian civil wars or ethnic cleansing. Ah but what if the Jews were a rich and educated minority, then they could have influenced the - I'm gonna stop you right there.
I mean look, who can say, counterfactuals are counterfactual but if you believe Zionism was an accurate prescription for the threat that Jews faced in Europe (and I understand you do not) then I don't see what special situation would lead you to believe that the situation for the Jews in the MENA would have been better. Jews before Hitler generally thought Europe (at least Central and Eastern Europe, leave the czar out of it) was a much better place for Jews than MENA, which is why no Jews (except Zionists) moved from Europe to MENA and why Moroccans and North Africans were desperately trying to get French citizenship or to get to the Americas. Now it turns out that Europe was actually a much worse place for unforeseeable reasons but that doesn't mean MENA was actually less precarious than contemporary Jews understood.
"(at least Central and Eastern Europe, leave the czar out of it)"
Around 3/4 of European Jewry were subjects of the Tsar, and this is what Zionism really was: a solution to the problems of a population who had seen a sustained 100-year decline in their living standards, social status and legal protection. People don't understand this because they start by learning about the Dreyfus Affair, but the fact is that Herzlean Zionism was a brief, failed attempt to launch a hostile takeover of the Zionist movement, and that the only surviving Herzleans came to be called Territorialists. The fact is that Zionists simply did not predict anything like the Nazi conquest of Eastern Europe and did not plan for it in any way. The limmud zechus, of course, is that no-one else did either (except Territorialists).
Now, as to the rest. Dispense with counter-factuals, what did Zionism cause?
- Jews went from being another minority, sometimes persecuted (Yemen) and sometimes privileged (Morocco), to being the most hated minority in every Arab and Muslim country without exception, without any historical precedent for this at all.
- Jews were specially hated by both sides of the main political binary in the Arab world (Islamists vs Arab nationalists). Again, unprecedented.
- Almost the entire Jewish population of the Middle East emptied out after thousands of years in slightly more than a decade.
This is a complete catastrophe by any standards whatsoever, and I think it's legitimately retarded to think anything close to this would have happened in the absence of Zionism.
I think it's a much closer question whether Jews in Czarist Russia and Poland were worse off than the average MENA Jews than you do (you'd have to drill down to specific times and places), and I also don't think that Herzlian Zionism was an attempt to take over the Zionist movement. (It's not what Russian Zionists thought they were doing even if Chovevei Zion was operating before.) I continue not to get your love for the Territorialists.
>- Jews went from being another minority, sometimes persecuted (Yemen) and sometimes privileged (Morocco), to being the most hated minority in every Arab and Muslim country without exception, without any historical precedent for this at all.
What is the basis for your belief that Morocco was some paradise for Jews or that Jews were a privileged minority? Yes there was an upper strata of wealthy Jewish families some of whom perhaps enjoyed periodic influence with the royals when they weren't being forced to convert but for the vast majority of Moroccan Jews who lived in slums or the rural Atlas mountains...why is Afula so bad?
>- Jews were specially hated by both sides of the main political binary in the Arab world (Islamists vs Arab nationalists). Again, unprecedented.
But what other minority was present in every such state? MENA is writ large full of sectarian grievances. Islamists vs. nationalists, Shia vs. Sunni, Muslims/Christians, Alawites/everyone else, etc. etc. It's a region of haters! Jews are just the odd man out everywhere. You say it's unprecedented for every main political binary in an area to hate the Jews but is it? What was Europe, where Jews were the bane of Protestants/Catholics, nationalists/bolsheviks, etc. Did Zionism cause all this? Once the Arabs got their hands on industrial means of killing how long before the periodic massacres started doing some real damage?
>- Almost the entire Jewish population of the Middle East emptied out after thousands of years in slightly more than a decade.
Yeah, because the Middle East sucks and Jews had means of getting out unavailable to Jihad Q. Public. Even without Zionism, North African Jews wanted to go to France. And France is no great shakes either. As transoceanic transportation became safer and cheaper people who could left crappy countries to go to less crappy countries. I don't think it's such a tragedy that Moroccan Jews stopped living as a precarious minority in a Casablanca slum or a cave in the Atlas mountains to go live in an apartment complex in Afula.
I don't think you are understanding what I am saying at all. Zionism was a movement *by* Jews in the Russian empire *for* Jews in the Russian empire, and their concerns were those of Jews in the Russian empire. They thought a lot about why a Jew whose grandparents were tax farmers was now scrabbling away in a shitty factory for pennies. They thought a lot about how they really hated their Rosh Yeshiva and would show him who's boss. What they didn't think about, basically, is anyone else at all. They didn't think about Central European Jewry, except to schnorr from them. They didn't think about MENA Jewry at all. The idea that their project might have implications for a Jew in Tunisia was totally beyond their wavelength. Hell, it wasn't really until the 1930s that they put any effort into thinking even about Palestinian Arabs.
After WW2, really shameless revisionist history reimagined Zionism as a gigantic rescue movement from imminent catastrophes with Herzl as the central figure. But the fact is that the Herzleans were marginalised and borderline expelled from the Zionist movement after about 7 years of Herzl failing in all his plans, which they never supported anyway. As an objective matter of fact, the name we use for Herzleans after that is 'Territorialist'. This has nothing to do with whether I like them or not. You can't think at all about the history of Zionism at all without clearing this apologetic clutter from your understanding. And the proof is the literally insane view that Zionism saved MENA Jewry from an imminent catastrophe when *obviously* it caused a catastrophe.
"where Jews were the bane of Protestants/Catholics, nationalists/bolsheviks, etc. Did Zionism cause all this"
You're a smart guy and shouldn't say Jewish day school nonsense like this.
I don't believe in Zionism fairy tales of a grand master strategy that was expertly devised to save every Jew in the Old World, but the fates of Yazidis, Alawites and others do bear out the contention that when mass killing devices reached the Middle East, it was going to be as precarious as Europe was. Yes, at the time( early 1900s), there was not a fool-proof way of anticipating this, but in hindsight, the establishment of Israel does seem to have been better for Middle Eastern Jews. What did the Yazidis do to piss off Muslims?( The Alawites did seize power, to be frank).
The answer is (a) worship the devil and (b) be in the immediate vicinity of ISIS. While I agree that the last 20 years should shift our view of how bad things would have been for Jews in the absence of Zionism somewhat, I do not think that there is any reason to think that this would have been generally representative of the Jewish experience. The fate of Christians in Mosul is more instructive as to how Jews would have been treated. Note that Christians were treated less harshly not only than Yazidis, but also Shia and even Sunni judged to be subject to Takfir. Conversely, in the rare cases that ISIS have captured Jews, they simply killed them. But anyway there is no reason to think that anything of the sort would have happened in Morocco or Tunisia.
I agree that Northwest Africa seems to be culturally and socially different from the Middle East/Egypt. More backward, yet also less rigid-minded and dogmatic.
You think it’s legitimately retarded for the Holocaust, which had just happened without Zionism, to happen again without Zionism?
You are legitimately retarded, that's for sure.
Arab nationalism is gay, and the fact that the arabs in the Levant are still into it shows the low level IQ which would eventually have led to other problems. Arabs, can’t live with them….
All third world nationalism ended up pro-Soviet, poor, and dysfunctional, so I see no reason to imagine Arab Nationalism (where human capital is even worse than Latin America and comparable to parts of Africa) would have been any different.
I think Arab World human capital has some range, from Lebanon/Syria to Yemen/ Gulf States. Lot of genetic diversity is contained under the term "Arab". Without oil in the Arabian peninsula, Gulf states would've remained at the level of some African countries.
" speaking their ancestral tongue, and are free, self-governing people living lives of dignity in Afula."
That, sir, was a low blow.
A funny one, but a low one.
It's incidental but I don't know how much luck was behind 1967. Before the war UK and US intelligence agencies were confident Israel would win in less than a week if they started the war and in less than two weeks if someone else started it.
Yes, the expected outcome was an Israeli victory against Egypt. But if Israel had been as unlucky as it was lucky, it could have been very bad. Perhaps a 15% chance of catastrophe.
The more I think about it, all of this thinking about counterfactuals is asking the wrong question. The alternative timelines you sketch are all plausible enough, but at the end of the day history is messy and unpredictable and we have no idea how things would have gone in reality. No one can possibly know all of the potential second and third order effects of any of the differences you outline (for example would France have been as open to taking in Moroccan Jews if Israel hadn't absorbed most of them?). And there is always a tail risk of some crazy catastrophe, no matter what you do.
So instead of speculating about possible timelines and trying to compare reality with the likely alternative scenario (which we have no way of really knowing), the better approach is to opt for a political setup where you control as much of the situation as possible and have as many tools as possible to deal with whatever unpredictable thing happens. It isn't just that there is more dignity in having your political fate depend on your own decisions rather than on the personal relationship of some unsavory askan with this guy (https://www.economist.com/1843/2023/04/14/the-mystery-of-moroccos-missing-king). Rather having more control, tools and options gives more of an ability to secure a better outcome.
On this approach Zionism wins, it unlocks things like having an army, participating in state-level international diplomacy, economic treaties and all the other capabilities that states have that communities do not. Nothing guarantees that we will use them well or that the outcome will be good, but having these things gives us a range of options we wouldn't have otherwise and increases our level of control over any given situation.
Almost everything in the alternative timelines you outlined without Israel depended on what the Arab Nationalists, the British and the Soviets would do. By contrast pretty much every variable in the alternative Israel timelines was downstream of a Jewish choice. Similarly more or less every bad thing about actual Israel, from the hairstyles in Afula to Oct 7, is downstream of some bad choice we made at some point. We just need to figure out ways to make better ones more consistently. Not easy, but its possible and is up to us. So your conclusion is correct, but IMO its a call to action, not an argument against Zionism either way.
I think all this only works with some kind of nationalist metaphysics. I don't have an army, I don't have international diplomats, I don't have the ability to sign economic treaties. Do I have more ability to access these levers of power because I can vote in an election? Is a state less determined in its actions than a goy?
It doesn't need to be a metaphysical thing, it works on the level of political/sociological analysis. Human beings group themselves into collectives, whether they be tribes, nations, states, corporations, street gangs, whatever. It is possible that all of these things are fake social constructs that only exist in people's heads. But the fact is that once these collectives exist in enough people's heads and they organize their lives accordingly, then they exist in political and social reality and can take actions that are attributable to the collective as a whole.
Different collectives have different capabilities. Usually the individual members don't have much control over how these are used, as these decisions are made by some small subset of leaders/representatives/agents. But especially for core affiliations like being part of the Jewish people, the range of options that are available to that subset ultimately matters a lot for the situation of the individual members as well. You are part of a group that now does have an army and international diplomats at the disposal of some of its decision makers. So I'd claim that you do have these things in an important sense, whether you are happy about it or not, at least more than your great-grandfathers did.
Not sure I understood the last question about state vs. goy.
This is going to be a post one day, but to put the matter simply, a state isn't like a magic stick that allows you to do things you couldn't do before you had it. It comes with its own sets of pressures that determine how it acts in the same way that a council of elders has in a diaspora community. Right now presently, the way that the Israeli government has behaved over the past few years was basically determined by Hamas' success and the general stupidity of the Israeli public. Not only do I as an Israeli Jew have no mechanism to stop the state harming my long-term interests, I would have no way as a diaspora Jew to avoid it. In fact, the entire Jewish people is now hostage to the dumbest half of the dumbest half of the Jewish people indefinitely.
Nothing is ever fully deterministic, both the state and the council of elders always have some range of options of how they respond to their respective sets of pressures along with new sets of capabilities. And yes, having a state brings new sets of pressures and constraints to go along with the new capabilities. On some level all of this is just a matter of deciding which package of pressures and abilities we prefer.
But to say that the way the state and the council of elders act is determined *in the same way* by external pressures seems implausible. The state has a wide range of things it can do and it has much more ability to impact the course of events, it is by nature a more politically powerful entity. The council of elders options to respond to their pressures are much more limited. Donald Trump also has a set of unique external pressures that impact on how he acts, pressures that are probably hard for us to really imagine, does that mean that his actions and yours or mine are equally determined, that we all have the same ability to impact the course of events?
On the last points, without the state you also wouldn't have a mechanism to stop your country from harming your long-term interests, and would be held hostage to the dumbest half of the British, American or Moroccan people. Having more capabilities has the risk of misusing them and creating more harm, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't want to have them at all.
The two arguments against providence seem weak to me.
I think you overemphasize Arab nationalism's role