The United States and Britain did not support Israel in the 1948 War of Independence. The Soviet Union did - for a reason. Stalin remembered the huge role Russian Jews played in establishing the Soviet regime and was sure they would build a socialist state in the Middle East.

The Exile made Jews fear the mob; they long for a stronger state. Jews are smart and opinionated, and many want power. Monarchies reserve the first roles for hereditary rulers. Democracies do not elect Jews, a distinctive minority, to top positions. Non-democratic socialism offered the Jews the best chance to ascend to power. Jews, imbued with the idea of changing the world for the better, embraced socialism which promised a just and safe society. Stalin was sure the Jewish state would be socialist.

And so it was. Israel based its agriculture on kibbutzim, a radical version of Soviet collective farms. Just as in the USSR, kibbutzim were successful initially but quickly degraded. Simple enterprises can be communal, but economic development causes diversification.

Israel is not just a welfare state. She redistributes much more of her GDP than any other civilized country. Israel’s redistribution level qualifies her as a socialist state. Many Israeli groups depend on government paychecks rather than jobs for a living, particularly elderly Soviet immigrants who never worked in Israel, many large sephardic families, the religious establishment, and the Arabs. The Israeli government manipulates voters through arbitrary welfare policies.

Strong trade unions have secured internationally non-competitive work terms and huge pensions and other benefits. The bulging state sector of the Israeli economy symbiotically joined the military and thrives on producing unnecessary weapons at unreasonable prices.

It takes mind control to make working people agree to a tax shearing of 63% (the consolidated tax rate) of their income, and the Israeli government controls minds. There is no free press in Israel. The government owns some media outlets, and oligarchs who depend on the government own the rest. Censorship long since extended beyond military matters to police brutality to purely political issues. Sharon made criticism the withdrawal from Gaza a punishable offense.

The brainwashing in Israeli schools and the army is unprecedented by the standards of civilized countries, is on par with Soviet propaganda. Leftists permanently control the educational institutions and cram young people with anti-religious (anti-Judaic) sentiment and the absurd notion that Arabs are good neighbors (and so, implicitly, the Israeli army that opposes are a bunch of murderers).

The small Israeli establishment is deeply interconnected, and any dissent is detrimental to its political position and income. Just as in the Soviet Union, and in striking contrast with Western countries, there are no large independent political sponsors in Israel. Non-mainstream political parties lack financial opportunities.

The militant government is certain of its righteousness. The extreme polarization of Israeli society makes for drastic measures to deal with opponents. With world opinion behind the Arabs, discontent is directed against fringe Jews: the religious and the Right. The population depends on the government for security and readily submits to some injustice.

The ever enlarging police counters the Arabs adequately and grows by extending its control over Jews. Left-leaning Israeli courts join the police in suppressing political dissent. Administrative detention without trial, intended to deal with terrorist suspects, is extensively used against Jews.

Governments readily oppose internal (harmless), not external, (dangerous) enemies. The Israeli government opposes not Arabs but religious Jews. To quash religious and nationalist feelings, the government is ready to sacrifice Jewish land to the Arabs and to accept a huge number of Arabs in Israel.

The Left will try to cover their strategic errors by strengthening the Israeli state’s totalitarian features.

Israel, a small country with a pervasive security apparatus, drifts into the Orwellian nightmare. Faced with all-powerful police and harsh suppression of dissent, Israelis opt for the leftist newspeak. Old terms acquire new meaning, and old ideals are bereft of their essence. Zionism, the desire for a Jewish state in the Promised Land, has come to denote any policy of the Israeli government. An ostensibly Jewish state gives away Jewish lands and accepts an impending Arab majority. Unwilling to abandon their ideals and prevented by the government from achieving them, Israelis have emasculated the ideals.

Israel is superficially pluralist. The Knesset is highly fragmented, and so was the Reichstag in the days before the Nazis came to power. Political fragmentation, superficial discussion that does not deal with real issues, economic devastation, and a grave military situation are the prerequisites for a totalitarian takeover. A hopeless population that has tried every option to achieve peace and prosperity will accept any regime which promises them.

Israel will unlikely become a dictatorship, but neither was Nazi Germany. Germans dissented from the Nazi line on many issues, including major ones like euthanasia and atheism. The Nazis never entirely controlled German media. The German police respected the basic rights of criminals and moderate dissenters, and the courts behaved reasonably in non-political cases. The USSR had no free press but retained elections. Some Soviet bloc countries had a multi-party system. Totalitarianism comes in many flavors; their common denominator is absence of rational political choice. Israel has crossed that line.