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After a surprisingly fractious negotiating period, Israel finally has a new government in place. The most religious, hard-right government it has ever had! A brief list of its priorities are listed here.
For my part, I remain puzzled over how some of their initiatives are termed anti-democratic. For instance, they want to allow businesses to reject certain customers/requests based on their faith. This reminds me of the "LGBT cake" ordered by a gay couple from a Christian baker in the US a few years ago. One gets the sense that they did it as a provocation, and to rub it in his eyes. He refused, was sued, and the case later went all the way up the courts.
If you're libertarian, shouldn't individuals and businesses be free to associate and do business with whoever they may want? I can see why this would be offensive if you're a leftist, but the charge is that this is "anti-democratic" which isn't synonymous with leftism. Or it shouldn't be, at least.
The coalition agreement is non-binding but rather a statement of principles. How much gets implemented remains to be seen, and there is rife speculation - one may be forgiven for thinking it is wishful thinking - in the media about the current government being short-lived. Either way, Israel's new government will be worth watching for how far a genuine right-wing government can be allowed to travel before it gets blocked by the establishment.
It's also worth mentioning that Prime Minister Netanyahu's own Likud party is substantially more secular than its right-wing/religious partners. So there is also an internal split that Netanyahu has to manage. He is liked by his base, but is loathed by much of the larger Israeli establishment. Particularly in the judiciary and the academic/media class.
I think from an American perspective, there's the idea that public spaces are for all* of the public because the alternative is segregation and we decided in the 1960s that that's bad. "Anti-democratic" doesn't quite fit, but I think the idea is that everyone is part of the same society is part of why it's important that everyone has a voice in how the society is run and there's some connection between being allowed to participate in society by being present in public spaces and being allowed to participate in society by voting.
*That is, businesses shouldn't exclude people by group/demographics; excluding individuals due to behavior (e.g. that specific person harassed the employees of that specific restaurant) is different.
I don't think that consensus actually exists. The Vaccine mandates of 2021/22 is the refutation.
I think that consensus does exist, but it's more like 'Public spaces are for everyone, especially certain protected groups, with some exceptions that we won't dwell upon too much, but we'll know them when we see them'.
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Nondemocratic or antidemocratic have indeed become hollow fighting words. I would not expect them to be invested with any actual meaning.
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This was half-written almost 4 weeks ago but I lost interest; might be as good an opportunity to post as ever will be.
Israeli elections and the limits of excuses
Can Israel get so right-wing that it'll lose its title of «the only democracy in the Middle East» and turn into just another icky Middle Eastern ally of convenience, like Saudi Arabia? Can it be disavowed, at a minimum, by the democratic consensus of the US – not wokes and token bugbears like Omar, but the Pelosi party core?
The Israeli are committed to find the answer. In the recent elections, one Itamar Ben Gvir, came third and is poised to become Minister of National Security. Conservative Jews of the US are worried:
Gvir is a Kahanist, a terrorist supporter (convicted in an Israeli court, ah, but I hear now it's partisan lefties), perhaps tied to the assassination of Rabin, and an unashamed Jewish supremacist, with a... non-expansive idea of who counts as a Jew to boot.
To be clear: I think that Israel is a true democracy, more of a democracy than, say, the US (by virtue of a clear binding ideology and having a multi-party system) – albeit an increasingly illiberal one. But that's not all of what Westerners mean when they use that word.
Maxim Katz, an Israeli-raised Russian liberal opposition leader (Russian mother, if that matters) who has gone back recently on the account of the war, notes curious parallels between his two homelands:
The commentariat is split between stressing that he can't know nothin' without decades of experience on the ground and how wretched it is to use filthy Russian analogies for understanding the best country in the world – and grimly agreeing. You can find the same discourse on Reddit (1, 2, 3) and elsewhere. A suspicion creeps in that Max will soon learn how this isn't really funny. I don't like him, but immensely appreciate the unexpected consistency of his liberal inclinations. You get this with Jews (expansively defined) sometimes, as with other people.
Not always, to be sure.
This post was inspired by my getting blocked here by JarJarJedi (you get a notification for it btw) after making the case for considering Israel a potential global threat and source of X-risk (you be the judge of its merit). Here's his rationale I didn't respond to in time: 1, 2.
It was an amusing and edifying moment. I don't remember altercating with JJJ in my years here, and in fact I thought favorably of him. Uh, have you read HunterXHunter? When I saw those, I was reminded of Ch. 298 (manga novices: go right to left). A specific frame - you'll know it when you see it. The hair-trigger activation of the tribal Us vs. Them framework, blatant lies, underdog posture that'd put any woke establishment journalist to shame, cackling and hollering about Da Joos, blatant misrepresentation and shell games with definitions, paroxysms of coarse tryhard sneering, gaslighting (textbook stuff, «you wear tinfoil if you do not submit») – it was as if... the facade of a human peer disappearing, revealing something alien, and much simpler in its drives.
But I guess he felt the same way, which is why he wrote it like this and blocked me.
It's a typical pattern when talking topics that concern their interests, sometimes not even related to their identity (encountered it in fairly nerdy apolitical domains) with strongly identifying Jews – making ones who lack (or suppress) such impulses all the more precious to me – and it's much of «my problem with Jews», and also exactly what I had in mind when making my case, the very mechanism by which opponents and passerbys are scared into false consciousness, into ignoring the elephant in the room, while the radicalism of the in-group grows. Nice to get confirmations quickly.
But would such sentiment, at scale, no doubt going beyond the election of Ben Gvir in a few years (and thanks to his policies), be enough to discredit Israel as a «Western-style democracy»?
Well you know Pelosi's stance on Israel: 'Even if the capitol crumbles to the ground, the one thing that will remain is aid to Israel!'
https://youtube.com/watch?v=nBslpxCg6CM
I got blocked by JarJarJedi too and returned the favor. I don't think he even commented to me. Surely this is not how the website is supposed to function.
Also, what a pity that Meruem managed to survive. What is the point of luring him out to a desolate location only to use just one bomb? Keep them coming! That smug prick was so arrogant, so certain that he was better than we are despite being only a few weeks old. It'd be a very different story if the Nen users were truly upstaged by technological power though...
blocking doesn't stop you from seeing their comments or replying to subthreads (idk if it blocks replying to comments), unlike on reddit
I actually really like this mechanic, because it puts the power back on the blocked party's side, only saving the blocker his nerves. Reddit logic was obnoxious.
Agree, although I'd prefer no blocking at all, or 'blocked party can reply to your comments but you don't see them'.
IMO, that's worse than no blocking or what we have here, it'd give the blockeds too much power. The fact that I can see JJJ's posts and comment on them if I'm so inclined already creates the temptation for bad-natured humor – and if I could do that in direct replies, unseen, that's just ugly. On reddit that'd instantly create circlejerks.
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When he blocked me, I couldn't reply to him even though I could see his comments. After I blocked him, I don't see his comments.
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Question- if Israel hadn't decided to provide state subsidies to the Haredim, would they be more productive?
In the US, which similarly has extremely loose homeschooling laws and a permissive attitude towards religious wackos, the religious wackos are generally productive citizens because they'll starve otherwise. Even isolated cults like the Hutterites and FLDS generally support themselves.
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That's a confirmed fact, because after the whole legal and wide-covered story, they went back and did it again, this time for gender transition. One can plausibly claim it is random event - it is a vendetta and an attempt to establish a precedent and make an example of him.
I expect not very far, unless they manage to rein in the Supreme Court, which has been very activist (to the left) for years and has not been shy to intervene politically. And which the left is not shy at all to use as a bludgeon to override any policy they don't like. That said, the traditional left in Israel right now is kinda in shambles politically after their "New Middle East" project obviously fizzled out, and no there's no long-term solution to the issue that anybody in Israel believes in. So the contention is now more along religious/secular lines, with secularists kinda aligning with American Left, but not entirely (there are wokes among them, but they are really in minority, most of them would be somewhere around moderate Republicans by American standards).
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You're projecting American culture and idioms on a completely different culture. The entire meaning of "right wing" in Israel is different (e.g. it's not 'conservative' in the American sense), and the assumption that the establishment is somehow opposed to the right is another Americanism. The establishment in Israel is populated by lots of ex-military guys, and being Zionist (= Patriotic) is practically a prerequisite for any movement or person to succeed outside the margins of society.
The presence of any meaningful leftist movements in Israel is rather marginal - represented politically by Meretz (so small they're not in the current Knesset even) and Labour (also small). While there's a lot of what an American might term "woke signaling" in the Tel-Aviv area, especielly with regards to LGB stuff, it doesn't extend well to actual minority populations. The Arab/Jewish divide is very deep, not like the Black/White divide in the states, so whenever woke rhetoric is projected on them it falls very much flat. It's just a different landscape, really.
I get what you're saying, but I disagree. There is deep divide, but rather it's between small l liberals (in the classical sense) like Gideon Saar and Benny Gantz and a conservative faction represented by Smotrich et al. Politics in Israel is more about secular/religious which is their version of left/right. In the West, everyone is basically secular so being conservative means a different thing. That doesn't mean that there isn't a liberal (centrist liberal) establishment in Israel's media, academia etc. Because there is.
I think you may be projecting some of the US culture wars a bit too much on Israel yourself, because your definition of what passes for conservatism and liberalism is very US-centric and you appear to think if it doesn't fit this bill then it can't be applied.
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I can respect that the Arab/Jewish divide is deeper, but the B/W US divide is.... significant.
Yeah, I could have phrased that better. I didn’t mean to say that the black/white divide in the US isn’t deep, I meant that the Arab/Jewish divide is even deeper, so it’s not exactly like the Black/White divide.
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I truly wish the libertarian mindset was relevant enough for this to be a genuine critique but it's not so I'm not sure what you mean to imply here. Libertarian alignment with conservatives against Big government should be confused with Libertarians being particularly conservative or conservatives being particularly taken with libertarianism.
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‘Anti-democracy’ just means the Atlanticist elite don’t like it. Hungary and Georgia(the state) may or may not have legitimate issues with their elections elevating a minority(which at least in Hungary’s case I doubt), but their real crime is the winners doing things that Atlanticist elites don’t like.
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I thought it was commonly believed that they did, because they basically shopped around looking for the one guy in town who would refuse so that they could sue him?
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"Democracy" in the West means "liberal democracy" means "liberalism" whenever the average person votes for something that violates the cultural desires of the Western or Western-educated elite. A lot of the times it's specifically American hangups. After all: overriding judicial rulings is not unheard of even in the West.
This is a sort of civilizational motte-and-bailey for the entire Western world: when you need legitimacy then you have the will of the people. When they will something inconvenient then you get the "it's a Republic" or 'that's letting the mob run wild!".
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https://archive.ph/5qyEx#selection-2497.0-2497.8
The end result and goal by the zionist lawmakers is segregation. The "lgbt cake case" is more like that a Jew shouldn't be forced to provide a christmas tree (creative services). But not providing a venue, is like denying to sell a generic cake.
I personally don't see a problem with a religious Jew refusing to host a Christmas party. There are many venues to choose from in Israel.
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BTW many Jews don't mind Christians celebrating Christmas. Some Jews indeed want nothing to do with Christians and anything related to them, but it is in no way a universal sentiment, and there's many historical precedents to it, both in Israel and in diaspora. E.g. some affluent Jewish families had a tradition of organizing Christmas parties for their staff - while they themselves did not celebrate, they organized it, provided the venue, bought the gifts, etc. But yes, I guess for a certain Jew it might be offensive if Christmas celebration happened in his venue, and in this case they should be able to refuse.
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I think there's a useful distinction between providing a venue for a specific event, and providing a venue period, in a lot of the ways that Hurley v. Irish-American recognized that a specific organization's parade could (and would) be seen as endorsement.
((Not that Hurley means anything to anywhere outside of the US.))
I think the strictest read of some Orthodox Rules would be closer -- "that Jews shouldn’t do any business with those of foreign religions (I think including Christians) on or within three days of the pagans’ religious holidays, lest they seem to be supporting or participating in them", especially for groups like Catholics which have a saint for every other day. But I also don't think the Israeli lawmakers are proposing that be permitted nevermind required, I don't think it's popular even among most Orthodox in Israel, and it's not very practical.
Hurley was not about some generic right not to be seen as endorsing an idea you disagree with. It was about compelled speech. It was about whether, if you decide to speak, the government can compel you to include specific ideas in your speech: "Disapproval of a private speaker's statement does not legitimize use of the Commonwealth's power to compel the speaker to alter the message by including one more acceptable to others." Holding a parade is obviously a form of speech. Offering a venue for rent isn't, just as a government is not speaking merely because it offers flagpoles at city hall as a venue for the speech of others . Shurtleff v. City of Boston, 596 U.S. ___ (2022).
In the sense that the strict terms of art used by the justices were more focused on compelled speech as a legal standard, yes. From the sense of whether that connection was seen as speech rather than mere access… Shurtleff said merely offering flagpoles at city hall wasn't endorsing speech, but that's very specific to the facts of the case
And then explicitly notes that it could be seen as government speech had Boston made those policies, as other jurisdictions at the time did!
Now, that's a different test than the non-government variant, but it is relevant as an example.
Hurley's central framework is compelled speech, but the Turner Broadcasting analysis is, if not specifically using the word 'endorsement', very much about whether the GLIB's speech would be seen as part of the broader parade's speech.
You are agreeing with me. As you say, "very much about whether the GLIB's speech would be seen as part of the broader parade's speech." As I said, "Hurley was not about some generic right not to be seen as endorsing an idea you disagree with. It was about compelled speech. It was about whether, if you decide to speak, the government can compel you to include specific ideas in your speech.
And, as I said, "a government is not speaking merely because it offers flagpoles at city hall as a venue for the speech of others." I put "merely" in bold for a reason: If that is the govt is doing, it isn't speaking. If that is all that a rental facility is doing, it isn't speaking. As I said, "Holding a parade is obviously a form of speech. Offering a venue for rent isn't."
And that is also why the parties spent so much time in Masterpiece and 303 Creative discussing whether the baker/website maker were speaking, and that is why the lower court in Masterpiece rested its decision on a finding that "such conduct, even if compelled by the government, is not sufficiently expressive to warrant First Amendment protections." Note that I am NOT saying that the lower court was correct in its conclusion, but rather that the issue of compelled speech does not arise unless the person is speaking, and merely offering a space for rent is not speech, unlike a parade, which clearly is.
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Can I book a gay sex orgy at a mosque then?
Obviously not. I don't see the difference. Nobody is obligated to use their talents or property for your benefit.
The issue is not whether anyone is obligated to use their talents or property for the benefit of others. It is the extent to which someone who is engaged in the business of using their talents or property for the benefit of others can discriminate against customers. You are framing the question in a way which avoids the actual issue at hand.
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Can you book a regular orgy at any venue?
If you managed to somehow get a recognized religion that required an orgy as a ritual, you might be in luck - I think religion is a protected class in the US. Satanists are trying to (ab)use it for political goals but so far I didn't see any major success for it.
Aren't there a few neopagan groups with sex rite and which aren't obviously just reddit-tier trolls? I think the question would be what they get away with.
I mean obviously satanists get away with less than other groups because of the whole sincere religious belief test, which they quite obviously fail and will tell you that they fail.
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With discrimination law it's important to distinguish the direction of discrimination to understand whether it is enhancing or restricting liberty. Majority>>Minority discrimination is very different from Minority>>Majority discrimination in the impact it has on people's lives. That's the way one distinguishes anti-discrimination laws which prohibit the majority whites from excluding minority Blacks from virtually every public accommodation in the South, leaving Black travelers to consult the Green Book or face a total lack of available restaurants, hotels, and even filling stations or even risk violence; versus the a gay couple who found the one baker in the county who wouldn't make them a cake just to fuck with the guy. One enhances liberty for more citizens, ensuring that everyone is able to find something, increases the speed and reduces the friction of commerce. One reduces liberty for a small number of citizens, pushes them out of commerce altogether, while not enhancing liberty for anyone in a significant way as substitutes were available.
These are at core factual rather than universal considerations.
I have no idea what the social circumstances in Tel Aviv are. Is it the case that I would have trouble finding a venue for my Christmas party? Or is it the case that I would have to go out of my way to find an Orthodox venue that wouldn't let me hold a Christmas party so I could make a stink about it? Anyone know?
Sorry for nitpick, but in many US states Black population was/is about 30-50%. IIRC there were three states which had >50% for certain period of time.
Correct, but not tremendously relevant to whether a motorist could find a place to stay at night in any given small town.
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Seems to me the main question isn’t majority / minority but whether the market is thick or thin.
If the market is thick, discrimination is costly and therefore by and large not an issue (such as the gay cake — there were many bakers who would bake the cake).
If the market is thin (classic is common carrier), then anti discrimination laws may be needed.
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There's a substantial Christian minority in Israel, and about 1/6th of the population is Russian and celebrates the equivalent Novi-God. You might face trouble if you try to use a venue from ultra-orthodox Jews (Haredim) or something, but otherwise your only problem is that everything is fully booked already.
Do the Haredim offer event venues generally? I was under the impression they were a largely impoverished minority made up of isolated cults and not the sort of thing that own businesses, real estate, and the like.
There’s a lot to say on this. It’s true that many Haredi men don’t work, but most Haredi women do, and a smaller percentage of the men also do work at least part time. The official statistics are also necessarily false, and trend too much towards unemployment, because that’s one way for Haredi men to avoid conscription (without getting into the details of why that is).
Even so, there are business owners that cater specifically to the Haredi market, both from within the community and from outside. It’s a very organized market, so securing a deal with them or even with a specific sect can be very lucrative. As an by anecdote, I used to work for a Haredi Spharadi man doing security for the Lithuanian Haredi population. He had plenty of steady work.
Officially, the great majority of Haredi are poor, but it’s not the same as being poor in the states. Health and education are practically free, public transport is cheap, basic food is donated to them from abroad, and they get very good deals from the aforementioned businesses owners who compete for the Haredi market. They also wield considerable political power, so they can get cheaper housing on the tax payer’s expense. Still, divide their income by the number of family members and they’re deep below the poverty line.
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Even before Russians brought the Novi-God, there was Sylvester - which is how Israelis called New Year, because the Jewish New Year is, of course, happening about 2-3 months before. I don't think anybody (non-Catholic) in Israel knows or cares much who St. Sylvester was, but it's how it has been called, and there were parties and events and so on - among secular Jews mostly, of course. I would argue Novi-God is an improvement - at least the holiday is not named after a Catholic Pope now!
True, true. I didn’t think of that, since Sylvester celebrations are more akin to American new-year’s than Christmas (no tree, for example), but for the religious opposition to hosting an event of the sorts it’s roughly the same.
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Actual rad-trads don't care about St. Sylvester, so I wouldn't expect the Polish genpop to either.
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I appreciate the info! What percentage of Jews do you think would refuse to host an Xmas party, or an Easter party, or whatever?
Let’s say all the ultra orthodox will, just to make the numbers easier. That’s about 1/7th of all Israeli jews, roughly a million people. But, they don’t have a proportional number of venues, it’s much less and they’re generally dedicated for their own uses (e.g they only allow badatz kosher food, separate women and men’s areas).
I don’t know if Easter is well known enough to be refused by anyone.
Then this seems like a real non-story doesn't it.
Hard to say. There’s no actual legislation going on yet, so it’s all up in the air. The examples given to western media aren’t actually relevant either (who cares about Christmas, or Christians for that matter? It’s not really a front in the culture war). In a general sense it sounds pretty bad to me, but I can’t say what will happen in practice.
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I think it would depend a lot on where the venue is. Like, in Tel Aviv, probably anything goes, but in the orthodox quarters of Jerusalem it's a different matter. I'm not sure I can talk percentages, but I don't think the religious question would be a problem if you really need a venue and not to make a statement.
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I fail to see how this is consistent with the fourteenth amendment guarantee equal treatment under the law. If the law says you can get me, but I can't get you, then it's not treating us equally.
I have some issues with Gorsuch, but he's naively idealistic enough to apply this rationale in cases before him. It's possible that within my lifetime civil rights, the great trampling on my liberty by the federal government, will be reversed in some fashion. It would take some doing.
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