[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by Nantoz

Due to The Law of Return

Milo has already covered this, but it's worth re-emphasising : The demise of the Soviet Union was of course a one-time event and the migration of Jews from the fSU to Israel isn't going to happen again, barring some calamatious events in the United States where the largest Jewish population exists.

There will of course be drips and drab migration from Western Europe (especially if anti-Jewish attacks occur or they generally feel uncomfortable with Europe's growing Muslim population) and the United States (the children of the orthodox and so on) and possibly Latin America (Argentina mainly, due to economic problems) but I doubt it will ever be on the scale of the "Soviet" Jews migration which approached something like a million people.

Simply put, there are no more large scale Jewish populations who want to return to Israel. Which definitely can't be said for the Palestenians.

More generally, both inside Israel (and the occupied territories) and Israel's neighbours the Arab populations have a high birth-rate (I believe at one stage the Gaza Strip had the highest birth-rate in the world, although some have doubted those figures). Almost all of the countries around Israel have a relatively high birth-rate and their populations will grow enormously over the next fifty years if trends remain as they do.

So to summarise : Israel is going to be dealing with keeping down larger and larger Arab populations. Gerrymandering, atrocities, expulsions and the like will help in the short-term but they will not change facts. The cost of occupying / continual war will wear Israel down and eventually they will fall. Of course, for now (and certainly for the next ten to twenty years) they have the United States who stand unopposed in military might.

Originally Posted by Kura

South Africa , as i stated, reached a point where internally they had a shift of power. They didnt suffer a massive invasion from their neighbours, and the changeover of power was not a long, drawn out war.

Snurx's South Africa analogy is very valid although there are obviously differences (the whites were always a small minority and the black states which surrounded South Africa were all militarily insignificant). South Africa did have an internal shift in policy but this wasn't because the Afrikaaners woke up one day and realised they had been terrible to their black brothers all these years.

Instead, it was because elements inside the National Party (and elsewhere in South Africa's elite) began to consider the costs of apartheid were too high. Compulsory military service for instance was generally disliked - remember this wasn't playing boy scouts in the Alps like many of our European cousins seem to partake - but proper military service where you could be sent to Angola or have to deal with some township rebellion in some of the worst places on Earth. I have an in-law who tried to commit suicide simply to avoid it, for instance.

The black population was growing (and migrating) far quicker than the white population and this was unlikely to change. The ANC (and co) were growing in organisation skill and ability to disrupt/boycott/harrass the authorities (payment strikes, sabotage, etc).

In addition to this, international pariah status (sanctions, boycotts, being barred from sporting events, etc) bears down rather heavily if you're living in an otherwise priviliged lifestyle. Israel is not in such a bad position due to history but it's not like they have a high degree of international support either (let's play count the UN votes on Israel & Palestine shall we?)

But the whites could have continued. They could have, instead of putting Mandela in Robben Island for twenty odd years simply shot him in the head. They could have used their military advantage to crack down much harder on "the terrorists" in the ANC. And if you speak to some white South Africans you will find many people who believe that is precisely what they should have done. Instead they struck a bargain. Negotiated transfer of power and the whites got to keep much of their land / privilige (well, for now).

There is a quote in one of the Discworld books which says something along the lines of "If you are going to kick a troll when he is chained up, don't be around when he is unchained".

Originally Posted by Kura

There may come a point in the future where America has a crisis of its own to deal with and cannot provide fully the current support it brings to Israel, but as of right now, militarily, Israel is in a position to defend itself from any acts of aggression from its neighbours.

Yes, and no-one is doubting this. However, your original statement (in response to my comment about Israel's destruction) said that you couldn't see this ever happening. Forever is a long time and we'd be foolish to believe that American hegemony will last that long.