Is Israel on its way to being a "Failed State?"

Iran, North Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia. The criteria is that they oppress and kill people without compunction. In Israel’s case, they go further and are bombing and starving an other nation to death.

Palestine and Israel are not the same country.

Palestinians are not Israeli.

"excuse myself" from what? @MCOut

I am Middle Eastern, and very well aware of what life is like on the other side of the coin. The idea "the west" is entirely responsible for the issues in the middle east is something I generally hear from people who are not from the middle east.

I find it actually very offensive. As if my people are not sentient and capable of making our own choices in the same way Western people are. We don't need to be infantilised.

I am Lebanese, Iraqi, Eqyptian - we do not blame all our problems on "The West". We're well aware that while some things "the west" have done have certainly contributed to instability, the root lies in far more than that.

I believe in democracy, human rights, secular government and rule of law and believe countries who embrace those values are far superior to live in and I am very lucky to be fortunate enough to do so. If those things are supressed either by religion, or by extremist ideology (such as communism) my experience is that the invariable result is terrible oppression.

And do not tell me how I can or cannot speak about my family. It's none of your business, thanks.

How do you know Israel is not headed down that road. It took many years for that to happen to Venezuela

Israel is disproportionately reliant on tech which can move (and where the leaders have threatened to move if the judicial reform goes through). Due to its demographics, it is in danger of being a halakhic state. if you include the west bank in israel, that also creates more problems which may mean israel would resemble lebanon in time, and lebanon is definitely a failed state or on its way to becoming a failed state. If it alienates all its international allies, then that is another factor that would lead to its decline, esp if there are international sanctions, making food imports very expensive.

' The confluence of judicial reforms and imposition of religion is mutually reinforcing. It is, of course, very difficult to forecast the consequences. If mass protests and political compromises succeed, they may thwart the danger, at least for now. If the next elections bring other parties to power, some changes may be reversed (though not all). There is however one possible scenario, in which Israel will slowly become a weak or failed state or a clerical one, in which rabbinical courts officiate. If so, and over time, the secular, economically strong parts of the population are likely to leave. A case in point is the flourishing tech sector. With around 10 per cent of employed workers, 15 per cent of GDP and more than 50 per cent of exports, it is the linchpin of the economy and a highly mobile one. In January, one tech entrepreneur at a business valued at over $2bn announced on TV that he and the company are leaving. Once gone, taking with them a corresponding share of Israel’s tax revenues, those left behind will have diminished resources. A vicious cycle might ensue.'

This is from an FT article written by a professor of economics at Tel Aviv University and at the London School of Economics’ Centre for Macroeconomics

https://www.ft.com/content/bef33a6d-b108-4e5f-a1aa-7ede50a81216

I don't see how it can be considered fair or free when there are separate two justice systems, applied according to ethnicity.

Palestinians can be tried in Israeli military courts, Israelis are not.

There's no similarity of any sort. Venezuela became a failed state because of widespread government corruption, inefficiency and mismanagement of government institutions, breakdown of democratic structures, mismanagement of the oil industry on which almost all it's income relied, fluctuations in oil prices leading to hyperinflation, shortages of basic goods, and a severe economic recession, Devaluation of the currency causing hyperinflation, extreme human rights abuses of it's citizens, including removal of democracy, shortages of food, medicine, and other essential goods, rising crime rates and a mass exodus of it's citizens due to unlivable conditions.

That's a good example of what a failed state looks like when it's on it's way to becoming one, and a good illustration of why this thread is so weird.

Every time the west has decided to take up arms and kill people disproportionately and leave places in absolute shambles this is exactly the language they use. From Iraq to regime change in Libya. The messaging is always these people and their culture are inferior and therefore, we should be able to do what we like to them.

Do not use your sister’s tragedy to excuse yourself. That LGBT people are safe in Israel is never going to be an acceptable excuse to commit murder.

venezuela was one of the richest countries in the world. today it is definitely a failed state given that you can barely visit it without the FO advising you against it. If mumsnet existed in 1950, and someone had written a thread saying would venezuela be a failed state, maybe some people might think its ridiculous but if you read it again in 2024, you would probably marvel at how this person was prophetic.

Countries rise and fall and I find Israel's demographics worrying. Its not just the OP who thinks that, Haaretz also publishes articles like this.

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/business/2020-09-10/ty-article/.premium/israel-is-heading-down-lebanons-failed-state-trajectory-four-case-studies/0000017f-eafe-d3be-ad7f-faff3f250000

Are they also antisemitic. The demographer Dan Ben David has been warning for years that a grim future awaits Israel and he has done a lot of research into this albeit at the University of Tel Aviv. Is he also antisemitic?

Btw I have met Israelis who have basically told me the NHS is a failed system. The NHS is basically a religion to many Brits (and in polls its is always the top thing that makes Brits proud to be british) and probably they would be gravely offended if they heard that. But I would never say that foreigners who say the NHS is a failed institution are being deliberately anti UK

I have searched Mumsnet and found only one thread ever asking about a country becoming a failed state. It is about Pakistan, because it was harbouring Osama Bin Laden. The thread is from 2011 and appears to be quite unpleasant, accusing immigrants of being potential Islamic extremists and were I found it also deeply offensive. I'd imagine such behavior was deeply uncomfortable for Pakistanis and it doesn't appear to be something which happens frequently on Mumsnet at all.

Can Mumsnet perhaps explain why they are deleting posts from Jewish people saying they are finding something antisemitic and explaining why?

Which guideline does this breach exactly? Are Jewish people not allowed to express their belief that racism is taking place? Does this apply to Black, Muslim, Trans and other Mumsnet users or just the Jews?

Wild to be honest. Absolutely wild.

No. They don't. The problem isn't "Jewish people", the problem is antisemites. Nobody "criticises Israel" more than Jewish people. Take a walk to the Jewish Mumsnetters forum and have a read for yourself, or open your eyes to the protests in the streets from Jewish Israelis. Jewish people are perfectly happy to "criticise Israel".

What we're also able to do is recognise what antisemitism is (something antisemites are not very good at doing generally) and frankly, threads asking if a democratic, thriving country with a 7,45 on the freedom index, one of the highest GDPs in the world and population of millions of people is on it's way to being a "failed state". The implication made is clear to us.

The idea that Israel is on it's way to being a failed state is objectively completely ridiculous, so when people do stuff like this, we recognise it. We see it.

I refer you to the Jerusalem Declaration:

"Context can include the intention behind an utterance, or a pattern of speech over time, or even the identity of the speaker, especially when the subject is Israel or Zionism. So, for example, hostility to Israel could be an expression of an antisemitic animus"

So when there is a forum and threads like this ONLY about Israel, making ridiculous assertions or asking ridiculous questions that wouldn't in a million years be being asked about any other place, we see it. We get it.

I refer you to more...

"What is particular in classic antisemitism is the idea that Jews are linked to the forces of evil. This stands at the core of many anti-Jewish fantasies"

"Portraying Israel as the ultimate evil or grossly exaggerating its actual influence can be a coded way of racializing and stigmatizing Jews"
"Denying the right of Jews in the State of Israel to exist and flourish, collectively and individually, as Jews, in accordance with the principle of equality.

We see it all day, every day, and we watch it being completely normalised and defended by the people doing it. Which causes me to remind myself Hitler once won a defamation lawsuit against Jews for defaming him! LOL!

Here we are.

Well said.

I've no idea what you are talking about. Personal freedom and democracy are measurable ideas. You can either participate in a protest or you can't. You can either be openly gay or you can't. You can either have a right to a fair trial or you can't. I am sure those things sounds meaningless to you, but then you've never had to live without them I'd imagine.

I have absolutely no idea what "Western Oppression" is, but last I checked millions of families like mine end up in Britain and the west as refugees to escape oppression, because there are many societies on earth where people are not so lucky and freedoms and basic civil liberties do not exist.

My sister in law, for example, is a lesbian from Libya. She came here because she dared to hand out some leaflets in the street for women's rights. The Taliban took her at gunpoint, TWICE, once quite literally from her bed while she was asleep, held her at gunpoint, beat her brutally, almost killed her and I'd imagine probably raped her (although bless her, she's never spoken of it). Had they known she was also a lesbian, she'd be dead.

And now here she is, walking around, a big, happy lesbian able to work and live and enjoy existing with all this "Western Oppression" .

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/01/mob-rule-rishi-sunak-sarah-everard-failed-state/

Article in The Telegraph, in relation to whether the UK is a failed state. Similar articles are easily available on a search engine near you.

If you go on to other discussion sites in relation to politics, you'll see that "is X at risk of becoming a failed state?" is actually a fairly frequent topic of discussion.

The sad thing about all this is that Jewish People become convinced that any criticism of Israel is antisemitic and then they get conned to make aliyah (for those who are not using the aliyah program as a sex and shekels scheme) and you have to wonder who this benefits. Bibi's chums in the building industry or Jared Kushner's new plans to build housing in gaza.

People criticise all sorts of countries, my own country is also criticised for all sorts of human rights violations and has been dubbed Disney land with the death penalty. I don't slam them for being racist.

This is why I cannot take some of you seriously. Here you are perfectly happy to co-opt the language of western oppression so Israel can be a beneficiary of racist exceptionalism, but then in the next breath you want to cry anti-semitism.

These things are measured. Here is the Freedom Index

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/freedom-index-by-country

This measures each country in the world on a scale of how equal, democratic and fair it is by actually measuring the personal freedoms of citizens and the quality of those things, from rule of law to civil rights.

Israel scores in the high 7s, along with Greece and Italy. It is indeed a free, fair and democratic country. USA and UK score in the high 8s by comparison.

Every other country in the middle east scores roughly between 3 and 5 and offer some of the lowest scores in the world, due to personal freedoms and democracy being thin on the ground in the region.

Israel's nearest neighbours for example have scores as follows:

Egypt 4.24
Syria 2.96
Lebanon 5.74
Yemen 3.43

The only country with a score gaining on Israel's in the middle east, is Jordan, which has a 6.32. However, it scores low for personal freedoms, but appears to do very well on things like law and so on.

Nobody is saying that Israel is lacking legitimacy. As in so many other threads, please stop trying to deliberately misrepresent people.

One of the markers of a failed or fragile state is issues with the legitimacy of the state's leadership.

Many people in Israel and around the world have raised concerns about corruption and the legitimacy of the current leadership.

Now, I'm not an expert in the particulars of determining a 'failed' or 'fragile' state. My personal view is that the criteria don't seem to be met at this time as the bar is pretty high. But if someone wants to ask if current concerns mean that a country is at risk of heading down that slide towards those endpoints, that's not in itself a thread demonstrating hate towards the country in question.

I remember having similar discussions on other sites and in real life in relation to the UK, US and Russia, all in the past year. It's a discussion, not a call to eradicate a country.

Who would you describe as the second most equal, democratic and fairest society in the Middle East?

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-06-08/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/how-the-west-bank-settlements-became-israels-welfare-state/00000188-9b13-d3a7-adcf-bb1fe8940000

'There is an ongoing phenomenon whereby the state diverts its economic and political attention from those towns to the settlements. This is a conceptual, ideological and political transition from a policy aimed at advancing the so-called development towns [as they are referred to in Hebrew] to one that bolsters the settlements. Of course, it can be argued that the upgrading of various locales within Israel was not done in the most ideal or perhaps beneficial way, but the point is that the towns in question once constituted the national settlement project – until they were replaced by the settlement project in Judea and Samaria, and in the past by the Gaza Strip settlements as well.

The development towns were originally designed as part of an enterprise whose objectives included the integration of new immigrants into Israeli society, the dispersal of the Jewish population throughout the country, and the preservation of state lands. That is also the reason the project was problematic, because the towns suffered for years from inadequate economic infrastructures and from high rates of unemployment. In this sense, the “development mission” was broken off before it was completed, when the political and public agenda shifted to another project involving settling people: occupying the territories.'

Its also backed up by data. Do all poor people move to the settlements? No but they absorb a lot of the poor people. And going forward if most house building is in the settlements, thats where people would go.

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-02-15/ty-article-magazine/.premium/go-west-bank-israels-housing-crisis-plan-turns-even-more-israelis-into-settlers/00000186-545c-de95-a1fe-f65f212f0000

As someone who grew up in Ariel but left as an adult, Noam didn’t view signing up for the lottery in this city, located in the heart of the northern West Bank, as a political issue, or as an issue at all. It was purely an economic choice.

“70 percent of the Israelis in the West Bank are ‘quality-of-life settlers’ and only 30 percent are ideological.”

Most of the people coming to the settlements for economic reasons in recent years have been ultra-Orthodox, he added, and they now constitute 40 percent of all settlers. Most live in Modi’in Ilit and Betar Ilit, and the rest in settlements like Immanuel, Ma’aleh Amos, Asfar and Tel Zion."

The thing is that if the government solution to poverty is building homes on internationally disputed land, you have to worry for the next generation. It is cheap until it is not cheap anymore, it is safe until it is not safe anymore. at some point, the west bank will boil over and there would be another October 7 massacre there and people would not be able to live there, then they will move to your cheap city and then you would be priced out (just like my SIL and BIL have become priced out of bat yam and don't want to move to another israeli city to be priced out yet again). Even if you buy, unless you can buy apartments for every child, the family would just end up getting priced out.

We have a housing crisis in the UK, but its not as acute. The stakes are not so high and as a community we can also establish new jewish communities. Borehamwood is a really good example, it is now far more jewish than it was even 10 years ago cos younger people have moved there and it is quite affordable compared to the likes of Finchley or Hendon (though as i was looking near the station, i found that it wasn't that much more expensive to buy a flat in London compared to a terraced in borehamwood, but if you live over a mile away from the station you have more options). or even canvey island in the case of Haredim. There is also more awareness of the housing crisis in the UK and long term i do believe the government will do something i.e. relax planning permission and tax BTL landlords, which will alleviate the overall housing crisis including for Jewish people. In israel, people don't seem to have that same level of interest in their economic survival given that they are mostly concerned that they would not be murdered in their beds by hamas terrorists. The reality is that you need to be solvent to lead a good life and I would not want to live a life with such low expectations that my chief worry is whether I would be killed in my bed.

No.

sadly Israel has always been plagued by war and terrorism as well as obsessive antisemitism. But it remains the most equal, democratic and fairest society in the Middle East by a huge margin.