Contents
Last week: the national self
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The national self, continued
1 Previous reports
Nations: structure, dynamics and trajectories of power (new)
Extract from my report at the end of 2022 … Russia, Ukraine, Germany, USA
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2 Nations and empires in Europe
German unification, 1871
Hitler and Stalin, Germany and Russia, “Mum and Dad”
Daniel Finkelstein … Germany, Poland, Ukraine …
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3 The Ottoman empire: before, during and after
The Trojan War … Troy
The Celtic peoples … Galatians
St Paul’s epistle to the Galatians
Lygos, Byzantium, Constantinople, Istanbul
Ottoman Empire: c. 1299-1922 … Turkey 2023
“The New Ottoman”
Hagia Sophia: May 29th, 1453 … May 29th, 2023
Yugoslavia 1918-1992 … 1963
Serbia and Kosovo … June 2023
Israel
Israel protests, June 10, 2023
Variation within a nation: Israel (January 2023)
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Last week: the national self
Self and other; opinions and reality (a couple of paragraphs).
Britannia: Three Prime Ministers and a Queen
Scotland and Britannia … Independence and Referenda
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The national self, continued
In recent weeks we have been discussing ‘the national self’. It started with a discussion of Britannia and this was followed by a look at Ireland and Northern Ireland in relation to Britannia, and last week Scotland in relation to Britannia. By coincidence last week there was also the appearance of an article on Putin’s notion of Russian civilisation.
This week continues the discussion. First I revisit three chapters which I wrote some years ago about nations and the structure, dynamics and trajectories of power. Next, I revisit my discussion at the turn of the year, emphasizing the notion of variation in nations and in world society, particularly with Russia, Ukraine, Germany and the USA in mind. Finally, the events of the last week lead to further reflections on Empires in Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Of special interest has been Daniel Finkelstein’s new book, Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad. A Family Memoir of Miraculous Survival. The final section considers the Ottoman empire, and before and after the empire, with attention to recent events in Turkey, Kosovo and Israel.
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1 Previous reports
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Nations: structure, dynamics and trajectories of power
Back in 2014, there was the Russian invasion of Crimea and the referendum on Scottish independence. Both Ukraine and Scotland are discussed in later sections. In abstract the two quite different events relate to the general notions of geopolitical structure and dynamics, and the trajectories of power. In particular there are nations with empires, and nations within empires. These aspects are discussed in the following three chapters:
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The world today: tension and volatility in a multi-level geopolitical structure: (2014) chapter
World history: progress and destruction, independence and incorporation: (2014) chapter
Power trajectories: Western Dominance and Eastern Growth: (2017) chapter
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Extract from my report at the end of 2022 … Russia, Ukraine, Germany, USA
“Variation in nations and in world society
There is variation in world society: variation between nations and variation within nations. Sometimes a nation is conceptualised as a unitary entity. Sometimes it is conceptualised as a divided entity. However my analyses suggest a nation is neither united nor divided but rather something more complex – a distribution perhaps?
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Consider the notion of “A Nation Divided”. At the time of the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014, I considered whether Ukraine was united or divided and discovered a more complex situation:
Ukraine: united or divided? West and East; living with others
pages 148-174. Chapter 9, (2014)
That same year there was a referendum on independence in Scotland. Rather than united or divided I found Scotland was “more varied”. An additional point related to the comparison between Scotland and other countries. Scotland was “less distinctive” than some might imagine. Scotland is not exceptional …
… there is sometimes reference to “American exceptionalism” but the notion of exceptionalism can be invoked by any country. As well as being exceptional we can ask whether ‘our values’ are unanimous? universal? exceptional? good? safe? The following chapter gives an extended discussion of the debate in 2014 around the question, “Is Britain Christian?”
‘Our Values’: Unanimous? Universal? Exceptional? Good? Safe?
A common observation about USA politics is that it is divided. Rather than accepting this there is a need to consider the abstract structure of public opinion:
USA 2020, Trump: the Abstract Structure of Public Opinion:
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Conceptions of the national self
Putin justified his invasion of Ukraine in part by appealing to the history of Russia and Ukraine. We might say that Putin has a certain conception of the national self. It involves looking back to a time of greatness, feeling that the greatness has been lost and seeking to restore that greatness. Part of making Russia greater is making its territory wider (again). Russia is not at all distinctive in having a conception of national self that takes this form.
37: ‘Our nation’: conceptions of the national self … Rus, Britannia, etc
42: Rus … Reich … “quintessentially British”
The USA has Donald Trump’s MAGA: Make America Great Again.”…
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2 Nations and empires in Europe
We have already referred to my chapter:
World history: progress and destruction, independence and incorporation: (2014) chapter
The following quotation is apt:
“Over the past two hundred years the general trend has been for an increase
in the number of states. The rate of increase was slow in the period up to
1945 and fast in the period 1945 onwards – reflecting the period of
decolonisation. There have been sudden changes at five points in time:
a sudden decrease in the 1860s (Italian and German unification) –
from 46 states to 33 in the period 1860-1872;
a sudden increase around the end of the First World War (in part the
break-up of the empires in continental Europe) – from 43 in 1917 to
59 in 1920;
a sudden decrease and then increase reflecting the conquest and
subsequent liberation of states in the Second World War, from 66 in
1938 to 52 in 1943 to 66 in 1946;
a sudden increase in 1960 reflecting decolonisation - from 89 in
1959 to 107 in 1960;
a sudden increase in 1990 reflecting the collapse of the Soviet
Union and Yugoslavia – from 165 in 1990 to 177 in 1991.”
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German unification, 1871
Bismarck’s War. The Franco-Prussian War and the Making of Europe. Rachel Chrastil. Allen Lane. 2023.
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/315164/bismarcks-war-by-chrastil-rachel/9780241419199
The Franco-Prussian War. Michael Howard. 1961. [and Bertrand Taithe; 2021]
Review: “The gory invention of Germany.” Sat Rev May 27, 17
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/bismarcks-war-by-rachel-chrastil-review-ml9dmdr5z ;
https://www.britannica.com/place/Germany/Germany-from-1871-to-1918 .
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Hitler and Stalin, Germany and Russia, “Mum and Dad”
D-Day, 6 June 1944 … 2023
https://www.britishlegion.org.uk/get-involved/remembrance/remembrance-events/d-day
VE Day, 8 May 1945 … 2023
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_in_Europe_Day
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In 1940 Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia had continuous control of the land from the North Sea to the Pacific Ocean.
In 1945 the Allies of the West and Stalin’s Russia had continuous control of the land from the North Sea to the Pacific Ocean.
At the time just children, Daniel Finkelstein’s Mum survived Hitler’s Belsen and his Dad survived Stalin’s Siberia, “an island of hunger and death”.
Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad. A Family Memoir of Miraculous Survival. Daniel Finkelstein. William Collins, 2023.
Review, Observer: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jun/04/hitler-stalin-mum-and-dad-by-daniel-finkelstein-review-a-family-in-peril
Review, Times: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/hitler-stalin-mum-and-dad-by-daniel-finkelstein-review-b6vkwvkdj
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Daniel Finkelstein … Germany, Poland, Ukraine …
Readers of The Times will already have picked up a few pieces about his family history from Finkelstein’s articles over the years. Indeed I quote him in my chapter on Ukraine:
“Illustrative of west-east competition for dominance are the boundary changes made after the First and Second World Wars. Daniel Finkelstein writes: “After Yalta, we can’t betray Ukraine yet again”.[1] He notes “Lwow, my father’s birthplace ... at Yalta, a people who saw themselves as part of the mainstream of Europe were taken into the Russian orbit ... Lwow became Lviv ... The Big Three agreed a movement of the borders of Poland which shifted large parts of that country into the Soviet Union ...”.”
Page166 in Ukraine: united or divided? West and East; living with others: pages 148-174
His father and mother met after the war in. His mother was a German Jew, the family moving to the Netherlands where she knew Anne Frank, like Anne Frank transported to Belsen, but unlike Anne Frank saved alongside others due to a bizarre arrangement due to Himmler towards the end of the war. Whereas his mother suffered Hitler’s persecution of the Jews, his father suffered Stalin’s persecution of the Poles. His father’s journey which eventually led to Britain sounds somewhat similar to that of Josef Tarnowski’s, again referred to in my chapter on Ukraine: see above.
“Josef Tarnowski’s father came from Winnitza (Vinnitsya) and his mother from Ploskirow (now Kmelnytskyi). They met during the evacuation of Poles west in 1917 as the Bolshevik army invaded Ukraine. They settled in Maniewicze, the family later moving to Kowel and then Luck (in Volyn).[2] Tarnowski records his childhood ... the turmoil of the Second World War ... the Vorkuta gulag ... joining the Free Polish Forces in Scotland.[3]”
Page 149 in in Ukraine: united or divided? West and East; living with others: pages 148-174
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Note: It is just 87miles between Lviv and Luck, between Finkelstein’s father and Josef Tarnowski:
https://www.rome2rio.com/s/%C5%81u%C4%87k/Lviv
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If I remember correctly a Finkelstein article a few years back recalled that when his parents were asked of their experiences under Hitler and Stalin which had been worse, his mother had replied “it’s not a competition.”. The remark has stuck in my mind.
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3 The Ottoman empire: before, during and after
“The New Ottoman” was how The Times editorial greeted President Erdogan’s recent re-election in Turkey. This and other items have led me to reflect on the history and geography of the Ottoman empire – and some of the events which came before it some which came after it. (My selection of events is somewhat haphazard.)
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The Trojan War … Troy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_War
Troy 3600BCE to 500CE … was located near Çanakkale in Turkey on the Dardanelles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%87anakkale
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The Celtic peoples … Galatians
The Celts are a set of peoples who have had a presence in various parts of Europe and Anatolia since at least 600BC. The details are unclear. Genetic markers provide some evidence of their geographic distribution.
[Anatolia: ‘Asia Minor’; a peninsula in Western Asia, corresponding to modern Turkey.]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celts ;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galatia#/media/File:Celts_in_Europe-fr.svg;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatolia ;
The Galatians were a Celtic people living in Galatia, a region in central Anatolia, centred around modern-day Ankara. In 25BC, Galatia became a province of the Roman Empire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galatians_(people)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galatia
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St Paul’s epistle to the Galatians
[All this comes about because my sister Margaret is in her local group up in Scotland discussing this book of the bible, and my friends down here are telling me what they know! A key question at the time apparently was how Jews and Gentiles (non-Jews) relate to one another and to Christianity.]
Paul was a Greek-speaking Jew from Cilicia in Asia Minor, a Roman citizen and a Pharisee. He initially persecuted Christians but later was converted to Christianity on the road to Damascus. He wrote epistles to a number of groups, one of which was the Galatians. Paul lived from possibly 4BCE to around 62 CE.
“It is possible that Paul believed [prior to his own conversion to Christianity] that Jewish converts to the new movement were not sufficiently observant of the Jewish law, that Jewish converts mingled too freely with Gentile (non-Jewish) converts, thus associating themselves with idolatrous practices, or that the notion of a crucified messiah was objectionable. The young Paul certainly would have rejected the view that Jesus had been raised after his death—not because he doubted resurrection as such but because he would not have believed that God chose to favour Jesus by raising him before the time of the Judgment of the world.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_the_Apostle ;
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Paul-the-Apostle ;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistle_to_the_Galatians;
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Lygos, Byzantium, Constantinople, Istanbul
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Istanbul
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Ottoman Empire: c. 1299-1922 … Turkey 2023
See map for 1481, 1566, 1683, 1739, 1914AD in:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Empire
In 1683, the empire was just short of Vienna and just short of Kiev. …
In 1853-1856 the Crimean War involved Russia versus the Ottoman Empire and others … there had been a dispute between Catholic and Orthodox Christians in Palestine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_War
In 1914, the empire continued to include a small region across the Bosphorus; and it extended down through modern Israel and all down the west coast of the Red Sea; all down the Tigris and the Euphrates; and all along the south coast of the Black Sea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Empire#/media/File:OttomanEmpireMain.png
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Empire#/media/File:OttomanEmpire1914.png
It lost much of its territories in the First World War … including Palestine.
Modern Turkey, created in 1922, is bordered by Greece and Bulgaria … and by Syria, Iraq, Iran, Armenia, Georgia … and by the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Map_of_Middle_East.png
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“The New Ottoman”
“How Turkey’s second century is being shaped by Erdogan. … The Islamist president has thrived on exploiting religious and ethnic fault lines. Victory tomorrow would further bury the country’s secular roots and raise question about its future as a western ally …” 27, 34-35
“Nationalism set to win in Turkey today, whoever gains most votes. … The anti-immigration message is the focus of both campaigns before the runoff vote.” 28, 26-27
“This is the century for Turkey, Erdogan declares. … Analysis: … the real winner of this election is a xenophobic and often conspiratorial brand of nationalism that has set a new political paradigm.” 29, 28-29
“The New Ottoman. Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s victory in Turkey’s presidential election promises more uncertainty for the country’s democracy, economy and foreign relations.” 30, 25
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The results were as follows:
Erdogan: 49.5% in first round; 52.1% in second round
Kilicdarogiu: 45% in first round; 47.9% in second round
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Turkish_presidential_election
The map shows Erdogan losing in all the Mediterranean coastal areas, in Istanbul and Ankara, and in the south east.
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Hagia Sophia: May 29th, 1453 … May 29th, 2023
“[Ultra-nationalist] Suleyman Solyu, President Erdogan’s interior minister, joined prayers in the Hagia Sofia yesterday on the anniversary of the Ottoman conquest of Istanbul. Supporters met in the Hagia Sophia to mark President Erdogan’s poll victory.” 30, 26-27.
Hagia Sophia was built in the sixth century in Constantinople as the seat of eastern Christianity.
It was converted into a mosque after Ottoman Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror seized Istanbul from the Byzantines on May 29th 1453.
In 1934 Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the secular Turkish republic deconsecrated it and turned it into a museum.
In 2020 it was turned back into a mosque enraging Greek Orthodox Christians.
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Yugoslavia 1918-1992 … 1963
Serbia gained its independence from the Ottoman empire in 1815, first a principality 1815-1882 and then a kingdom 1882-1918.
In 1914 Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated by a Bosnian Serb by a member of a group that wanted an independent Yugoslav state.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand
At the end of the First World War the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian empire led to the creation of Yugoslavia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugoslavia
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A personal note. Back in 1963 the rest of the sixth form skived off to come to Waverley to see me off on the train. I met up with the others in London and we got the train to Zagreb (now Croatia) and then flew in a small plane landing on a grass strip just outside Budva (Montenegro). When the chess was all over, we went inland by bus(?) to Kosovo(?) or Macedonia(?) (for more chess). Finally we got the train to Ljubljana (Slovenia), and because we were in different sections of the split train, some of us returned via Vienna and the others went through Italy. I smuggled David Smith’s suitcase through customs on our return home.
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“During 1990, the socialists (former communists) lost power to ethnic separatist parties in the first multi-party elections held across the country, except in Serbia and Montenegro, where Milošević and his allies won. Nationalist rhetoric on all sides became increasingly heated. Between June 1991 and April 1992, four constituent republics declared independence (only Serbia and Montenegro remained federated). Germany took the initiative and recognized the independence of Croatia and Slovenia, but the status of ethnic Serbs outside Serbia and Montenegro, and that of ethnic Croats outside Croatia, remained unsolved. After a string of inter-ethnic incidents, the Yugoslav Wars ensued, first in Croatia and then, most severely, in multi-ethnic Bosnia and Herzegovina. The wars left economic and political damage in the region that is still felt decades later.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_Yugoslavia
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Serbia and Kosovo … June 2023
The history of Kosovo is complex, variously the core of the Serbian empire then part of the Ottoman empire for five centuries until 1912 … later part of Yugoslavia and after Word War II, an autonomous province within the republic of Serbia within Yugoslavia.
“Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia on 17 February 2008,[16] and has since gained diplomatic recognition as a sovereign state by 101 member states of the United Nations.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo
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Kosovo religions: 95.6% Muslim; 2.2% Roman Catholic (Rome); 1.5% orthodox (Constantinople); 0.7% others.
https://www.britannica.com/place/Kosovo/Religion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Orthodox_Church
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“Kosovo is a frontier society where two Balkan nations, Albanian and Serb, as well as two religions, Islam and Christianity, clash. This rift has often been perceived as a hard and fast line of division, but the area also has a history of co-existence across these boundaries, through cultural contact, religious exchange and conversion. The tension between conflict and symbiosis lies at the core of this text, which contains seven case studies of various ethnic and religious groups, each of which examines how religion — Islam, Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodox — shapes their efforts to construct or reconstruct their identities. Although the focus is on Kosovo, the scope is much wider, covering developments in Croatia, Bosnia, Albania, Macedonia and Serbia as well. The author challenges the idea that Balkan conflicts are evolving around clear-cut and fixed ethno-religious groups. The ethnographic evidence shows that Balkan identities are full of ambiguities, caused by processes of conversion, dissimulation and other forms of manipulation, which are seen as important survival strategies in conditions of endemic violence and insecurity.”
https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/religion-and-the-politics-of-identity-in-kosovo/
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Kosovo, June 2023
“Zvecan, May 29: Masked men fight heavily armed UN peacekeepers.” 3, 38
“West calls for calm over Kosovo.” 1, 2
“US rebukes Kosovo over border clashes.” 1, 30-31
“Mayor* in the middle of Balkan stand-off. A local official’s choice could ignite, Kosovo, Bosnia and even Europe …Nato peacekeeping troops are guarding Zvecan’s town hall.” 3, 38
*197 votes with 6% turnout, boycotted by local Serbs.
“Albanian Kosovans blame Belgrade for Serbs’ post-election violence.” 4, 26-27
“Europe’s other conflict. Heavy rioting in Kosovo, fanned by Serbia and Russia, is a challenge to Nato and threatens to plunge the continent’s youngest state into renewed bloodshed.” 5, 23.
“I won’t appease friends of Putin, says Kosovo PM.” 5, 25.
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Israel
Israel too is a consequence of the break-up of the Ottoman empire at the end of the First World War. There followed the establishment of the British Mandate for Palestine, 1920-1948, and the subsequent creation of the state of Israel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandatory_Palestine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Palestine-mandate
https://www.britannica.com/place/Israel
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A poignant paragraph:
“Before [the Second World War] my grandfather had supported the idea of a homeland for the Jews in Palestine, but not a nation. He was vehement about it. The Holocaust, inevitably changed his mind. Without a state, there was nowhere on which Jews could rely and, after the war, few places for many displaced Jews to go. A state was needed. And Palestine, by the way, feel the same. They want a state too, and with good reason.”
Daniel Finkelstein, The Times, June 7, 2023: 21.
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Israel protests, June 10, 2023
Variation within a nation: Israel (January 2023)
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Israel protests, June 10, 2023
“ ‘Clear and present danger’: protests enter 23rd week ahead of key judicial panel vote.” June 10, 2023
https://www.timesofisrael.com/
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Variation within a nation: Israel (January 2023)
Last week a coalition government was finally formed amid concerns that it included the hard right. The current situation in Israel echoes a number of the features that are present elsewhere. A democracy produces a one-sided government and there are appeals for it to work for all the people. Also there are certain features which can also be found in Putin’s Russia, specifically the presence of a tension between religious tradition and religious and social liberalism.
“Palestinian fury at Temple Mount visit.” 4, 26.
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Netanyahu and his coalition partners, November 17 2022
[extract from: Ukraine 39: 8 billion … Xi and Biden … USA, Israel, Qatar]
“Netanyahu rattles his defence chiefs.” 16, 34
Netanyahu’s bloc of right-wing and religious parties won 64 of the120 seats in the recent elections.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Israeli_legislative_election
The leader of the Likud party may be about to give control over the army and the police to his allies from hard-right parties: Bezald Smotrich of the Religious Zionism party; and Itamar Ben-Gvir of the Jewish Power party; and Aryeh Deri of the ultra-orthodox Shas party.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bezalel_Smotrich;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryeh_Deri;
Some of the parties want changes to Israel’s citizenship laws so that only those recognised as Jews by Orthodox religious strictures to emigrate to the country. (16, 34).
Thus the coalition has a distinctive “conception of the national self”.
The geographical distribution of the results shows Netanyahu strong in the south /middle (including Jerusalem and the West Bank) and the north-east and the current governing coalition strong in the north (including Tel Aviv and Haifa). Looking at the map the Netanyahu coalition controls perhaps 80% of Israel’s land border.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Israeli_legislative_election
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel
The distribution of the seats between parties on the left-right dimension is 5, 5, 4, 24*, 12, 6, 32*, 11, 7, and 14 seats. It forms what I have called an M-shaped distribution. Israel is one of the countries discussed in:
Middle parties and the M-shaped distribution in political space
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December 30 2022
“Netanyahu back to lead a coalition of hardliners.” 30, 30.
“Binyamin Netanyahu returned to office last night at the head of the most hardline government in the country’s history, threatening new confrontations with Palestinians, judges and LGBT groups.” 30, 30.
Times of Israel: https://www.timesofisrael.com/
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All-the-people democracy
Thinking loosely, isn’t democracy supposed to be for all the people? If a notional democracy is not for all the people, is it really a democracy?
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One-sided democracy … the M-shaped distribution for parties
The democratic process in Israel has produced a one-sided government. A process which allows this to happen might be referred to as one-sided democracy.
Middle parties and the M-shaped distribution in political space
11 Satisfaction with democracy
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Middle Democracy … optimal social choice
Middle democracy produces a middle government – which is the optimal social choice.
13 Optimal social choice, preference functions: Peter Emerson and Dublin City Council
14 Optimal social choice, value functions: social design, ethics and the amount of value
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The military situation
.(1) An insecure state
“Insecure Russia: the only country outside NATO? (not quite)*
Back in the 1980s the IR Theory Group of BISA held a seminar on The Insecure State. The two cases were the Soviet Union and Israel. It’s not really something one should joke about but the joke made back then was that the Soviet Union was the only country in the world surrounded by hostile Communist states. The reference of course was to the Warsaw Pact countries**. Israel likewise was surrounded by hostile Arab states.”
Quotation from 3 Conflict and love … loss aversion and insecurity
.(2) Military past
Throughout its history Israel has had wars with its neighbours.
.(3) Military present
There is continuing conflict with Gaza.
.(4) Military future
A main mission is to prevent Iran building a nuclear bomb.
.(5) A conception of national identity
There is to be a new “authority for Jewish national identity”.
.(6) A wider nation
Since its founding, military conflict has led it to expand its territories.
.(7) Increased population of Israeli settlers
A graph shows how the number of Israeli settlers has increased to 650,000 from zero in the 46-year period 1972-2018, initially in East Jerusalem and later in West Bank (and hardly at all in Gaza). Since 1990 the number of settlers in the West bank has risen linearly at the rate of 12,500 per year.
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THE END
[1] Finkelstein, Daniel. “After Yalta, we can’t betray Ukraine yet again.” The Times, March 12, 2014: 25.
[2] Volyn, Kmelnytskyi and Vinnitsya are ‘oblasts’ (provinces) in today’s Ukraine.
[3] Tarnowski, Josef with Raymond Raszkowski Ross. Walking with shadows. Kirkcudbright: Glenn Murray, 2009: 10-11.