naraburns nihil supernum
1yr ago
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #2
This is a refreshed megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
I mean, it appears that Ashkenazi Jews are literally the smartest group in the world by average IQ(it’s possible that some Brahmin or middle eastern Christian subgroup, or something like that where there’s a sliced up minority of a minority that’s already notable for high IQ’s, has a higher average IQ, but I haven’t seen any direct evidence). Which raises the question of how much Jewish overrepresentation is specifically Ashkenazi, and I would bet that’s a lot of it.
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hydroacetylene 1yr ago·Edited 1yr ago
Let's look at the list of Israeli PMs (Ashkenazi/Sephardi/Mizrahi):
Ben-Gurion: A
Sharett: A
Eshkol: A
Allon: A/?
Meir: A
Rabin: A
Begin: A
Shamir: A
Peres: A
Netanyahu: A/?
Barak: A
Sharon: A
Olmert: A
Bennett: A
Lapid: A
There are just two PMs that have moms that might theoretically have non-Ashkenazi roots (born in Mandatory Palestine), but that's probably because I can't read the Hebrew Wikipedia, only the English one.
Is it the case of intra-Jewish discrimination? Did the Ashkenazi sponsors of Israel and the overwhelmingly Ashkenazi New Yishuv settlers discriminate against Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews fleeing post-independence pogroms in Muslim countries?
UPD: I also checked the current cabinet. They are younger, so their origins are less clear for many members. I had to resort to phrenology in some cases.
Benjamin Netanyahu: A/?
Yariv Levin: A
Aryeh Deri: S
Moshe Arbel: A (Haredi)
Uriel Buso: A/S
Yitzhak Wasserlauf: A/?
Amichai Chikli: M
Yitzhak Goldknopf: A
May Golan: M
Avi Dichter: A
Shlomo Karhi: S?M?
Miki Zohar: S/M
Yoav Gallant: A
Bezalel Smotrich: A
Nir Barkat: A
Yoav Kisch: A
Haim Biton: ?
Israel Katz: A
Idit Silman: S
Eli Cohen: S
Ofir Sofer: M
Galit Distel-Atbaryan: M
Gila Gamliel: M
Mordechai Eliyahu: M
Meir Porush: M?
Ya'akov Margi: S
Yoav Ben-Tzur: ?
Orit Strook: A/?
Itamar Ben-Gvir: M
Michael Malchieli: ?
Ofir Akunis: A
Ron Dermer: A
Haim Katz: A
Miri Regev: S
Benny Gantz: A
Gideon Sa'ar: A/M
Gadi Eizenkot: S
Hili Tropper: A?
Yifat Shasha-Biton: S/M
It looks like Israel did a stellar job integrating Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews. It's also surprising how many of the ministers live in the settlements.
It seems relevant that the current Israeli government is a large coalition agreement and Israeli political parties are split partially on ethnoreligious lines, though, doesn’t it? Major confound there.
I’d bet a list of every Jewish Fortune 500 ceo in the G7 plus Israel would be pretty heavily Ashkenazi, maybe a Sephardi or two. Likewise for professors at the top universities in each major economy.
I checked what the Shas party is about and it "primarily represents the interests of Sephardic and Mizrahi Haredi Jews", which explains their prevalence in its ranks, but even many Likud ministers are Mizrahi/Sephardi.
I’d bet a list of every Jewish Fortune 500 ceo in the G7 plus Israel would be pretty heavily Ashkenazi, maybe a Sephardi or two. Likewise for professors at the top universities in each major economy.
G7 is a pretty big confounder itself, given than none of the countries there are Muslim. I don't know where to find a good list of Israeli Jewish CEOs detailing their ancestry. I casually browsed the list of scientists from TAU, Hebrew University and Technion, and it does look like they are mostly Ashkenazi, with random interesting exceptions like Moshe Many, who's an OG Israeli from the Old Yishuv.
My understanding of Israeli politics is that you see lots more mizrahi Jews, and sometimes more Sephardic Jews, in political appointee positions than would get in by pure merit for the same reason there’s lots of black political appointees in the US- it holds up parts of political coalitions- except with the confounder that Israel doesn’t have longstanding coalition agreements, and ethnic minorities are spread out across the spectrum instead of being all democrats except for Vietnamese Cubans and tejanos. So I wouldn’t read too much into ministers and political appointees.
Obviously, most Jewish CEOs in Germany and Russia are Ashkenazi. Equally obviously there are very few Jewish ceos in Muslim countries, or Japan. So G7 is a confounder but US/Canada/Australia might be a better comparison(maybe add France, which I believe has both Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews and/or Brazil, which has a lot of every ethnic group you could care to name). Of course I’m not sure that finding their ancestry is easy, but I’d bet that a representative sample would show that Sephardi Jews are barely overrepresented, if at all, while Ashkenazi Jews are very overrepresented. Open to corrections, of course, but HBD is a pretty big confounding factor that comes down on one side of the equation.
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Notes -
I mean, it appears that Ashkenazi Jews are literally the smartest group in the world by average IQ(it’s possible that some Brahmin or middle eastern Christian subgroup, or something like that where there’s a sliced up minority of a minority that’s already notable for high IQ’s, has a higher average IQ, but I haven’t seen any direct evidence). Which raises the question of how much Jewish overrepresentation is specifically Ashkenazi, and I would bet that’s a lot of it.
Let's look at the list of Israeli PMs (Ashkenazi/Sephardi/Mizrahi):
There are just two PMs that have moms that might theoretically have non-Ashkenazi roots (born in Mandatory Palestine), but that's probably because I can't read the Hebrew Wikipedia, only the English one.
Is it the case of intra-Jewish discrimination? Did the Ashkenazi sponsors of Israel and the overwhelmingly Ashkenazi New Yishuv settlers discriminate against Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews fleeing post-independence pogroms in Muslim countries?
UPD: I also checked the current cabinet. They are younger, so their origins are less clear for many members. I had to resort to phrenology in some cases.
It looks like Israel did a stellar job integrating Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews. It's also surprising how many of the ministers live in the settlements.
I think Israel has some history of discrimination by Ashkenazi against non-Ashkenazi Jews, but I’m unsure how much.
I updated my original comment with the members of the cabinet.
It seems relevant that the current Israeli government is a large coalition agreement and Israeli political parties are split partially on ethnoreligious lines, though, doesn’t it? Major confound there.
I’d bet a list of every Jewish Fortune 500 ceo in the G7 plus Israel would be pretty heavily Ashkenazi, maybe a Sephardi or two. Likewise for professors at the top universities in each major economy.
I checked what the Shas party is about and it "primarily represents the interests of Sephardic and Mizrahi Haredi Jews", which explains their prevalence in its ranks, but even many Likud ministers are Mizrahi/Sephardi.
G7 is a pretty big confounder itself, given than none of the countries there are Muslim. I don't know where to find a good list of Israeli Jewish CEOs detailing their ancestry. I casually browsed the list of scientists from TAU, Hebrew University and Technion, and it does look like they are mostly Ashkenazi, with random interesting exceptions like Moshe Many, who's an OG Israeli from the Old Yishuv.
My understanding of Israeli politics is that you see lots more mizrahi Jews, and sometimes more Sephardic Jews, in political appointee positions than would get in by pure merit for the same reason there’s lots of black political appointees in the US- it holds up parts of political coalitions- except with the confounder that Israel doesn’t have longstanding coalition agreements, and ethnic minorities are spread out across the spectrum instead of being all democrats except for Vietnamese Cubans and tejanos. So I wouldn’t read too much into ministers and political appointees.
Obviously, most Jewish CEOs in Germany and Russia are Ashkenazi. Equally obviously there are very few Jewish ceos in Muslim countries, or Japan. So G7 is a confounder but US/Canada/Australia might be a better comparison(maybe add France, which I believe has both Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews and/or Brazil, which has a lot of every ethnic group you could care to name). Of course I’m not sure that finding their ancestry is easy, but I’d bet that a representative sample would show that Sephardi Jews are barely overrepresented, if at all, while Ashkenazi Jews are very overrepresented. Open to corrections, of course, but HBD is a pretty big confounding factor that comes down on one side of the equation.
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