March 19, 2015 Don’t Like The Test Results? Scrap The Test! Luke Ford No sacred cows.

Don’t Like The Test Results? Scrap The Test!

Posted on March 19, 2015 by Luke Ford

The New York Times reports: “Many law school deans, bristling from criticism that they are replenishing their ranks with less academically qualified students as the number of law school applicants has fallen sharply, began to openly question the mechanics of the bar exam.”

I suspect that on average, smarter people are turning away from law as a profession and less smart people are charging into it.

According to the July 2014 test results of the California State Bar, 69% of whites passed, 38% of blacks, 52% of hispanics and 58% of asians.

Blog post: Bar Passage: California, the state that administers the most bar exams, reports pass rates by race. For July 2011, the pass rates for first-time test-takers were:

White test-takers: 75.4%
Asian test-takers: 67.3%
Hispanic test-takers: 55.3%
Black test-takers: 45.7%
Other minority test-takers: 59.0%

California allows graduates of unaccredited law schools, as well as apprentices who “read the law,” to take the bar exam, but those differences do not account for the racial disparities. The same California report breaks down bar results by educational preparation–with the same racial patterns in each group.

New York, the nation’s second-largest administrator of bar exams, reports similar racial disparities in bar passage. A study reviewing New York’s July 2005 exam reported the following pass rates for first-time takers:
Caucasian/White test-takers: 86.8%
Asian/Pacific Islander test-takers: 80.1%
Hispanic/Latino test-takers: 69.6%
Black/African American test-takers: 54.0%

Posted in Law | Comments Off

Starbucks Wants To Talk About Race

Posted on March 19, 2015 by Luke Ford

Comments to Steve Sailer:

* It would be hilarious if someone from Steve’s readership could conduct a street-level social science experiment by getting hired by Starbucks and, you know, talking about race with customers who just want to buy coffee, but talk about race from a totally non-creationist way.

Countdown to getting fired.

* “I’d like a mocha frappucino please, and the Bell Curve has never truly been debunked.”

* I’ve decided to ask the barrista, if she puts a racial message on my coffee cup, to write three things and then to guess what it means: 85, 35,000, and 52%.

I will then ask them to match those numbers to the number of white women raped by blacks, percentage of all homicides by blacks and, of course, the average black IQ. That should get the dialogue moving along nicely.

* I’ve been waiting for someone to discuss the race relations caught in this cell phone video from a day or two ago:

It looks like a black lady attacking a young white girl and her even younger brother for being white. The white girl keeps asking what she did.

Maybe there is more to this clip that I don’t understand, but it looks to me like racial violence incited by Holder.

If videos of racist comments are the top news at Google News and other news sites for hours, this deserves more than just liveleak.

Maybe it did get more attention somewhere, too, but I didn’t see that.

Maybe we can discuss it at Starbucks.

* This will go over sooooo well. Because if there is one thing that the upwardly aspiring yuppie soccer moms who frequent Starbucks want, its a lecture on how racist they are, by a pierced and tattooed twenty something who is an indie alt-rocker and drug addict in their spare time.

Finally, the guy who came up with the Edsel and the guy who came up with New Coke are breathing a sight of relief. They are not the most boneheaded corporate moves any more.

* Maybe they can show their commitment by opening up a shop in Ferguson. You can talk with the Baristas from behind bullet proof Plexiglas.

* Billionaire Schultz sure wants a lot from his $9.50 p/hr employees. I suppose he’s supplied them with crib sheets containing talking points and wise sayings. A couple local stores of theirs that I go to employed college students for a long time but in the past year I noticed a turnover in staff, going from college types to Hispanic and black workers with no higher education. I figured the managers decided on a new business model, that of hiring people with less options and thus less likely to be able to trade up. They’re pleasant enough serving coffee but really don’t seem the type to be able to impart much. Also, be careful of what you say; you don’t want someone spitting in your coffee.

* I bet I am the only person posting here who actually, often worked in “food service” although, back-in-the-day it was called: busing tables, waitressing, hostessing, cocktail waitressing, cashiering, etc. We also had to Windex-down all the surfaces & microwaves at the end of the shift….stock up the ketchups, s& p’s, napkin stacks, etc.

I worked throughout my teenage years, summer jobs, in between crappy corporate jobs I quit in NYC in the 80′s and early 90′s – it did finance some wonderful trips roaming the world; paid for tuition; bought a car I still have with that waitressing money, BUT, I had few, very rare, very good restaurant-owner-bosses as well…who would never have asked their employees to do something like what Starblachhh is trying to persuade their employees to do. They would not even insist we wear Halloween costumes on our shifts. They knew this was just a stepping-stone job and we were young & mercilessly rudderless…especially if you were younger than 32 (ok, I’ll be kind tonight). Also, our bosses in “food service” always assumed we were gonna GTFO as soon as a “real job” was within sight. One world-class NYC business owner actually encouraged his employees to go for that audition, interview, option as long as we covered the shift at his business. What a mensch. I still see his face even if he is long gone when I drink Jaegermeister.

The annoying thing is, most “food service workers,” baristas, bartenders, cocktail waitresses don’t really wake up every day thinking they are gonna “tweak” their walk-in customers to think about “saving the world,” in this case, starting spontaneous discussions about race, of all things. It is unfair, plain unfair. Most baristas are middle-class kids who are today’s indentured servants: saddled by high student debt/living in an expensive city where their hopeful, dream-job exists, in between their shift hours at a restaurant they are too embarrassed to name on date night/too embarrassed to tell their parents that after High$$$ PrivateU, they can’t get a “real” job with a degree in psychology/comparative literature/criminal justice/art (ouch, that’s SOOO personal), political science, etc., etc., etc. I love saying that ever since Yul Brynner said that!

It is unfair because it assumes the chump (that was me, often) that needs the job at a Starwhatever, must feel 100% genuine about hawking their wares combined with a condition, to a customer; basically cajoling a reluctant customer into talking. I must have worked at The sad-sack/bitter restaurant in NYC because the last thing my “tables” wanted, was for me to be cheerful and ask them how they were…and, if I thought engaging them to talk about what they thought about Mayor Dinkins, Koch, Prince, or Tompkins Square was gonna get me a better tip or lead them into a constructive conversation about race, well, they would have walked out instead.

I feel sorry for the employees of Starbucks who will feel coerced on some level, to go along with this idea. For the most part, people who show up at bars or coffee shops don’t want their consciousness raised, they want coffee or a drink, but silence most of all. A lot of “food service” customers don’t want to be disturbed, like bears in the wilderness…they really are there for the coffee and a refuge from their head exploding from other stuff happening in their very private lives. Most people do not like to bear their souls and say stuff unless they are wasted, crazy or both.

So, the sad part is, these Starbucks employees will feel compelled to do this because their supervisor is watching, their franchise owner wants to know the stats….and, they don’t want to lose this “stepping stone” job that is paying for their share of a $3000-a-month, 1 bedroom apt they share with 3 other people, and, probably cats & dogs & ferrets & old Halloween/Mardi Gras stuff.

* Okay, Senorita Barrista: Let’s talk about [this] in which one Urban-American named De’asia Watkins, 20, decapitates one 3-month old female Janiyah. And why black lives matter so very much.

* Why don’t they just screen interracial porn and see if anyone wants to talk about that?

* Steve Sailer: Here’s a question: Is working at the airport a black thing in general?

It is at LAX.

Maybe white people moved out of airport adjacent neighborhoods under the flight paths of noisy 1960s jets, so the airport is the convenient big employer for the blacks who moved in?

* “Two lattes please.”

“Yes sir. What size?”

“One small and one large. Sorry, my mistake, one White Crime Rate and one Black Crime Rate.”

* I’d be happy to discuss my experiences.

I’ve lived in Chicago 11 years now. Been robbed twice, once violently beaten during the robbery. Caught another guy trying to break into my apartment. Within two months of coming to the U.S. from Spain my girlfriend was also violently attacked and robbed.

What do all these crimes have in common?

* Michael Brown and the clerk at Quik Mart probably had their own racial dialogue:

C: Sir, those cigarillos don’t belong to you. You have to pay for them.
MB: Who you talk’n to Mother $#%$er?
C: Please Sir.
MB Get out of my way you little punk.
C: I will call the police
MB: Yah, what can they do?

Somebody needs to write a play.

Posted in Race | Comments Off

Happy Hump Day!

Posted on March 19, 2015 by Luke Ford

* I was going about my way humbly and quietly, following G-d’s commandments, and the shiksa next door says to me, “Happy Hump Day!” L-rd, send Moshiach now!

* Just heard a Jewish parent berate his teenage kid for putting his girlfriend before his own family… All normal teens do this. Who texts their mom at 1am?

* I once asked a boss, “What’s the first thing you look forward to doing when you retire?”
Boss: “Firing you.”

* I watched this old Jew tell the hot latina in the restaurant: “Your vegetables are so fresh. They’re restaurant quality. Top of the line. Your greens are delicious. Your artichokes are to die for.”

* Many bosses don’t like it when I text while they talk to me, prompting comments like this: “Put that phone away! You’re a millenial! Do you do that at the other office?”

* If you had to go to the pharmacy with your 13-year old kid to pick him up STD medication, would you loudly berate your kid while in line to teach him a lesson?

* Anybody have a conversation about race with their barista? I can’t wait for someone to get shot over this Starbucks experiment.

* Would dating a Mexican count as racial treason, even if she were Jewish? Perhaps I need to get her DNA first to see if she is of European stock.

Luke Ford At 48, a man needs to think realistically.
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Darren Melamed Why start now?
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Chaim Amalek I say you forget the whole racial angle here and embrace your inner miscegenator. If you meet some sweet pretty 20 year old black woman with a mania for older white dudes, go for it.
15 hrs · Like

Chaim Amalek After all, if a Yellow woman was good enough for your great great grandpa and his genes, a Black woman should be good enough for you and yours.
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Chaim Amalek Properly bred, a white man crossed with a black woman might well produce a superior sort of human being: the Kwisatz Haderach.
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Steven Ben-Off Abrams “Texican’ Eva Longoria’s DNA test results: 70% White European, 27% Native American and 3% African.

Chaim Amalek Properly bred, a white man crossed with a black woman might well produce a superior sort of human being: the Kwisatz Haderach.
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Lilian D’Or Honestly, and I say it with love, a ten year difference is the max appropriate norm. Beyond ten years is playing with fire. Sometimes it works like Catherine Zeta Jones and Michael Douglas. Yet, a huge age gap did not work with Paul McCartney and his ex. Usually, the white men in their late 40s and 50s who marry women in their 20s and early 30s are the ones who acquired a south Asian wife with the prospect of a better life in the west. Or with a Russian/Ukrainian mail order bride. The white women they can get are usually around their age.
15 hrs · Like

Lilian D’Or Maybe find a nice Russian Jewish lady who longs to get out of the cold and be in sunny California with you.
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Luke Ford God wants me to reproduce.
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Lilian D’Or I knew a 21 year old white Army kid who married a 40 year old philippina woman. She gets to be a stay at home wife in the US away from her village. He gets to be deployed in Iraq to have his money be sent to her parents in the Philippines. They have been married for about 10 years. Almost all of his white platoon married Philippino women.
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Christoph Donnellan Death of The West.
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Chaim Amalek I agree with you Lilian But where does that leave the man who wants to have a children? Older women simply are not likely to work out for that purpose. So perhaps in that case, it is better to marry someone much younger knowing full well that it is n…See More
14 hrs · Edited · Like

Lilian D’Or Only Luke can contain the fire of an 18 year old woman.
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Luke Ford Who cares. The Cowboys signed Greg Hardy.

Posted in Personal | Comments Off

Black Rapper Says She Hates White America

Posted on March 18, 2015 by Luke Ford

I don’t blame blacks for hating whites. I think it is normal, natural, and to some degree, healthy. All closely identifying in-groups, such as blacks, Jews, Muslims, tend to have some hostility to out-groups.

I believe in Genetic Similarity Theory. We are more willing to sacrifice for those with whom we have closest genetic similarity.

Black/Jewish/Chinese/Muslim contempt for white America is not mollified when white America does great things. This contempt is just a natural function of strong in-group identity.

The nicer white America is to blacks, will blacks feel more positive about whites? No. Not really.

Blacks/Muslims/Chinese are never, on average, going to love whites and whites who seek that love are wimps. Instead, whites should look out for their own interests, instead of getting so invested in mollifying minorities and rooting for Israel and for sports teams and the like.

As far as I can see, most blacks love being black. Their interests are primarily black. They like hanging out with blacks. Their concerns are for their group first. These are all healthy tendencies that other groups would do well, in certain situations, to emulate. In other situations, less ethnocentrism is more adaptive.

REPORT:

Rapper Azealia Banks hates “fat white Americans” and believes that those who live in middle America are “these racist conservative white people who live on their farms,” according to a recent interview she did with Playboy magazine.
Banks, 23, also said that a part of her knows that she’s “not supposed to be worshipping Jesus Christ,” calling it, among other sentiments, “unnatural.”
When asked if she wants to leave the U.S., the rapper said “Yes!” and proceeded to explain her reasons.
“I hate everything about this country. Like, I hate fat white Americans,” she said. “All the people who are crunched into the middle of America, the real fat and meat of America, are these racist conservative white people who live on their farms.”
Banks, who was raised in New York City, continued, “Those little teenage girls who work at Kmart and have a racist grandma — that’s really America.”

Posted in Blacks, Whites | Comments Off

Is It Time For Jews To Leave Europe?

Posted on March 18, 2015 by Luke Ford

The comments on this Atlantic piece by Jeffrey Goldberg are excellent:

The next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is likely a Jew. He is very open and proud of his ethnic background. He can be because it’s an electoral plus. As was the former President of France. Who proudly extolled his jewish heritage. Jews are not on the fringes of European societies. But often at their heart.

It is a nonsense to suggest Jews are unwelcome or objectively unsafe because of brutal, but relatively rare acts of terrorism. In fact, it plays into the hands of terrorists, validating their wicked strategy. So too that anti-semitism vile that it is, is the kind of prejudice warranting a blanket mass exodus from a diverse continent. Neither are reason to leave the relative peace of much of Europe, their home, for a state that is in a constant state of war. Nor are the prejudices of any segment of a majority for a minority, let alone one minority for another, a validation of the question you pose. Muddling very different European states, in the way you do, as you do with historical and modern Europe, to support preconceived notions informed by history is natural, but also folly.

If anything, mainstream European societies today view people of Muslim backgrounds with overt prejudice, not Jews. But that is no reason for Muslims to leave. Or any minority to leave anywhere, unless the threat places their existence, or at the very least life chances to succeed at risk. None of which is true for most states here.

Europe today is increasingly diverse, and I would argue tolerant. And yet even her most enlightened states have struggled to adapt to immigration, and establish a common identity. And that is where the tension lies between Europe’s progress, and it’s new makeup. Governments do need to be more proactive toward fostering community cohesion then they have been. And confront Muslim prejudices directly, but constructively. To build bridges between communities. And find common ground where it can be found on Israel-Palestine. And to unapologetically reassert the best values of the west.

There are no quick fixes, expectations must be moderated, and I accept it’s imperfect, but unlike mass emigration it’s rooted in addressing the needs of millions of people who aren’t going anywhere, jew or muslim, and everyone else. And not giving up to seek solace in homogeneity either ethnically or culturally when the world is increasingly interconnected.

There is currently an “exodus” of Israeli technology entrepreneurs leaving Israel, for of all places, Berlin, and there are many Jews living in poverty in Israel, including a homeless tent encampment outside Tel Aviv.

European jewry genuinely, and justifiably feel vulnerable after recent attacks. They rely on people like you to provide measured perspective. So it’s all the more irresponsible for a journalist in a respected publication to stoke the flames with Netanyahu’s opportunist propaganda.

* That’s why #HitlerDidNothingWrong and #HitlerWasRight were trending on twitter from mostly Arabic twitter handles and names when the Israel/Gaza war occurred last summer, but sure, continue pretending it doesn’t exist.

* Do you think European countries would have muslim no go zones if Hitler had won? Do you think there would be a chance of some European countries having majority muslim populations in the next century if Hitler had won? Would muslim gang rape be an issue in some places in Europe if Hitler had won?

* Post-war Germany brought in millions of Muslim, mostly Turkish, guest workers, whose German born, German speaking descendants were long denied citizenship. Had the Nazis won the war, something similar would have happened. Hitler lacked a specific hatred of Muslims, but held all non-Germanic peoples to be inferiors. Once the extent of Arab oil resources became clear, the Third Reich’s need for Lebensraum would have extended to the Persian Gulf.

America majored in race hatred and only minored in anti-Semitism. Europe’s Ph.D. was in Jew hating. The Muslims living in America and Europe have picked up on both histories. The more numerous and densely settled European Muslims see Jews as fair game. American Muslims, despite their antipathy toward Israel, by and large live at peace with their Jewish neighbors. Go to Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn where Muslim and Jewish enclaves have long coexisted.

* “Herrenvolk” doesn’t translate as anything close to “master race”. Hitler respected upstanding, volk-minded men of many races. He certainly bore Asians generally and the Japanese in particular no ill will, regardless of circumstance. Indeed, the Japanese and NS Germany recognized the wide concordance between Hitler’s philosophy of life and Shintoism.

* The original Bolsheviks were indeed disproportionately Jews. This is a fact. But they were not all Jews and did not set up a Jewish state. There was no Jewish privilege for citizens. They banned the practice of all religions including Judaism. They burned places of worship including synagogues. The Bolsheviks were ideological revolutionaries who thought they could create utopia from the barrel of a gun and terror. They were not “the Jews,” as people like you call them.

* To the perennially persecuted Jew “anything” not about the Jew is considered a “false equivalent”. For decades we in the United States have been treated to the whining and finger pointing of people like Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center who saw anti-Semitism everywhere he looked. Much like an oft-accused spouse, the paranoia of the accuser becomes reality. While I sympathize with the citizens of Israel and celebrate their courage I find the whining and carping of European and American Jews to be tiresome. Jews have complained so often their cries are now being ignored. What was a sympathetic audience after WWII has become indifferent. By siding with the liberal politicos in America (often against the best interest of Israel) the Jew has found himself isolated now that his former friends in the Democrat Party have found value in mining Muslim wealth.

Posted in Europe, Jews | Comments Off

Is Israel Sustainable?

Posted on March 18, 2015 by Luke Ford

Comments to Steve Sailer:

* The really interesting question: is Israel sustainable? Can a welfare case like Israel (in such a tiny sliver of hell) survive into the 22nd Century? Who’ll be Israel’s sponsor going forward? We’ve gotten a taste that the US Democratic base (the majority of the country) couldn’t care less about Israel, at best, and is hostile, at worst. When Whites are a quarter of the population of the US in 2080 or so, where will poor Israel turn?

Demographically, of course, Republicans are finished. They will never win another presidency so it won’t matter what the neo-Cons think of them. Look to the neo-Cons to refashion themselves (double down on open borders and social liberalism) and try to regain control of the Democrats’ foreign policy. But that can only last so long.

Obama is young–that’s huge. He’ll be the powerbroker and spokesman for NAMs for the next decade at least, regardless of who’s in the White House. Once out of office, once no longer in need of his Jewish handlers, what then? I see him looking back at his eight years as President and being pretty pleased with himself. He may or may not appreciate it, but his race protected him from 99% of the criticisms that should have come his way. He thinks well of himself. Only one group has pretty much told him to his face or in books that they think he was over his head and clueless. Bibi has insulted him again and again. I mean, brutally insulted him–we’re talking taking the attitude of White men pre-Civil rights era. Larry Summers has written how he was schooled during 2008-10. I don’t think Obama will forget or forgive, not someone with his over sized ego. It will be interesting.

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Chinese Birth Tourism

Posted on March 18, 2015 by Luke Ford

Comments to Steve Sailer:

* This is not the work of Sistah Soujah, Madeline M. O’Hara, Andrea Dworkin, Black Panthers old or new, Occupy Wall Street or any number of university professors or other Fox News bogeymen.

This is the end result of centrist, ostensibly good-will conceits. Made possible by the kind of folks who are against “illegal” immigration, but certainly not against the legal sort, which has made America “great.” Along with lots of help from the Chamber of Commerce dirt bags.

But, by all means vote for Jeb or Walker or Rubio. Keep on mouthing the Ellis Isle/Horatio Alger platitudes. Keep on talking ala Bush, McCain or Foster Friess about universalist values. Keep the focus on growth at all costs. Got to keep them real estate prices high.

These women embody the ruthless drive that GOPers claim make this country so great.

Until such time as the GOP becomes more of a blood and soil party this stuff isn’t gonna stop. If the GOP went nativist they couldn’t change too much, but at least they could act as an effectual brake on the Democrats.

* Argh. Just require *one* of the parents to be American citizens or permanent residents for their American-born offspring to be an American citizen.

It’s. So. Simple. And. Sane.

* Mark Krikorian writes: To the extent that supporters of our current practice have made any coherent arguments at all in response to claims that such children are “anchor babies,” they have noted — correctly — that having a U.S.-born child does not give parents any formal right to stay or work in the United States, so that the “anchor baby” label is inaccurate. They have claimed that automatic citizenship for children was not a magnet for illegal immigration because the parents remained deportable and were, in fact, sometimes deported.

President Obama has changed all that.

Thanks to a strategy outlined in a memo by John Morton, the director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, illegal aliens with U.S.-born children have been effectively exempt from deportation since 2011. ….

The anti-borders Left (with its collaborators on the Right) will stop at nothing, including lawless executive decrees, to ensure that a child born in the United States really is an “anchor baby.” ….

It’s clear now that automatic citizenship at birth must be limited to those with at least one parent who is a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident.

* Who, Womb

* This raid was done without legal preparation.

The linked article was published on March 16, about a raid that was done on March 3.

So, about two weeks after the raid, prosecutors still were trying to figure out which law might be used for an indictment.

Does that make sense?

For such an unprecedented raid, the legal grounds were not established beforehand?

I suspect that the agents who conducted the raid acted on their own initiative.

Posted in China, Immigration | Comments Off

Flyover Country

Posted on March 18, 2015 by Luke Ford

* “…everything between LA and NY is basically Nazi Germany.” (My friend Alex Trivunovic making fun of my group)

Christoph Donnellan: “Goy country, where people are patriotic, go to church, and look down on transgenderism and ‘same-sex marriage.’ Shades of The Shoah!”

Posted in Jews | Comments Off

Orthodox Union In-Fighting

Posted on March 18, 2015 by Luke Ford

A source says: “There was a huge fight that ended last year. Rabbi Steven Burg was supposed to be rising to a leadership role but was aligned with the losers and had to depart for the Museum of Tolerance. Rabbi Steven Weil was supposed to be on his way out, but was aligned with the winners, and stayed put. Not a healthy organizational culture.”

Another source says: “I’m not sure Rabbi Weil was necessarily a winner there — perhaps a survivor. He is no longer Executive Vice President/Chief Professional Officer; some other rabbi holds that position. Weil is something like Senior Managing Director, which seems to involve a lot of travel to OU shuls. I’d look for him to leave in the next few years. Also, Paul Glasser has left the OU and is now working for Yeshiva University, as he did until the early 1980s.”

Posted in Orthodox Union, R. Steven Weil | Comments Off

America, Zionism & Mutual Respect

Posted on March 18, 2015 by Luke Ford

Steve Sailer writes: Perhaps the most important foreign policy difference between Israel’s two major political wings has been one of tone: the Israeli right expresses its reasons of state using language that American Jewish liberals find needlessly offensive, while the Israeli left traditionally attempts to assuage their American cousins’ troubled consciences with more diplomatic-sounding verbiage.

But the policies haven’t differed much, as the first Likud Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, pointed out in a frank 1982 speech rationalizing the war he and Ariel Sharon had chosen to launch by invading Lebanon. Begin observed that Labor governments had similarly started wars of choice in 1956 and 1967. Begin observed:

In November 1956 we had a choice. The reason for going to war then was the need to destroy the fedayeen, who did not represent a danger to the existence of the state.

The 1956 Suez Crisis was an elaborate conspiracy among Israel, Britain, and France. First, Israel invaded Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. Then the old colonial powers invaded, ostensibly to separate the combatants, but actually to seize the Suez Canal. The misadventure ended in shame when President Eisenhower reacted with distaste to the transparent ruse.

The famous Six-Day War began with Israel launching a Pearl Harbor-like surprise attack on the Egyptian air force. Begin admitted:

In June 1967 we again had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.

Although Israel’s foreign policies have been endlessly hashed over in America, Israel’s domestic policies, such as immigration, are quite interesting. Americans don’t really understand Israel because our public discourse is so much more constrained by mental no-go zones than in the freer Jewish State.

For example, a major issue in the Israeli campaign has been the high cost of housing, which is tied by simple supply and demand economics into Israel’s spectacularly successful population policy of encouraging Jewish births while discouraging births among Muslims (and Ethiopian Jews).

In the late 20th century, it was a truism that Israel’s long-term survival as a Jewish democracy was impossible due to Muslim fertility being so much higher. Either Israel would cease to be Jewish or it would cease to be majority-ruled, because, of course, it was unimaginable that anything could be done to drive down Arab fertility and drive up Jewish fertility.

But the Israeli majority didn’t agree that it must become the minority in its own country, and the Israeli government tends to be adroit at devising policies to implement the majority’s wishes. Hence, births to Muslim mothers have fallen slightly, from 36,000 in 2000 to 35,000 in 2013. Meanwhile, births to Jewish mothers have exploded from 92,000 in 2000 to 127,000 in 2013. The total fertility rate (expected number of births per woman per lifetime) of Muslim women has fallen to 3.35 in 2013, while the TFR of Jewish women continues to climb, reaching 3.05, an extraordinary level for a population as prosperous as Israel’s Jews.

Of course, this rapid expansion of the supply of Israeli Jews increases their demand for housing. Real estate agents will tell you that land naturally goes up in price because they aren’t making any more of it (although Israelis have been making more territory for themselves in the West Bank since 1967).

In Israel, even secular Jewish women average more than two babies apiece. But one reason for Israel having such high Jewish fertility is because of the maintenance of the ultra-Orthodox population as, in effect, a reserve breeding stock in which fathers are subsidized by the government to study during the day and procreate during the night. It’s as if the U.S. government paid the Amish to breed more white people.

With the haredi now comprising eleven percent of the population, the tradition of excusing them from working for a living or serving in the Army is getting expensive to the state. One ultra-Orthodox leader has been willing to share with the Army his young men in the bottom 20 percent of their IQ range:

Bar Chaim in 1999 established the Nahal Haredi unit with the help of Yehuda Duvdevani, a retired brigadier general. The battalion has since recruited more than 6,000 soldiers from the roughly 20 percent of ultra-Orthodox men who Bar Chaim says aren’t interested in a life of study. For these people, he says, the army is a far more suitable place than an unskilled job such as delivering pizza.

Historically, ultra-Orthodox Jewish populations could turn into highly educated secular Jews fairly rapidly. For example, linguist Noam Chomsky’s four grandparents were ultra-Orthodox.

Posted in America, Israel | Comments Off