Zionism is optimism.

About a decade ago, in the midst of my first online-cult initiations, it felt satisfyingly contrarian to be non-Zionisti – as it did to be non-statist more broadly – but I don’t think I can be quite so dismissive of the 75-year-old 3,500-year-old powerhouse anymore.ii

With the benefit of that much more life experience, my fourth trip there last year, and the magnitude of recent geopolitical events, now seems like as good a time as any to share my updated thoughts on The Little Country That Could: The Second Foundation.iii

Indeed, as the descending world (ie. western world) wrings its hands evermore loudly regarding plunging TFR, excessive immigration, monetary debasement and the inevitable civilisational declines that are now almost impossible to ignore, basically the only salmon swimming upstream of this slow-motion global tragedy is Israel. This is becoming increasingly obvious to astute cultural commentators, including Bismarck Analysis’ Marko Jukic, whose recent TFR “mass extinction” threadiv was rather helpful in sparking a pleasant little back-and-forth between yours truly and a couple internet randos, which is preserved herebelow for future enlightenment and entertainment:

Pete D: Israel is the country of the Third Millennium. I don’t think we’re ready to wrap our heads around that either.

Roger: Explain that, if you don’t mind.

Pete: Israel is a tech-forward militaristic fertility cult with a chip on its shoulder and something to prove. It’s the whole package.v

Sim: It’s too small though, without the US they can’t survive and the US is in decline. Israel is similar to Taiwan in that sense, with stronger military and more births. Both have a smart populace and a strong tech culture but Taiwan lacks the ultra-religious popping out kids.

Pete: US might be in decline but there’s still a huuuuuge amount of fat to render, and Israel has no problem doing that, or with buying arms from Russia/China if required. Israel also isn’t “too small” any more than David was against Goliath, or 300 Spartans were “too few” against

Sim: Right. I don’t disagree in the short term but what‘s the long-term strategy? Since the US does’t have Israel’s birthrate nor a culture that can be depended on for much longer (not sure if Israel itself does either btw, it’s a multicultural mess).

Pete: US is vast enough and determined enough to protect (and rebirth) enough pockets of competency for at least a few more centuries.

Sim: What we observe points towards the opposite. US allies get weaker and it’s mostly due to misguided ideology. Germany destroyed its own economy with their climate cult. Britain is turning into a weird anarcho-Islamist police state. African leaders aligning with Putin/China, etc…

Pete: Except it’s not the opposite if we view Germany and Britain as fat to be rendered for Americans, and Americans as fat to be rendered for Israel.vi

Sim: It’s a lose-lose situation, what you‘re implying sounds like some weird conspiracy theory where Israel profits from America‘s decline. Maybe I misunderstood you though.

Pete: It’s less a “conspiracy”vii and more an observation of entropy. To the active goes the agency. It’s ever been thus.

So ya, things are looking up, at least for some of us.viii And it must be observed that the importance of homeland continues to be underrated. A light upon the nations, indeed!ix

גמר חתימה טובהx

  1. I can’t however claim to have ever been anti-Zionist. ↩
  2. Moses led the Jewish people out of Egyptian bondage into the Promised Land around the end of the Bronze Age, so call it ~1,500 BC. ↩
  3. You might think of Israel as The Second Foundation. No doubt that Isaac Asimov was thinking exactly that when he published the original trilogy between 1951-1953! But if you still don’t get the reference, you needn’t just take my word for it that the juice is most definitely worth the squeeze:

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  4. I can’t say I’m quite as pessimistic as Mr. Jukic regarding “mass extinction,” at least not on account of “industrialisation” or “decadence” or whatever. Maybe it’s just my zionism optimism talking, but can you imagine cultural commentators a hundred years ago trying to predict what the global population would be today? They’d be miles off! There are just too many other factors at play, whether it’s plagues, wars, pole-shifts… ↩

  5. The Third Temple might even happen in our lifetimes! ↩
  6. Name me another Diaspora so committed to the success of its homeland. Somali Ilhan Omar wishes her Minnesota state flag troll was 1/100th as effective as our people’s string-pulling:

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  7. The only Israeli “conspiracy” is that they actually have an effective Secret Service:

    And a fiercely loyal Diaspora!

    Including Epstein??! Hmm…. ↩

  8. To quote the late Chief Rabbi in the UK, Jonathan Sacks (1948-2020):

    How probable is it that the universe should exist? How probable is it that life should exist? How probable is it that out of all the 3 million life-forms on planet Earth, only one—us—is capable of asking the question: Why? Nothing interesting is remotely probable.

    Think about the Jewish people. How probable is it that one man—Abraham, who commanded no empire and ordered no army, performed no miracle, delivered no prophecy—should today without doubt be the most influential man who ever lived, who’s claimed as the spiritual ancestor by 2.4 billion Christians, 1.6 billion Muslims, and most of you in the room today?

    How probable is it that this tiny people—the Jewish people—numbering less than one-fifth of 1 percent of the population of the world, should have outlived the world’s greatest empires. . . How likely is it that, after 2,000 years of exile, our people should have come back to our land and there—having stood eyeball to eyeball with the angel of death in Auschwitz a mere three years earlier in 1948—said, despite the worst crime of man against man, lo amut kiechyeh. I will not die but I will live.

    Israel is the greatest collective affirmation of life in the whole of Jewish history.

    Friends, Judaism is the defeat of probability by the power of possibility. And nowhere will you see the power of possibility more than in the State of Israel today.

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  9. Hurr durr anti-colonialists need not apply before doing the required reading. ↩
  10. G’mar Chatimah Tovah : may you be sealed in the Book of Life! ↩