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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 2024

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TBH a Mega!Israel with most/all of pre-WWII European Jewry transplanted there* would probably have colonized out to the historic borders of the old Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem at this point just through population pressure, let alone the Jabotinsky's of the world.

*in 1948 the new nation of Israel had about 650k Jews in it, give or take. If we add in appx. 50% of the 1933 Jewish populations of France, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Poland, and Romania (an estimate attempting to allow for for stay-behinds, pogrom-victims, or emigres to other places like the US), we turbocharge that to 3,700,000. For context, Jordan had appx. 500k people in 1948. Syria had about 3.25 million. Lebanon had about 1.3 million. Arabs would have been absolutely swamped all across the Levant, and if it had come to war as it did historically, God alone knows what would have happened. And if we assume the same rate of population growth as historically, in this alternate Mega!Israel, that would mean 50 million Jews running around the holy land today.