AHC Make the Israel in top twelve countries by Inequality adjusted HDI by 2015

Insider

Banned
Remember. These guys started from the scratch, arrived as a refugees with a bundle or two making up their whole belongings. So they won a war which was declared on them the moment they started to exist as a sovereign nation, build the strongest economy in the region, all while winning three other wars and weathering countless terrorist attacks. Israel have not only navigated through crisis of 2009 without reducing GDP but managed to pull it without overextending its public debt. This nation already did very good.

To not get overly rosy. There are problems. There is a lot of poverty. 21% of Israelis live below poverty line, which puts the country between Mexico and Chile.

Water would be another problem as it becomes to be in short supply due to the climate change and increasing demand.

International situations is precarious as it always been and Arab uprisings abroad spill over to Palestine, requiring military action to put them down.

How do you think they could fix this?

Rules: obviously POD is after 1950 (the Israel was created as OTL). No screwing the world around to make Israel look better.
 
So, for a long time, Israel was very socialist and had fairly good economic and social [in this specific context] equality. Don't forget that much of the original settlement of the land was done with literal communes.

There are three primary problems that make modern Israel so unequal - and, broadly, none of them involve water or security, which are fairly orthogonal to economic policy in Israel historically (the entanglement of socialism and doveishness on the one hand and liberalism and hawkishness on the other dates from the mid 90s at the absolute earliest, and probably more like the early 2000s), and water is water, though I guess a government less aligned with the kibbutzim and less obsessed with redemption through the soil might allocate less water to agriculture and more to industry...but partly for security reasons, Israel has always tried to be self-sufficient food-wise. Even today, only grain and beefare imported in any numbers, with Israel growing almost all of its own fruit, vegetables, eggs, dairy, and chicken (there's also a modest veal industry associated with the dairy industry; Israel has a very small difference in price between beef and veal as compared to the US, which is my point of reference)

The first is that following the entrée of the Likud/the right/the Revisionists/whatever into government, the country saw massive and often somewhat inept liberalization of the economy. While today this policy is hailed for planting the seeds of Israel wresting itself into being a completely developed nation, at the time it was fairly disastrous, at least in the short term, leading to hyper-inflation, the collapse (and subsequent nationalization) of Israel's largest four banks, and widespread labor disputes. The Yom Kippur War is also implicated by some for some of these problems, but considering that that happened in 1973 and most of these problems manifested in the early 80s, I have difficulties believing that. Interestingly, the solutions implemented were an interesting combination of liberal and controlled economics, with things like slashing government spending and ceasing the printing of money alongside strict price controls on a wide variety of items and conciliation with the all-powerful national union.

Now, Israel emerged from the crisis arguably stronger than before, but inarguably more unequal. Gone were the most ridiculous of the luxury taxes, and a relaxation of corporate laws made entrepreneurship much easier, and the early 90s saw an explosion of development, especially in the high-tech and service industries...though it's important to remember that Israel also accepted 10-20% of its population in mostly skilled immigrants at this time.

Keeping Labour in power through the late 70s and 80s might well lead to a less unequal modern society; I'm not sure it would get rid of the ultrarich, but it would probably pull the poor up a little and the middle class down a little. Don't forget that a lot of the ultrarich in Israel are Russian oligarchs who are probably getting counted in the inequality statistics, as are some rich foreign Jews who find it legally convenient to maintain residence in Israel for tax reasons or whatever.

It's worth noting, at this time, that a lot of the people with money in Israel date from before the state, immigrants who came in the 20s and 30s (or earlier) and built houses and started industries and so were in an excellent position when the refugees started pouring in in the late 40s and early 50s (they were taxed and controlled to oblivion at the time, but the government seldom seized assets outright). A ridiculous portion of Tel Aviv, for example, is still owned by the descendants of German Jews who built most of the core city in the 30s, and in Israel owning a few apartments in Tel Aviv pretty much makes you wealthy.

On that note, it's also worthwhile to point out the systematic racism against Mizrahi Jews that touched most of Israeli politics and society through the 80s (and today, though it's much less bad than it was, which used to be Irish-and-Italians-in-America-in-the-20s levels, more or less), the results of which still affect modern income inequality.

But in my opinion, the real reason for the inequality in Israel is one that lines up very, very well with your number of 21% in poverty - the Arabs and the religious. Israel, I've often thought, is not one society but three in parallel: "Mainstream", religious, and Arab. Even today, it's possible for a member of one of those segments to never meet a member of one of the other two their entire life, and even just 10 or 15 years ago I would say it was even common.

I'll address the religious first, because this one is way easier. For those of you who don't know, there's a very large segment (about 10%) of Israel that is highly religious [Jewish] and poorly integrated. They live in their own enclaves or cities, don't serve in the army, some oppose the existence of the Jewish state in the first place, they highly restrict television and newspapers and internet, etc. Employment is less than 50%; they mostly live off of the dole. They attend their own [publicly funded] schools which often don't teach any useful skills, dooming them to a life of "study" (air quotes because a lot of them don't, in fact, study much). The reason for this is political calculus, and short-sightedness. When the state was first established, allegedly some of the early leaders wanted to preserve this highly archaic way of life that had been almost completely destroyed, and so they gave money for a few tens of thousands of highly religious Jews to focus on studying the Talmud and Mishna and preserve that cultural heritage. The problem became that they reproduced very very quickly (when you're a subsistence farmer, you need as many children as possible, and passing through the Holocaust isn't going to change that opinion); while the numbers have been getting lower and lower, they're still almost 4 children per Haredi woman today, at were much, much higher in the past. They also became very, very politically organized, with almost all Haredim voting for one of two political parties (representing Sephardi and Ashkenazi Judaism, respectively, though the Sephardi party also receives support from some less religious Sephardim). This ensures that they have a lot of political clout, and since they're basically a one-issue party, they've been considered a "safe" choice and have been in many/most of the governments in Israel, protecting their rights to the dole and non-conscription.

This situation could have been easily avoided from the get-go by not letting their have their own schools, making it less easy for them to claim life-time dole payments, and forcing them to join the army (an important source of skills, common culture, and connections in Israeli society; historically, many jobs have required military service, though in fairness that's often just been a way to discriminate against Haredim and Arabs). The Haredim might or might not assimilate (I'm betting that they would, except for a few hard cores like the founders of Bnei Brak or Mea Shearim), but they would be much less poor...especially if their fertility rates drop as their prosperity increases. You can look and see Haredi populations in much of the world today, and only in Israel and the US are they so unemployed and poor - and in the US, that's fairly recent and takes heavy inspiration from Israel.

The 800lb gorilla in the room is, however, the Arabs. For most of Israeli history, the government's solution to "the Arab problem" has been to ignore it. Arabs lived in Arab towns, worked at Arab jobs, attended (very poorly funded) Arab schools, didn't join the Army, and socialized with and married other Arabs almost exclusively. The Israeli government heavily neglected Arab towns, often not running roads to them, allowing them to remain unconnected to the power grid and have no sewage systems, etc. Cholera remained a big problem in Arab towns in Israel through the 90s. Cholera. In an allegedly first world country.

Cholera.

Anyway, where there was Arab-Jewish interaction, it was often limited to small-scale commerce with neighbors, or use as relatively unskilled labor - construction work, agricultural work, etc - and even that only picked up in the 70s, as the poorest members of "mainstream" society were becoming too educated and expensive to do the same work. Now, there were a few places, like in Haifa, Yafo, Nazareth(ish), and Ma'alot-Tarshicha where Jews and Arabs lived in proximity, but even then their mostly went to different schools and worked and lived in parallel societies, Jews eating at Arab restaurants and Arabs shopping at Jewish shops being the "paragons of integration" - which is kind of sad, because compared to much of the country, this was in fact highly integrated.

Obviously, this lead to Arabs in Israel being much poorer than average, which they're only just now starting to get over.

There are a couple of solutions to this problem in Israeli history. The first, easiest, and most horrible option is simply to have fewer Arabs in the country. More expelled in 1948, or have later expulsions - through the 50s as a reaction to Fedayeen raids and fears of a Fifth Column, for example. Without touching on any of the other implications of this, it would certainly eliminate a poor segment from Israeli society.

The next step would be continued segregation, but more equality. Honestly, though, I'm not sure how this would happen; politicians are politicians and no one wants to spend a lot of money building infrastructure where there isn't any (especially installing sewer systems in pre-existing settlements) in a place where the residents almost certainly aren't going to vote for them.

Less unthinkable but more difficult is integration into Israeli society. This is difficult primarily because neither the Arabs nor the Jews want such a thing occurring, though steps were made. It's important to note that Arab society in Israel is far from monolithic. Christians are, on average, more urban, better educated, and richer than Muslims, and this was even more true in the past. The Druze (don't call an Israeli Druze an Arab to his face, by the way) have been joining the IDF and receiving token positions in major parties for almost the whole history of the country, and though they still mostly live in their own towns and marry their own, the army service causes them to be more integrated and less discriminated against. Circassians are similar, and Samaritans as well (again, don't call either of those groups Arabs, but they are a religious and ethnic minority that largely lives segregated from Israeli society, so if the shoe fits...)

The Israeli government also has a complicated relationship with the Bedouin of the country. Many join the IDF (though historically they served alongside the Druze in the IDF Minorities Battalion, a Jewish-officered unit in the best tradition of Sepoy regiments). There have also been several attempts to settle the Bedouin of the country, especially of the Negev, starting in the late 60s. These attempts were mostly an exciting combination of building brand new (often kinda shitty) cities in the desert, offering them essentially for free to local Bedouin, and demolishing all non-licensed settlements. In fairness, there was a fairly good attempt to work with tribal leadership in this process, and the transitions were often fairly peaceful. The towns had decent infrastructure and were connected to the country's road network, but unemployment remains very very high (even taking into account the informal economy), as does poverty.

The problem with trying to assimilate people more forcefully than OTL is that it quickly runs up against resistance from the people in question, who often want their own separate societies and never asked to be part of Israeli society or even a modern, industrial or post-industrial economy; most of the poorest Arabs were subsistence farmers before the establishment of the state. But more forceful attempts could be made. Forced integration of schools and busing. Requiring Arab participation in civil service if not the IDF (there are deep problems with forcing unwilling people to join a military that's fighting against some people they might identify with). Better infrastructure to Arab towns. The problem is that there's no political will for this.

On a positive note: in both Haredi and Arab societies, these trends are reversing. Both are enlisting more and more in the IDF (a decent proxy for "integration into society"). Programs to increase the number of Haredim and Arabs - especially Arab women - in the workplace are common and well-funded, both government and privately sponsored. Arab and Haredi schools are getting more money, and the former are getting curriculum reform; attempts are being made the reform the latter as well. Poverty is actually dropping pretty well in those sectors. Following further trends, the problem of severe poverty will probably be resolved in about a generation (the segments will remain poorer, but will largely no longer be in poverty).

Edit: just to add, Israel is hardly unique in having a large, segregated, poor population. Sami in Scandinavia, Native Americans/First Nations/Aborigines in thw US andCanada, Aborigines in Australia, groups throughout South America, Appalachian Hill Folk in the US, Roma in much if Europe, etc. Numerous different integration strategies have been tried, and I'm not sure any were much more effective than in Israel.
 
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Minty_Fresh

Banned
The Haredim are the biggest obstacle here because not only do they actively contribute to inequality through their lifestyle, but they are having children at incredibly high rates and growing as a proportion of the population, making poor non-working Israelis a bigger segment of the population. This is a problem not just in Israel by the way, as the Yiddish speaking communities around New York City often show.

But I won't go into them any more than I need to.

As said before, the issues of the Mizrahi Jewish were related to their initially poor treatment. The development towns, often not anything more than refugee tent cities at first, are still where a good portion of the Mizrahi population lives, often away from the Tel Aviv commercial hub that has so much of the wealth and prosperity that we associate with Israel being the Start Up country with. It really is a different world entirely, but its becoming less and less like that.

As for inequality, I would say that Israel, much like many developing countries, and to an extent, Israel is a developed country with a developing class structure, has massive issues with political and economic corruption. Its part of the culture of a country that had a defined leadership class at first that is now seeing a revolution in tech and financial services becoming such huge harbingers of wealth, and the best analogy I can use for this is Gilded Age America where a few families became wildly successful beyond any expectation and lived in a country with a huge amount of immigrants who added to that wealth. I might be describing this wrong, but basically, the corruption inherent in how much of high level economic decision making gets done in Israeli is neither unique nor unexpected. The era of Liberalization came on really heavy and painfully, to the point where Begin himself backtracked from it, but it was in the end quite worth it. This sudden infusion of privatization inevitably led to crony capitalism, which has gotten better over time, particularly I think due to Netanyahu being a true believer in the free market and the reforms put in during his tenure as Finance Minister.

The massive issues today economically at least aren't as much inequality, which the state handles better than you'd think, but rather housing prices. We are seeing this in the US as well in gentrifying cities, but Tel Aviv is becoming really hard to get housing in, and the fact that its basically a super urbanized version of Silicon Valley of course adds to this. There isn't really an answer to this problem yet, and its been compounded as of late by Ethiopian asylum seekers flooding South Tel Aviv creating further municipal strains.
 

Insider

Banned

I must say, I rarely see such comprehensive answers to any topic. I must say that I have mostly made this thread out of spite, after a poorly named one generated a lot of shit throwing and little substence. I feel a little unprepared to pursue analitical discussion, as I have rarely took interest in Israel inner politics. I was just amased how well they fared and assumed that, for Israelis at least, we live in the best possible universe. It seems that there are some fixable bugs afterall. Perhaps one they they would take the example of treatment of Sami in Scandinavia, which seems nothing but civil right now.

And for all who prefered shit throwing, the joke is on you.
 
I must say, I rarely see such comprehensive answers to any topic. I must say that I have mostly made this thread out of spite, after a poorly named one generated a lot of shit throwing and little substence. I feel a little unprepared to pursue analitical discussion, as I have rarely took interest in Israel inner politics. I was just amased how well they fared and assumed that, for Israelis at least, we live in the best possible universe. It seems that there are some fixable bugs afterall. Perhaps one they they would take the example of treatment of Sami in Scandinavia, which seems nothing but civil right now.

And for all who prefered shit throwing, the joke is on you.

Joke's on you, some people are way too well informed about things :p

As for living in the best of all worlds - obviously we don't. I can't think of any country that couldn't be better in some way; even the Swiss and Scandinavians have complaints (even setting aside the immigration issue that's become so prominent recently).

Honestly, Israel has done rather well for itself, and better than it had any right to do, though large influxes of skilled migrants at convenient times and foreign donations helped - and the Holocaust reparations that West Germany paid almost certainly saved the country from literal starvation in the first years of the country, when rationing was still in place. But in general, yeah, it's done pretty well except for the whole ignoring fundamental problems of social separation; but, as I said, this is getting better all the time; once upon a time Mizrahi and Ashkenazi Jews basically wouldn't intermarry. Nowadays, this is remarkable only for making jokes about how bad Ashkenazi food is and how religious the average Mizrahi family is. One way or another, I think most of Israel's internal problems will resolve within a generation. Two, tops.

Israel's real problem, of course, isn't internal. But that's a whole 'nother thread, and one that probably can't happen effectively on this board.
 

oberdada

Gone Fishin'
As far as I know, schools in Israel are a local issue.
How likely is a national school system? Like France for example, where every school teaches basicly the same things and gets the same funding and where teachers can be send to anywhere in the country?

I was in Israel once, about 2 years ago and happened to visit a school in an arab village and I was surprised. A school with pictures of arab nationalists hanging on the wall in Israel.
 
Does a drastic military threat foster equality? Certainly the British started to take care of people during WW2 because they were getting too many undernourished recruits into the Army. Without the existential military threat there won't be the drive for self sufficiency and high levels of general health and education required to meet this threat, and more scope for entrepreneurship and unequal wealth creation.
 
Does a drastic military threat foster equality? Certainly the British started to take care of people during WW2 because they were getting too many undernourished recruits into the Army.

In the 1950s and 1960s, due to the Cold War, the U.S. had mass armed forces raised by conscription. The forces had been formally desegregated, and became fairly color-blind. The formal rules were color-blind, and militaries tend to follow the official rules. It's been noted that the armed forces were in some ways far ahead of the business world in promoting blacks to senior positions.

So, yes, militarization can (doesn't always) break down established social inequalities.

(Paranthetical note, perhaps relevant: the Nazi SS had an egalitarian ethos, based on the fascist ideal of unity and comradeship. This was in strong contrast to the tradition-bound Wehrmacht, where there was deep awareness of class-difference between officers and "other ranks".)
 
As far as I know, schools in Israel are a local issue.
How likely is a national school system? Like France for example, where every school teaches basicly the same things and gets the same funding and where teachers can be send to anywhere in the country?

I was in Israel once, about 2 years ago and happened to visit a school in an arab village and I was surprised. A school with pictures of arab nationalists hanging on the wall in Israel.

Israel's school system is moderately local, and teachers certainly apply at specific districts and schools, but the curriculum is set nationally and funding is theoretically equal (it's definitely paid by national and not local taxes, though).

What you saw was likely less the result of some local people are more a product of Israel's nation-wide Arabic/Arab school system.

Does a drastic military threat foster equality? Certainly the British started to take care of people during WW2 because they were getting too many undernourished recruits into the Army. Without the existential military threat there won't be the drive for self sufficiency and high levels of general health and education required to meet this threat, and more scope for entrepreneurship and unequal wealth creation.

In the 1950s and 1960s, due to the Cold War, the U.S. had mass armed forces raised by conscription. The forces had been formally desegregated, and became fairly color-blind. The formal rules were color-blind, and militaries tend to follow the official rules. It's been noted that the armed forces were in some ways far ahead of the business world in promoting blacks to senior positions.

So, yes, militarization can (doesn't always) break down established social inequalities.

Interesting point. I can say that while it was never de jure segregated in any way, the IDF was very segregated in practice in the past and remains so in many ways today. This has even been formalized through the mechanism of something called the "Preliminary Psychotechnic Rating", a number assigned to all incoming conscripts which takes into account, among other things, the results of a general intelligence exam, a few other indications of general education and literacy, an appraisal of home stability (e.g., living in a household with two parents, parents divorced, single mother, one parent dead, etc), siblings who have previously died [especially in the army], history of drug use or large debts in the potential conscript of the family...the idea was to develop a measure of how "reliable" someone was, but I think it's not hard for people to see how easily such a system can be made fairly easily to be incredibly racist. There was a big scandal in the late 2000s which forced the army to tell people their score (which had previously been kept secret from them), and the resulting transparency led to some reform.

Of course, the IDF did and does lead to some social mixing; while systematic tendencies (honestly, by now I think it's more classism than racism, but class tends to have a racial component in Israel) lead to certain kinds of people dominating the top units and the bottom units, the majority of the army is sort of in the middle, with pretty good diversity. Anecdotally, the years since the 80s have seen more integration of non-Jews (Druze, Bedouins, Circassians, etc) into regular units, and 2015 saw the disbanding of the Minorities Unit. Though, I mean, 2015. C'mon guys.

Class-wise, the IDF serves somewhat as a means of social mobility because aside from the very top and very bottom, people do mix with others from diverse backgrounds, fostering the development of connections that can be used later. You can also use the army to gain useful skills as a mechanic or programmer or whatever, and if you're the anomaly poor or brown person to make it into a top program, you're set for life in Israeli society. That said, as I wrote up above, there's a lot of classism involved with allocating soldiers to certain units. So...better than it might be, not as good as it could be?
 

Minty_Fresh

Banned
The military is great for incorporating "others" into mainstream Israeli society. Mizrahi Army service in the '67 War for example was sort of a watershed moment of acceptance, as many Mizrahi soldiers were commended for bravery and accepted by their previously somewhat close minded Ashkenazi Kibbutzim fellow solders.

The Druze for example are becoming more and more on a level playing ground in terms of acceptance and treatment, but they are still a peripheral people for the most part who live away from the Tel Aviv centre. Religious settlers are also more and more seen as normal due to their willingness to volunteer for the IDF unlike the UltraOrthodox in Bnei Brak. The Russians are probably mocked and treated worst of the Jewish groups at least in my experience. The last time I was in Israel three months ago, I went to the theatre with some family and there were several segments where the foolish Russians had to get out their translation books to the laughs of everyone in the audience.

Christians I think are making more of an effort to engage with the rest of Israeli society, mostly because of the increased religious radicalization of Arab Muslim politics and leadership. They've formed their own political party that advocates for Christian service in the IDF. But this is still a long way off from seeing any sort of realization.

I would not however say that it leads to economic equality, which is more of a function of geographics and other factors. But social equality does see advances through the military. Druze, Settlers, Circassians, and Christians see less discrimination than before.
 

missouribob

Banned
Count occupied Palestine as part of Israel proper since it de facto is right now and I bet that makes things a lot easier.
 
The military is great for incorporating "others" into mainstream Israeli society. Mizrahi Army service in the '67 War for example was sort of a watershed moment of acceptance, as many Mizrahi soldiers were commended for bravery and accepted by their previously somewhat close minded Ashkenazi Kibbutzim fellow solders.

The Druze for example are becoming more and more on a level playing ground in terms of acceptance and treatment, but they are still a peripheral people for the most part who live away from the Tel Aviv centre. Religious settlers are also more and more seen as normal due to their willingness to volunteer for the IDF unlike the UltraOrthodox in Bnei Brak. The Russians are probably mocked and treated worst of the Jewish groups at least in my experience. The last time I was in Israel three months ago, I went to the theatre with some family and there were several segments where the foolish Russians had to get out their translation books to the laughs of everyone in the audience.

Christians I think are making more of an effort to engage with the rest of Israeli society, mostly because of the increased religious radicalization of Arab Muslim politics and leadership. They've formed their own political party that advocates for Christian service in the IDF. But this is still a long way off from seeing any sort of realization.

I would not however say that it leads to economic equality, which is more of a function of geographics and other factors. But social equality does see advances through the military. Druze, Settlers, Circassians, and Christians see less discrimination than before.

There's been a big uptick in Christian enlistment in recent years, but I do agree it's a long way to go. It's also very unfortunate that Russian Jews are mocked like that, I met some when I was in Israel last year. They were really decent people.

What about if Pinhas Lavon wasn't discredited by the Lavon Affair? If I remember right, he was a big supporter of Arabs serving in the IDF in the early 1950s and there was even the process of extending the draft to Israel's Arab citizens by 1954. Let's say he's not discredited, and some Arab community leaders decide to join him. Ben-Gurion could be persuaded to allow for more Arab conscription into the IDF and by the time of the Six-Days War, like Mizrahi soldiers, Arab-Israelis start to become accepted by their Jewish Israeli fellow soldiers. With military combat under their belt, Arab-Israelis could probably win more equal treatment from Israel as well as bring them into the political system much earlier
 
I'll address the religious first, because this one is way easier. For those of you who don't know, there's a very large segment (about 10%) of Israel that is highly religious [Jewish] and poorly integrated. They live in their own enclaves or cities, don't serve in the army, some oppose the existence of the Jewish state in the first place, they highly restrict television and newspapers and internet, etc. Employment is less than 50%; they mostly live off of the dole. They attend their own [publicly funded] schools which often don't teach any useful skills, dooming them to a life of "study" (air quotes because a lot of them don't, in fact, study much). The reason for this is political calculus, and short-sightedness. When the state was first established, allegedly some of the early leaders wanted to preserve this highly archaic way of life that had been almost completely destroyed, and so they gave money for a few tens of thousands of highly religious Jews to focus on studying the Talmud and Mishna and preserve that cultural heritage. The problem became that they reproduced very very quickly (when you're a subsistence farmer, you need as many children as possible, and passing through the Holocaust isn't going to change that opinion); while the numbers have been getting lower and lower, they're still almost 4 children per Haredi woman today, at were much, much higher in the past. They also became very, very politically organized, with almost all Haredim voting for one of two political parties (representing Sephardi and Ashkenazi Judaism, respectively, though the Sephardi party also receives support from some less religious Sephardim). This ensures that they have a lot of political clout, and since they're basically a one-issue party, they've been considered a "safe" choice and have been in many/most of the governments in Israel, protecting their rights to the dole and non-conscription.

This situation could have been easily avoided from the get-go by not letting their have their own schools, making it less easy for them to claim life-time dole payments, and forcing them to join the army (an important source of skills, common culture, and connections in Israeli society; historically, many jobs have required military service, though in fairness that's often just been a way to discriminate against Haredim and Arabs). The Haredim might or might not assimilate (I'm betting that they would, except for a few hard cores like the founders of Bnei Brak or Mea Shearim), but they would be much less poor...especially if their fertility rates drop as their prosperity increases. You can look and see Haredi populations in much of the world today, and only in Israel and the US are they so unemployed and poor - and in the US, that's fairly recent and takes heavy inspiration from Israel.

The first step to prevent this factor would be to change the current proportional system, either by raising the minimal votes (above the OTL 1% to 5-10%) and/or by setting geographical constituencies, which would dilute the power of the religious parties by preventing these rabbis to set up these "political machines" - however, it could be difficult to implement.

As for the training of the haredim, there were an university project on 1946: two American yeshivot, supported by proeminent rabbis, wanted to merge and to offer both religious and secular degrees; unfortunately, the junior college part was cancelled the next year because of the "unsettled business conditions of the country" and the death of Mendlowitz the next year, on 1948, sealed the fate for this project.

What about if Pinhas Lavon wasn't discredited by the Lavon Affair? If I remember right, he was a big supporter of Arabs serving in the IDF in the early 1950s and there was even the process of extending the draft to Israel's Arab citizens by 1954. Let's say he's not discredited, and some Arab community leaders decide to join him. Ben-Gurion could be persuaded to allow for more Arab conscription into the IDF and by the time of the Six-Days War, like Mizrahi soldiers, Arab-Israelis start to become accepted by their Jewish Israeli fellow soldiers. With military combat under their belt, Arab-Israelis could probably win more equal treatment from Israel as well as bring them into the political system much earlier

The final result will depend of the conduct of these soldiers toward rhose from a similar cultural and religious background their officers want them to fight: if they are perceived as "too much cowardly" then it will not much change about the integration of the Arabs.
 
The final result will depend of the conduct of these soldiers toward rhose from a similar cultural and religious background their officers want them to fight: if they are perceived as "too much cowardly" then it will not much change about the integration of the Arabs.

That's very true, and it does depend on how they conduct themselves during war. But assuming positive conduct and even a few examples of Arab-Israeli bravery (say an Arab-Israeli version of Zvika Greengold) during either the Six-Days War or Yom Kippur War, there would be definitely more positive integration of the Arab community. And with those examples, you would definitely see Jewish-Israelis start to see their Arab-Israeli counterparts as fighting and dying with them in defense of the homeland.
 
The military is great for incorporating "others" into mainstream Israeli society. Mizrahi Army service in the '67 War for example was sort of a watershed moment of acceptance, as many Mizrahi soldiers were commended for bravery and accepted by their previously somewhat close minded Ashkenazi Kibbutzim fellow solders.

Very true, though the top ranks of the army continued to be dominated by Ashkenazim (and in particular Kibbutznikim, as you point out) for decades afterwards, and the best units remain very white (for example, the unit I served in, which I will immodestly say was one of the best, or at least hardest to get into, was less than 10% brown. And probably less).

The Druze for example are becoming more and more on a level playing ground in terms of acceptance and treatment, but they are still a peripheral people for the most part who live away from the Tel Aviv centre. Religious settlers are also more and more seen as normal due to their willingness to volunteer for the IDF unlike the UltraOrthodox in Bnei Brak. The Russians are probably mocked and treated worst of the Jewish groups at least in my experience. The last time I was in Israel three months ago, I went to the theatre with some family and there were several segments where the foolish Russians had to get out their translation books to the laughs of everyone in the audience.
I think you put too much emphasis on being in the Mercaz or not. There's plenty of disadvantaged minorities in the Mercaz and plenty of well-off Ashkenazim in the Galilee (though not the South so much)

I also disagree with your point about Russians. Yes, there's some mockery, but it's mostly good natured, and Russians assimilated quickly and effectively for the most part. Top university programs and army units have way more Russians than Mizrahim, for example.

I'd say the most looked-down upon Jews are easily the Ethiopians.

Christians I think are making more of an effort to engage with the rest of Israeli society, mostly because of the increased religious radicalization of Arab Muslim politics and leadership. They've formed their own political party that advocates for Christian service in the IDF. But this is still a long way off from seeing any sort of realization.

I would not however say that it leads to economic equality, which is more of a function of geographics and other factors. But social equality does see advances through the military. Druze, Settlers, Circassians, and Christians see less discrimination than before.

I'm not sure how much of their increasing equality is because they're in the army, versus how much of their high enlistment rates are because of higher equality.

The first step to prevent this factor would be to change the current proportional system, either by raising the minimal votes (above the OTL 1% to 5-10%) and/or by setting geographical constituencies, which would dilute the power of the religious parties by preventing these rabbis to set up these "political machines" - however, it could be difficult to implement.

I'm unconvinced that either solution would help, since the Haredi parties are both pretty big, and Haredim are relatively geographically concentrated.

As for the training of the haredim, there were an university project on 1946: two American yeshivot, supported by proeminent rabbis, wanted to merge and to offer both religious and secular degrees; unfortunately, the junior college part was cancelled the next year because of the "unsettled business conditions of the country" and the death of Mendlowitz the next year, on 1948, sealed the fate for this project.

And what's wrong with Haredim just studying at regular universities?

I'm all for letting a small portion of the populace focus their lives on the study of the Talmud and Mishnah (And even the Torah, if they're feeling sassy), but never in history was it the case that the entirety of a Jewish community did so full-time. Let people study religion after school, let the best become rabbis and scholars, let everyone else join the workforce.
 
I'd say Israel is already getting there. I mean, it's already ahead of the United States in the IHDI.

A number of laws and regulations passed this decade will reduce poverty and inequality greatly, and it appears the Arabs and Haredim are gradually integrating. Israel may find itself in the top 20 in the nother so distant future. Maybe 10 years from now this will be a reality.
 
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