Supreme Clientele: Shtetlibs and Quislingsteins

The lynchpins of our bizarre existence as an American satrapy

If you’re read Curtis Yarvin’s excellent post on the Shortest Way With The Palestinians, you know that solving the Palestinian Question is both simple and completely impossible for Israel. In general, beating insurgents is not a complicated business and has been well understood for thousand years. Even George W. Bush’s US could manage it, not to mention more cohesive regimes like Sri Lanka. But in Israel, we can only do what our American masters permit us, and since the Palestinians are American clients, we are neither permitted to expel them nor to oppress them to the degree that they will stop murdering Jews. Israelis will just have to get used to a constant stream of murders, with the occasional spectacular attack.

The US controls us on several levels. American aid is the most obvious. US aid amounts to 3% of our GDP and makes up a large part of our military budget. In return, the US gets to have us field test its weapons against Iran and Syria, assures that Israel remains a captive market rather than a competitor in advanced weapons manufacturing (see the Lavi fighter for an example of Americans shutting down our efforts to develop an F-16 alternative,) gets a secure base for its efforts in the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean and a counterweight for its other Middle Eastern proxies and adversaries. Israel slipping the leash would result in overt American pressure, not for the first time. Considering the massive American military aid programs to five of our closest potential adversaries, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, losing US aid would involve significant short term vulnerability.

Hello, fellow Jew people

The problem with this level of control is that it requires overt force, or at least threats to resort to the use of force. Over its existence, Israel has developed a healthy lobby in the US government, with both overt and covert branches, comparable to those of other US client states such as Saudi Arabia. If threatened with a loss of American support, it uses this lobby to resist.

Fortunately, the US has something called soft power. In our case, this power takes the form of two social classes which I refer to as shtetlibs and Quislingsteins. Due to their mass and position, these classes make effective levers with which to control Israeli politics and ensure that Israel stays on the reservation, or, as it were, in the ghetto.

Shtetlibs are Israelis whose political views track those of the New York Times, lagging it by a decade. Due to their alienation from Jewish forms of thought, they rely on mass media for their worldview. The more advanced ones consume English language entertainment like Netflix, the less advanced prefer the local Israeli equivalents like Fauda. Shtetlibs adopt a slightly moderated version of the views you see expressed on CNN without much worrying about whether those views are right or appropriate for their context. For instance, I’ve had mainstream settlers explain to me that weapons ownership in Israel is rightfully restricted so that we don’t have school shootings like those with which the Americans are plagued. The main motive of shtetlibs is herd thinking-they do not want to have any opinions which will cause their peers and superiors to be upset at them.

Shtetlibs defending democracy

Shtetlibs don’t have much power or influence, individually or as a class. Their use lies in their numbers, which are turned into demonstrations and votes and thus political power for the people who are more directly responsive to the US. Which brings us to the Quislingsteins.

He merely picked the wrong international community to associate with

This class of Israelis is much smaller but more dynamic. Quislingsteins are the real proxies by which the Global American Empire runs our state. Unlike the middle class shtetlibs, who have no prestige or power individually and whose function is thus passive, Quislingsteins occupy middle and upper ranks in our military, security apparatus, academia, media, economy and government.

A Quislingstein’s personal fortunes depend directly on pleasing American patrons. Sometimes this takes the form of direct funding of the Quislingsteins in Israel. Sometimes it involves the direct creation of opportunities for them in America. More often, Quislingsteins benefit from access to opportunities in the US which would not be available to them if they were not so agreeable. This can involve lucrative consulting or trade deals, academic positions or the opportunity to voice their views in influential US media outlets.

In this system, there is no overt corruption, no quid pro quo. It is simply known that there are certain retired Israeli generals, for instance, who are invited to lucrative speaking engagements and weapons deals, and others who are not. Because American control over the Quislingstein class is so much more immediate and because they have much more influence than any individual shtetlib, it is imperative that they demonstrate their loyalty much more fervently. Therefore, they must hold political positions which are much further to the left than those of the shtetlibs, and signal them much more vocally.

Needless to say, if you want to make a career as a Quislingstein, you must start singing the right song early and never strike a false note. Getting into the right social circles takes a lifetime of ambition, and getting cancelled only takes one slip-up. Of course, if you choose this path, you can’t let any mundane considerations distract you, otherwise your more ambitious peers will shove you to the side.

The men in charge of our collective security

Given the Simchat Torah massacre, many of the shtetlibs are having doubts about ideas they’ve unthinkingly espoused their whole lives. One acquaintance of mine, who has spent years advocating coexistence, explaining that the Arabs aren’t going anywhere and that they are triggered by extremist settlers such as myself has recently expressed the wish that the entire population of Gaza die. From friends in North Tel Aviv, I understand that many of their Peace Now-type friends and family members now sound more radical than Kahanists. Slaughtered toddlers and families tortured to death in front of each other’s eyes, pictures of enslaved Jewish women and children shocked them awake, at least for now. I doubt it will be that easy with the Quislingsteins, for the simple reason that their personal status and wellbeing directly depend on never expressing a cancel-worthy opinion in public, nor in being associated with anything the New York Times would frown upon. Maybe time will prove me wrong-I certainly hope so.