Israel/Palestine thread

I am suggesting Egypt wasn't as secular as what the depictions of college students in Cairo might make you think.

As for religious radicalism, it's quite plausibly linked to women education mainly, which by itself can correlate with living conditions but it's not necessarily the link you have in mind (poverty -> religious radicalism).

Very low women education -> religious radicalism is more often the true causal relationship, and poverty can play a role there but not necessarily so (see KSA for example)

Are you sure you don't have that back to front?

Palestinian women are some of the most educated

Given rich arab states, but also rich jews orthodox communities, no

I don't think i am on record claiming the palestinian population is more radically religious than that of some other arab countries, am i? even if Tunisia, Algeria and Libya are even less radical.

I have actually repeatedly written palestinians are hostage to Hamas, which is quite radical

Saudi Arabia is, they literally financed 9 11

Some of the people in SA financed 9/11.

What acts of religious terrorism have the wealthy orthodox Jews you cited committed recently?

Some people at the upper echelons of saudi arabia society financed 9/11, and a lot of people there were happy about that

Lets keep in mind, when talking about "education" you guys can be talking about 2 very different things. A lot of the "education" which goes on in this part of the world is religious seminaries where extreme radicalization occurs.

They dug some tunnels under NYC.

Why is terrorism the only metric? we were discussing radical religious tendencies, and how they correlate (or not) with living conditions.

Basically we are trying to discuss how probable it is you believe stuff from religious books and clerics quite literally. It can be non-dangerous stuff like details about how you are supposed to dress to please god. Still a radical departure from logic and reason.

And my assessment is that doesn't correlate directly to poverty, but it can correlate indirectly.

Why women education and not both sexes education? because religious radicalism happens when you are very young in the vast majority of cases. And in most cases you spend a lot more time with your mother (and other adult women in the family, or older girls) than with your father (or other adult men), when you are young.

For me it's very basic stuff, like even having most/all adult women literate (which still isn't a thing everywhere).

I stumbled upon this very crucial element when studying fertility across countries. The main variable that explained lower fertility was women education above everything else, across cultures and geography (which btw is why i have no hope we can push fertility much higher than it is, as denying education to women is not something i am willing to contemplate as an option).

And it strongly correlated with religious radicalism as well

Well, the fundamental problem is that Islam has never undergone any sort of reformation (which would be thematically extremely difficult given that M was a patriarchial warlord who engaged in slavery, rape, genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, misogyny etc. and one of the central tenets of Islam is that he was the perfect human), so the Islamists pretty much always have the moral high ground, no matter how much they suck.

So, even if the average person isn't a radical Islamist, they cant exactly say no when Islamists push them in very destructive, antisocial directions. Very tricky situation.

My understanding is Palestinian women are very literate. Like Victor says, they are educated, but they are educated to believe stuff like the Koran and Elder Protocols of Zion, which isn't exactly a recipe for a liberal, tolerant, peaceful relationship with your Jewish neighbors.

Ye and in gaza especially they agree with hamas less than in other countries (or than in the west bank) lol.

I know you believe the palestinian population as a whole is particularly radical but i think you are wrong about that.

Just to give an example , the somali are much much much much much more radical.

Gaza and Palestine is one of the worse examples you could use for this. look up their literacy and education rates and compare them to the USA.

Why make this distinction?

Are there anytime the entirety of a country has pitched in to finance a military operation?

Fertility in palestine dropped from 8 (one of the highest numbers ever recorded in history for any place ) to 3.3 in 50 years, one of the quickest and biggest drop in fertility in human history.

While 3.3 might look very high (and it is, currently) yet, it still comes from such an absurdly high previous level, that we can fairly claim palestine had the same dynamic we see basically everywhere: an exceptional drop in fertility following an increase in women education.

Prior to 10/7 (and probably still) more radical groups like Lions Den and Islamic Jihad were MORE popular than Hamas.

Hamas has been in power in Gaza for 20 years and generally done an extremely poor job. In the West Bank, Hamas is more supported because the people get to cheer the Jihad (which they support) without all the sucky stuff that goes along with being ruled by Stone Age mindset homicidal maniacs, that the Gaza populace has had to deal with for 20 years.

And Hamas is still more popular than Biden, Trump or most Western leaders to their domestic populace. The fact that Hamas has the level of support it does after doing such a bad job for so long is a testament to how radical Gaza society is IMO.

But you aren't wrong about the Somalis. I was banned at the time, so didn't bring it up here, but it was pretty wild when Omar gave that speech to a Somali American delegation, that might as well have been written by Goebbels, it had so much disturbing ethno-nationalist religious rhetoric.

Well, I agree that if the terror pipeline form Qatar and Iran could be cut off, and all the radicalization that goes on in the education system halted, Palestinian society has the potential to quickly become much more functional.

It just appears the rest of the world doesn't want this to happen. They want the Rafah smuggling tunnels to remain operational, UNRWA to keep the radicalization train going, and Hamas to stay in charge. So I dont see much cause for hope, unless Israel just decides to shun the rest of the Western World and truly become a pariah state.

Israel is definitely in a race against technology. That's all this conflict has really ever been. In '48 is was just troop quality and weapons that prevailed. It stayed that way through the 70's. With Iron Dome it's more of the same. Israel has avoided being genocided themselves by consistently winning the war of science and procurement. That's the great irony, they've always been the ones the region wants to wipe out.

But the war in Ukraine is showing what a shift can look like on the battle field with inexpensive technological improvements. Israel is now racing against the unknown next improvements to further miniaturize weapons and make them that much deadlier. Because whatever you think of IDF targeting, Hamas with a weapons upgrade is humanity's worst nightmare.

The Abraham Accords and normalization with the Saudis is the path to maybe avoiding this, and even then I don't know. So although Israel is not unaware of how awful this whole thing has looked since Oct 7th, for them now this is the window to "handle" this front. And I think when you map this out over 100 years, they clearly feel the today cost in lives is going to be justified (over the alternate timeline where they don't get there).

Once normalization in the region really spreads, it'll be the unified front against Iran. And I think the hope is maybe Iran falls apart from within in a post oil world. Might be wishful thinking.

Btw for the people who support Hamas in here, here's a mental exercise:

Hamas is given access to a device (gas, nuke, pathogen, water supply, otherwise) they can use to eliminate Tel Aviv and kill 450k people in the process.

In this fictional timeline, in a post Oct 7th world, do you honestly think they don't?

Ofc they don't. They aren't stupid and despite your racism, they don't want to just kill Jews. Their demands are clear.