It took the Russian Empire three centuries to develop a caste of professional bureaucracy by mass import of foreigners into that profession. By the late nineteenth century, Russia finally replaced most Germans on the government service with natives. Still, provincial bureaucracy was famously corrupt and inefficient. Bolsheviks killed out the tsarist bureaucrats but failed to create new ones. Communist officials throughout the existence of USSR were commissars rather than bureaucrats; they relied on arbitrary commands rather than professionalism and cooperation.

In terms of professionalism, Russia has lost two generations which graduated from mid-1980s until now. The quality of education greatly deteriorated in the last twenty years with brightest students and many professors leaving universities for entrepreneurship. Russia’s universities offer very poor education now and there is no chance of changing that situation soon: there are too few good teachers to educate a new generation of professors. The diversity and complexity of modern knowledge made it very fragile. There could never be enough good teachers to staff mass education, but Russia lost the great educational potential it painstakingly developed over the previous century.

Half the country screams at draft dodgers. The other half dodges the draft. Naturally, Arabs are not fond of serving in the Israeli army; it’s not even about it being a Jewish army, but the primitive people's dislike for any kind of organization. Palestinian Arabs revolted against Ibrahim Pasha in early nineteenth century over the conscription. Conscripting them, however, is the best way to crush their opposition to Israeli regime; as a bonus for Jews, Israeli Arabs should be forced to fight their Palestinian brethren. Leftists imagine Israeli Arabs loyal to the state & fine, let us see their loyalty. As a minimum, let Arabs dig trenches along Israel's border with Egypt. Or keep march them from Galilee to Eilat and back. Whatever.

Haredi Jews, derogatively called ultra-Orthodox, are a similar matter. They exploit the original agreement with Ben Gurion which is now irrelevant. Ben Gurion lifted draft requirement for just 400 students of yeshivas; now all haredim are students. Their religious justification, that studying the Torah takes priority over other societal obligations is nonsense: most are not full-time students and anyway can disrupt their studies for two or three years for the army service. Besides, Jewish society just doesn't need so many rabbis. Hillel and Maimonides somehow managed to work, and certainly modern haredim can follow in their steps. The dodging is also immoral, as haredim enjoy the armed protection of the very Israelis they consider sub-Jews. And haredim do need the protection: the first modern pogroms in Palestine started in nineteenth century, well before the advent of Zionism. If they don't need the protection - go settle in Hebron or Schem under Abbas' jurisdiction.

But draft dodging raises a deeper problem. Theoretically, I won't blame the parents who cut their child's finger to prevent him from joining the IDF. What's the point of army service today? For the past twenty-five years, Israel uses her soldiers as small coins to pay the world media. Israeli soldiers are sent into the unnecessarily dangerous urban battles instead of leveling the enemy towns from the air; in WWII, urban battle in Krakow was the lone exception. Israeli soldiers fight strategically useless battles, such as in the Second Lebanon war' last days. Israeli soldiers engage strictly for the PR effect, as in the targeted assassinations and arrests in the enemy territory. Israeli soldiers conduct senseless missions, as the perpetual incursions into Gaza. Israeli soldiers are used against their own people, evicting teenagers from ramshackle "illegal outpost" houses. Israeli soldiers are made the cannon fodder, brainless pawns, and traitors. I can understand the parents who hate sending their children to such an army; of course, most draft dodgers won't go to any Israeli army.

Wasting, losing Jewish lives is the depth of immorality. Our morality doesn't extend to saving Amalek's life. A Jew who died in vain is the national shame and tragedy. But few Jewish soldiers died after the 1973 for the higher end of national wellbeing; most died for no good reason. Arguably, the 1973 war was for no good reason, too, but because Golda Meir's government failed to preempt or employ nuclear weapons.

I'm a liberal. Not a libertarian or socialist, but the liberal with deep respect for Jewish life as long as that life vaguely conforms to Jewish values. I would never accept Jews dying for political ends. For values, yes. For national survival and even welfare, yes. But not for the state's needs. I would even accept Jews living as an autonomous community under Muslim rule in Judea, if that saves Jewish lives. Israel that relinquishes to Arabs Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, Judea and Samaria, Hebron and Schem, and accepts 40% non-Jewish population, does not need statehood. Such Israel can as well accept dhimmi autonomy, relinquish sovereignty, and let the Jews live everywhere, even in the currently dreaded occupied territories of Judea and Samaria. The socialist atheist State of Israel is worse for Jews than a decent autonomy. We could pull that out a century ago, and Muslims would have welcomed us. Unfortunately, this way is closed for the foreseeable future. More soldiers are killed in retreat than in attack, and Muslims would slaughter the Jews if we abandon our military posture now. Too much hatred has accumulated to allow our Arab enemies the upper hand.

Should we possibly save Jewish lives by abandoning Israel and moving into the Diaspora? That would save lives, but extinguish Jewish lives through assimilation. Dying Jewish is a preferable option to peacefully marrying a Gentile.

In the framework of Jewish values, there is no alternative to the very strong army. In any other framework, I won't care about Jews.

How many Arabs are there in Israel? The latest publicly available brochure on ethnic distribution from Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics is for the year 2003. It shows 15.6% of Arabs are aged 0-4, and 9.1% of Jews are in the same age group.
In 2007, Jews were 5,470,000, and Arabs - 1,449,000. Accordingly, the number of Jews younger than five years is 5,470,000*9.1%=498,000; Arabs are 1,449,000*15.6%=226,000. In 18 years, therefore, Arab voters would be 226,000/498,000=45% the number of Jews.

There are also 4.4% of other peoples in Israel, or approximately 7,241,000*4.4%*9.1%=29,000 younger than five. That makes the Jews approximately 498,000/(498,000+226,000+29,000)=66% of Israel's young population. Jews already lost the supermajority status required for many legislative acts.

In truth, the ratio of Jews is much, much less. More than 300,000 Israelis registered as Jews are not Jews according to the traditional Jewish requirements. Unknown number of Israelis, estimated at 120,000 - 200,000 have only a Jewish grandmother which hardly makes them Jewish for practical purposes. Close to 900,000 Israelis live abroad, many of them counted as Jews in Israeli census as they keep visiting Israel once in a while. Therefore, the real number of Jews in Israel is 5,470,000-300,000-120,000-900,000=4,150,000. That makes the number of Jews younger than five 4,150,000*9.1%=378,000. Arabs of the same age constitute 226,000/378,000=60% of the number of Jews. Jews, realistically, constitute 378,000/(378,000+226,000+29,000)=60% among the Israel's young.

The trend toward emigration of young, productive Jews exacerbates the demographic problem. The number of Jews includes many questionable ones, such as non-halachic Jews by paternal lineage and 120,000 Black Christians and fake converts.

The Arabs form 226,000/(378,000+226,000+29,000)=36% of the Israelis. Arabs can count on other non-Jews, the 4.4%, in many policies. Arabs are also supported by ultra-left Jews who take 5-8% of the Knesset seats. In some situations, anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox Jews would join them; that's another 200,000 voters, or 3%. At the very least, those Jews generally abstain from voting, deducting the 3% from Jewish electoral base. That already GUARANTEES Arabs the Knesset majority in 18 years.

Moreover, Arab political spectrum is united in its most important aspect, opposition to Israel's Jewishness. That situation won't change: naturally, Arabs prefer a Muslim or ethnic-blind state to a Jewish one. On the background of highly fragmented Jewish political parties, Arabs will reach decisive power in the Knesset long before they and their allies form the majority.

The bulk of young Jewish population is concentrated in Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox sectors; the birth rate of secular Jews hardly breaks even. Birth rate among moderately Orthodox Jews, usually identified as religious Zionists, rapidly declines as they integrate into secular culture. Ultra-Orthodox Jews maintain their high birth rate due to the isolation from secular developments, but for the same reason they remain underproductive (often unemployed), unwarlike (often shrinking from IDF conscription), and contempt of the existing Jewish state. In some important respects, therefore, young Jews are becoming as inimical to Israel as Arabs.

The concentration of new Jewish births among ultra-Orthodox makes the birth rate vulnerable to welfare policies. After the child allowances for large families were reduced, and, say, a 10-child family found itself receiving merely $700 of subsidies per month instead of the pre-2001 level of $1,600, ultra-Orthodox families appeared in dire poverty. In effect, the government cut the subsidies retroactively, as the cut affected the children who were given birth with the previous level of subsidies in mind. The unruly ultra-Orthodox community frightens the government with its religious zeal, and the government works to decimate the community. In response to diminished subsidies, ultra-Orthodox birth rate dropped sharply. Though the official statistics remains secret – itself a proof of the government's malign intent – published pieces of evidence, such as the drop from 8.9 to 7.7 children in Beitar Illit, suggest a fertility reduction of 10-13%. The previous subsidies were not high: $160 per child per month for ten-child family translated into the government's expenses of $31,000 before the child reaches 17 years. That price is a bargain compared to state's expenses for secular education. The reduction of child allowances disproportionally hurt the high-yield ultra-Orthodox community, and significantly diminishes Jewish birth rate.

Israel's Arabs were 150,000 in 1948. In sixty years, they bred to tenfold increase.

The last time Jews constituted only 60% of Israeli population was in 1947. We have fought and expelled the Arabs.

America has no business aiding Israel. The attempts to achieve for Israel closer ties with the US are a disservice to Jewish people. America will never-ever pursue Jewish interests as they are irrelevant to US voters and establishment alike. America embargoed weapons shipments to Israel during the Independence War, threatened intervention on Egypt’s behalf in the 1956 war, had operational plans for landing its troops in Sinai to defend Egypt in 1967, barred Israel from preemption in 1973 - and only shipped Israel weapons after we won the war - forced Israel to abandon Sinai, and now pushes us into the suicidal peace process. America gives more aid to Egypt and Palestine than Israel, fought for Kuwait but never for Israel, and spent more in Iraq than the total aid to Israel since inception.

That is only natural, as we cannot expect America to care about the Jewish state. Why would the WASP establishment care, if Jews don’t? Polls indicate that American Jews overwhelmingly support the peace process and oppose the war with Iran. No one hates Israel like many American Jews: they want to prove to their Gentile friends that they are not too Jewish, and so they side with Arabs. They are trying to show that Jews are exactly like others; but the Jewish state is not like other states. And so most American Jews support "democratic" Israel where Arabs enjoy equal rights with Jews: that is, the right to breed and vote the Jewish state out of existence.

The support Israel now enjoys from America is a self-delusion. The US vetoed many UN resolutions which condemned Israel. But the very likelihood of such vetoes allows other UNSC members to behave more radically: they vote pro-Left and pro-Arab, knowing that the resolution won’t pass. The US vetoes keep Israel in the UN while a stream of empty anti-Israeli resolutions would have forced Israel out of that barbarian conference, and end Israeli adherence to the UN-sponsored nonsense such as the 1956 borders. The UN fails to enforce sanctions against Iran, an international pariah; the chance of effective sanctions against Israel is infinitesimal. If Israel doesn’t follow South Africa’s path of decades-long oppression of aborigines, but ends the Arab demographic problem swiftly and ruthlessly, in a few years there would be no prospect of sanctions.

From 1948 to 1972, Israel survived while having no official sponsor. We played with France, Germany, America, even the Soviet forefront Romania, and survived. Arab loyalty is non-existent and allegiance – prohibitively expensive; many countries would find it cheaper to buy regional influence by aiding Israel than the Arabs. America aids Israel to control her, and to brandish that control before Arabs extracting concessions from them. The control over Israel gives America great leverage in relations with every Arab country; aid to Israel is an excellent investment. Not only the US, but other countries, too, realize that and would ally themselves with Israel. In the show of absurd loyalty, Israel sticks to America, but America sells her at every corner – for oil.

Russia cannot give Israel much aid, but can supply advanced weapons much cheaper than America, and provide excellent support in the UN. Russia’s military credibility among Arabs is much higher than America’s; Arabs don’t hesitate terrorizing the American pawn, but would shrink from attacking Russia’s client state.

There is also France, boiling with imperial ambitions but unable to vie the Arab states away from America. Through an alliance with France, Israel can extract diplomatic support and considerable aid from the EU.

And there are China and India.

Israel pays with real concessions for the fictional American support. The US needs to show the Arab clients its power over Israel, and kicks her around just for the fun of it: witness the squabble over a few dozen hamlets frightfully dubbed “illegal outposts.” As if the Arab attacks on Israel from 1929 onwards have anything to do with those hamlets erected as a protest against the Oslo capitulation. American politicians sell Israel to placate Arabs, such as by boosting the peace process after the Iraqi debacle. The Carter-Rice ilk uses Israel to vindicate their silly theories, and Clinton pushed for the peace process to cover his deviatory conduct. If not for US pressure, Israeli governments wouldn’t even think of giving the Arabs Judea and Samaria and partitioning Jerusalem.

Incidentally, our tactical goals partially agree with a major aim of American anti-Semites: divestment from Israel. For utterly different reasons we, too believe that Israel must abandon the US aid and live on her own. Financial responsibility would signify the return to Israel’s fundamental political doctrine: Only the IDF is responsible for Israel’s safety. Israel doesn’t need Star Wars weapons to extinguish Palestinian terrorism; good old napalm would do. Israel need not cutting-edge weapons against regular Arab armies: nuclear bombs are good enough.

Rough, self-reliant, arrogant Israel has a good chance for a lasting armistice with neighboring Arabs. Israel the American client has no chance for lasting peace.

We have already tried relying on Assyria.

Even venerable Yitzhak Shamir, the former leader of LEHI, finally succumbed to the Left’s and foreign pressure and accepted Palestinian autonomy, a first step toward their independence. Menahem Begin, a no less distinguished former leader of ETZEL, was brought down by the Carter’s pressure, and gave away Sinai. No wonder Rabin the empty man was manipulated into the Oslo agreements, Netanyahu the business consultant abandoned the holy city of Hebron to Muslims, and Sharon with the brains of a bulldozer traded Gaza for the safety net against criminal prosecution of his family. Not even to mention Barak, another fake “Mr. Security” who made Hezbollah rather than Haifa secure.

On their background, Olmert stands very well. Starting with his principled opposition to Begin-Sharon’s giveaway of Sinai decades ago to the cat-and-mouse game with Abbas, Olmert gives nothing to the enemy. Everything seems to be agreed upon with Fatah, but Palestinian statehood is not advancing. Those who blame the 2006 Lebanon war on Olmert would do well to advance an alternative. Should we expect Olmert to improve the army during his two months as prime minister? Should he have invaded Lebanon again after the 18-year-long occupation proved strategically futile? Should he have scorched Lebanon with napalm to get rid of all bearded Arabs? Olmert had the courage to strike at Lebanon upon the first provocation.

Olmert, he is very brainy. Everyone wants him to invade Gaza, but what’s the next step? If the IDF kills even a couple of thousand Arab militants and withdraws, many more would volunteer immediately, because the IDF withdrawal would be seen as Hamas victory. If the IDF stays in Gaza, the international law kicks in, and Israel would have to take care of the occupied territory’s population. There are two dead in Sderot, but hundreds of Israeli soldiers might die in the urban combat in Gaza. As the Palestinian guerrillas acquire Grad-types weapons able of hitting Ashkelon, Olmert might have no chance but to order a punitive expedition and pacify Gaza for a year or two, like the IDF pacified Lebanon. There is just no clear-cut solution to guerrilla warfare, short of the measures which would look unacceptably cruel on CNN.

The left are greatly dissatisfied with Olmert and seek to topple him. So far, he had not succumbed to Rice-the-Black-Plague’s pressure or the threats of criminal indictment on fake charges. Conducting an honest, straightforward policy requires otherworldly moral strength; real politics is an art of maneuvering. Olmert is not a political bulldozer, but a master politician. His ways are not straight, but they do not lead to capitulation. This is as good as it gets with Israel’s politicians.

Size worked against Israel. Huge United States provided its early pioneers with vast expanses of empty land to live free. By the time American bureaucracy has established control over the subjects, they grew used to freedom. Israel lacked that immense advantage of space. The early Israeli kibbutzniks were pioneers not inferior to American. The Israelis were tough and daring in peace and war.

But in minuscule Israel bureaucracy established itself quickly and bound citizens with legalese. The system usurped responsibility, but wasn’t responsible. The political echelon and the army bureaucratized and played according to rigid rules, and lost consistently. Now even soldiers are afraid to shoot Arabs, and there is no question of commanders performing independent operations. If the Yom Kippur war happened now, Ariel Sharon won’t violate the orders and break behind the Egyptian lines.

Talmudic tradition made Jews legal-minded. There is no way to limit bureaucratic expansion in the Jewish state. It must be Jewish, but not a state. The Bible teaches us that in the absence of righteous and rightful monarch, the best system of government is Shoftim: independent townships without legislative power, only with judges. In the modern political theory, that’s free market anarchism. It presumes minimalist legislation, diversified among jurisdictions. Sort of every town having its own speed limit, though in reality basic laws tend to converge among jurisdictions. Judea must adopt the biblical system of Shoftim.

Unless Jews break the state now, the state will break Jews.

Why leave in Israel rather than in Australia – besides being unable to obtain a residence permit in Australia? Israel is a Jewish state, while Australia is not. Fine, but what makes Israel Jewish? The state violates even the basic religious precepts such as Shabbat, prohibitions of foreign worship and pork, and the positive commandment to build the Temple.

Perhaps Israel is a state where Jews are safe? That’s not congruent with the six or seven wars which Israel fought in its brief modern history; Australia is empirically much safer to Jews than Israel.

Maybe, Israel is a state of Jews? But of how many Jews? Arabs are already 34% among Israel’s youth; add Slavs and Jews-by-grandfather, and Jews are already slated for a minority status in Israel in twenty years. If living in a Jew-mostly state is so valuable that it is worth fighting for, then it is surely better to have a Jew-only state, and therefore expel the Arabs. Or, if living in Jewish state is good, then it is also good to live in Jewish communities, but the Supreme Court struck down the right of Jewish communities to refuse residency to Arabs; wherever Jews go in Israel, they cannot flee Arabs.

What’s the point of maintaining an Israeli state? Neturei Karta is right: Jews have even more rights as dhimmi under Muslim jurisdiction. When the country belonged to Arabs, Jews could settle freely in Hebron and any other place. Jewish education was religious or patriotic, whatever the Jews chose. Every Jewish group enjoyed autonomy, low taxes, absence of conscription, and until the advent of Zionism – safety. Jews were free to speak Hebrew, lived in isolated communities without Arabs, maintained friendly relations with Muslims, and had no occupational restrictions.

A third of Jews was exterminated in WWII. Another third dies out in the American assimilation oven. The remaining third was gathered in Israel from all corners of earth. Israel drained all Jewish communities. The preconditions look messianic: two thirds of Jews annihilated, the remaining third’s condition is hopelessly bad. Israel’s only purpose is to preserve some Jews from the universal assimilation. When Jews are no longer religious, Israel can at least provide them with national identity. Even if the Israeli experiment fails, the Jews who stream out of the country would still preserve a post-shock sense of identity perhaps sufficient to guard them against assimilation until the religious identity is acceptably redefined.

In Hebrew, rasha means profane, ungodly, and hamas refers to violence and destruction.

The peace process must put even die-hard atheists to shame. Nothing short of a miracle explains that every time Israel is ready to cede Judea and Jerusalem, Palestinians preclude the Jewish defeat. Arafat turned off Barak’s offer which included just everything the “moderate” Palestinians demanded. Now Hamas undermines Fatah’s efforts at chipping the Palestinian state out of Israel. Unless the wildest conspiracy theories are true and Israel’s security services manipulate the Palestinians away from statehood, there is no other explanation: God doesn’t want Jews to give the Promised Land away.

This chance is our last. The Almighty created the situation where the options are crystal-clear and Jews need no crystal ball to see them. The entire Jewry outside of Israel is annihilated: European Jews perished in Holocaust, American Jews are lost to assimilation, and Arab Jews were uprooted and resettled into Israel. God tells us in the most straightforward manner that now we must decide: would the Jews live or die out. Zechariah’s prophecy is fulfilled: the two-thirds are lost, and it’s up to the Jews whether the last third would be refined as silver or burn out.

Jews, of course, have free will and can rebel against the divine injunction. Israel received every sign she could hold on to the Sinai: four wars with Egypt won, and the Yom Kippur war even extended Israel’s foothold. Jews, nevertheless, abandoned the Sinai; now we’re tourists there, Egyptians – the owners. Similarly, Jews can transfer Judea to Arabs rather than Arabs out of Judea. Such act, however, would be equal to conversion. There is no practical difference between Jews’ converting to Christianity and consciously rejecting the commandments. Once the commandments are rejected, Jews can become anything.

Jews don’t live in the Land of Israel because of some stupid historical rights. If Jews can return after 1,900 years, all the more Arabs can return after sixty years. Jews were sovereign on this land for perhaps four centuries; the rest was a protectorate. Muslims governed this land for much longer. Jewish national right to statehood? What nonsense! Ask Chechens, Basques, Uighurs, or Bretons, and listen carefully to their reply: there is no such right. There is a single basis for Jews to conquer and settle this land: God have told us so.

Cleansing the land God gave us is a major commandment. It is arguably the major political commandment. Jews must drive away the inhabitants of the land. There can be no coexistence. Amalekites, Canaanites, or Palestinians would never be loyal citizens of Jewish state. Cleanse first, build later. To build a Jewish state in the land populated by Arabs is impossible.

There is unmistakable similarity between the Stalinist society laid bare by Koestler in his Darkness at Noon and the post-Zionist Israel. The defining characteristic of Stalinist society was a suppression of common morality now for the sake of attaining high ideals later. The ideals have to be sufficiently abstract so that the people won’t be able to evaluate whether the ends justify the means; besides being shiny, the ends are not clear. So in Israel. Zionists plunged to the depths of immorality such as hunting the fellow Jews (Kach, etc) without ever clarifying what they want to achieve. Just like their Russian counterparts spoke of the ultimate “worker’s state” while robbing and denigrating those same workers, Zionists declared a goal of the Jewish state without ever clarifying what “Jewish” means to them. Russian bureaucracy usurped the power in the name of workers; Zionist bureaucracy usurped the power while pushing religious and nationalist Jews onto the society’s persecuted fringes. Communists and Zionists were unable to formulate their goals because they had no clear goals. A short logical argument immediately demonstrates that planned socialist economy benefits the state rather than workers, and socialist Zionism opposes Judaism and Jewishness.

Koestler convincingly shows how the good communists were persuaded to submit to evil communists because the evil communists had currently the best chance of furthering the goals of communism. And so in Israel. Common Israelis believe the top political echelon, though corrupt and treacherous, works to uphold Zionist goals, and they submit to its rule. In the case of, for example, Baruch Goldstein it is evident that he could not have shot 150 Arabs with four cartridges. The guards, however, were persuaded to retract their testimonies so that the government could blame Goldstein for the “massacre” and disband the Kach party he belonged to. In another episode, many people in the sterile zone saw Rabin standing up and walking to his car after being “fatally shot” by Amir; dozens of medical personnel in the hospital knew that Rabin was fatally shot in the surgery room. All of them kept silent. It is impossible that all of them are cowards, submitting to Shin-Bet’s threats. Just like during the Soviet witch hunt trials, all of them were persuaded that temporary injustice justifies the shining ends of Zionism. Probably, just like the Koestler’s hero, they were offered an escape for their conscience: a possibility that at some remote date the truth will be allowed to stand and the non-guilty – acquitted. Israeli establishment can now afford to acquit Amir or Goldstein: Kach is dead, and the image of right-wingers stained irreparably. Indeed, they are all but formally acquitted: a majority of Israelis, polls show, don’t buy the official version of Rabin’s assassination. They, however, still don’t vote for the smeared right-wingers. Decades later, Kahane and Goldstein will be national heroes, just like today David Raziel and Avraham Stern, hunted by Zionists during their lifetime, became the official heroes; dead heroes don’t threaten the establishment.

Russian communists like the Koestler’s hero worked for the system. To rebel against the system was to admit one’s entire life efforts wrong. That was too much to bear. And so in Israel. Israelis suffer for the system from their early age. They risk their lives in buses, on the streets, and in the army. They see they dear ones killed or maimed. They suffer heavy taxation and international hostility. For common Israelis, to doubt the system is to admit their lifetime sacrifices futile.

Just like the communism, Zionism evolves. One notion having been discredited, the ruling clique embraces another. From Jewish state to a state with many Arabs to the state with looming Arab majority. From socialist state to atheist state to the state were the Supreme Court and the government direct rabbinical affairs. From zealously Jewish state to the state with affirmative action for Arabs and police pogroms in Jewish religious neighborhoods. It’s never possible to prove that the rulers betrayed their own goals because the goals are continuously adapted to the ongoing treachery.

Russia has never abandoned its Stalinist stature. Common Russians were silent in the face of their government blowing the houses in Moscow to instigate the war with Chechnya. They accepted transparent lies by the government just like their grandfathers accepted the ridiculous witch hunt trials. So does Israel. Jews were silent when Ben Gurion’s agents killed Arlozoroff or bullet-sprayed Altalena. Israelis, even conservatives, didn’t protest the government murdering Kahane or Zeevi.

Both communists and Zionists scored early successes by mobilizing near-free labor for ideologically inspired economic projects. Russian industrialization and Israeli agriculture leapfrogged due to the selfless labor efforts. But ideology quickly exhausts its economic potential as the societies grow, become diversified, and economic activities evolve too complex for straightforward planning. Initially more efficient than the conservative market-oriented economies, ideologically driven economies quickly fall behind, burdened by systemic distortions and lack of economic stimuli. Artificial ideologies are dangerous to minds, but also to pockets.

Israel has to abandon shining Zionism for the old-fashioned Judaism. The only alternative is communal death.