....With netbook potential, but let's stay small in our dreams for now.

Here's how I see Israel as of 2070, absent any knowledge from SF or SR4 or any of that.

Actually, here's the first principles I'm moving from:

1. Democracy is firm, and not hard. Israel is small enough that you don't really need TV time like you do in the US, reducing campaign costs and reducing the amount of money needed.

2. Economically, Israel is back in the 1950s. Hostile Arab states surround it, there's regular terror from the Palestinians in the WB DMZ and Gaza (moving to the next step of the 1974 Staged Plan of the PLO), but it's small-scale stuff. Rationing is in force for petroleum, but its status as "Silicon Wadi" means that all of the corps have presences here, and get products to market here.

3. The Second Crash hurt, but Israel is, as always, an early adopter, and WMI took off well here (helped by the fact that 80% of Israelis have cellphones).

4. There's a lot of low-level nepotism, and a sort of relationship-based bureaucracy. What the Israelis call 'protektsia'

5. Siege Mentality. Israel is surrouinded by Arabs that hate it, and knows it.

6. Practically every Israeli adult carries some sort of pistol. Off-duty cops and soldiers carry Assault Rifles.

7. The 'Status Quo' has been maintained.

8. Genemods mean that Tay-Sachs is rapidly pulled from the Ashkenazi genome, raising the Jewish birth-rate by a lot.

More to come tomorrow.

Not so much, Hahnsoo. It's only because of massive pre-natal genetic screening at the moment.

That said:

I don't see Israel lapsing into a dictatorship, a military junta, or a theocracy between now and 2070. Period.

Believe it or not, it's hard to knock over a mature democracy.
---

Now, as far as Military-Society interaction:

1. Don't expect cyber. Israel's military will still, by necessity, be a conscript force...And you don't give cyber to conscripts.

2. The government can be very intrusive...Look at RL Japan and you'll see an example. *However*, shadowrunning is still possible.

Retaliatory attacks against the Arab states would be perfect for mercs.

Political shadowruns would be amazingly common as the fractured political scene in Israel leaves every party scrapping for info.

Corporate runs would be common, too; The kibbutzim aren't as strong as they were, and Israel is in an ideal location (educationally, physically, and otherwise) for research establishments, as in real life. Extractions are the name of the game.

Extraterritoriality is limited in Israel. In exchange for the usuals within their turf, corporations agree to contribute to defense, abide by limited environmental regulations (all the polluting stuff gets parked in Egypt), and have limits placed on their security forces. Not as bad as in the UK or the Tirs or such, but it's not as freewheeling as in North America.

Zionism was dead. Was being the key word.

In the madness after the Awakening, the idea that people still hate them came back to the Israeli consciousness, and Israel's grown a traumatized bunker mentality. Kitachon Bitachon, it's called. The Sacredness of Security.

The peace process died after the Awakening, as Israel focused on the struggle to adapt to the new world, something they did manage. It took riots, political polarization that was only healed by the Alliance for Allah trying to take out the country, and time, but it was healed.

The continuation of the Status Quo between religious and secular (maybe someone else could describe it?) has ensured some social peace.

Metahumans are accepted, with many coming from the Arab countries and, surprisingly, converting to Judaism (after a sustained campaign by the government).

Magic is...not really liked (it still creeps people out a bit), but accepted. Every child is tested for magical ability upon entering school at age 3 (preschool), entering kindergarten at age 5, at age 13, and before entry into the IDF at age 18; Those who test positive are offered special extra schooling by the government and corporations, and are enrolled in rigorous magical training when inducted into the IDF.

Magical personnel are dealt with holistically; Magicians are not placed in special units, but are instead placed with regular battalions in 'thaumateurgic platoons'.

Adepts, discovered through the same testing as Magicians (is that how SR does it?), are offered their choice of training paths. Krav Maga is popular among mundanes and Awakened alike, and there are even techniques for cybernetically-enhanced practitioners.

Gaza was abandoned in 2015 to the Palestinians; Jerusalem, on the other hand, is now almost entirely Jewish after Muslims exited during the riots that followed Alliance for Allah attacks during the Second Eurowars.

The Druse have hidden themselves in their mountain villages; They still are a part of Israeli society, but do not integrate as much as they did, making their living from harvesting telesma from the land.

The Bedouin of Israel have mostly settled in villages by now, encouraged by corporate activity. Unlike their Native American counterparts, they didn't have much in the way of a magical renaissance.

Is there anything I'm missing?

Israel is known in the bioethics community for having some of the slackest genetics experimentation laws in the world. Too many articles to list, take a glance through PubMed for some sources, although too many of the relevant abstracts are missing from this database. It's also been said that there are more IVF clinics per capita in Israel than in any other country in the world. [Edit: should add that in Israel, IVF treatment is fully subsidised.] There is a strong focus in most (all?) branches of Judaism toward healthy reproduction as a central part of female fulfilment: and the (general lack of) legalities and regulation may reflect this. (It's also leading to some focused kinship rabbinical discussions: edit: this might be of some interest.)

It's interesting though that of the countries that have the capability for germ-line engineering, most have no or little law governing it, and where law does exist, it's more often worded as guideline than as absolute. (Germany is one of the most restrictive in the world in this field.) To the best of my knowledge, Israel's moratorium on reproductive human cloning expired in 2003 (other kinds of human cloning were never banned); but embryonic stem cell research and germline gene manipulation were never legally regulated (although as in so many other countries, there are regular calls for needed legislation).

Useful info...

In reverse order: Talia, I coulda sworn a law on that was passed recently by the Knesset.

Flak: The Druse are deemed heretical by Islam, as you probably know. In a real "clash of civilizations", they're in a funny position. I was unsure how to deal with them, actually.

Re the religious/secular divide: The thing is, Federman and the like are a distinct minority. The typical Ultra-Orthodox reaction to the secular world is, anyway, to withdraw, not lash out. Meanwhile, there's no truck among the secular for pushing things. In all likelihood, the prospect of a renewed external threat will keep everybody from pushing the issue, anyhow.

Re retaliatory attacks: Yeah, but the last time we really faced this, it was the 1950s and there wasn't the PR cost. In the SR milieu, it may be more worth Israel's while to invest in mercs. That way, they can deny involvement...Everybody will know they did it, yeah, but it'll be in nobody's interest to say so, and so the message gets across while appearances are maintained. Finally, there's an increasing casaulty sensitivity after (and there was during) Lebanon, and I've not heard of any decline in that during the recent conflict.

Re EC: The thing is that I don't expect Israel to be quite as anti-corp as France, or as anti-foreigner. What their attitude is is that the state has certain prerogatives. Corporations set up shop, in their view, knowing that those prerogatives must be respected, and that certain measures must be taken to preserve the Land and the nation. Within that, they'll let corps do business. Indeed, if one assumes a continuing reform economically, I could see Israel being a good place for the corps to play. They'll accept limits on ET as a part of doing business.

Hahnsoo: I'll look over your links. I recall getting my info from Wikipedia (yeah, yeah) and some groups focusing on Tay-Sachs. I think they're down to, like, 10 cases in Israel throughout 2003.

I'll try more tomorrow, but am tired for now. I need food, I need sleep.

I also have 3 papers due by the end of April that I need to work on.

My general approach: The ideas put forth in the Israel 2065 thread were, to me, too stereotypical, or they elicited the 'Germany syndrome', "Let's do whatever seems cool, even if it makes no sense". I don't know Hebrew or Arabic, but I'm not clueless about the region, either. I'm doing my level best to keep RL political views away from this; What we might want to happen is less important than what it likely.

Regarding genetics: I could see it being loosely regulated, as with cyber and similar...But that's only so long as it was a far-off sort of thing. Once it's not, expect some fairly tough laws. What you do in the lab, well, eh.

What you do that might not stay in the lab...Not the same story.

Now, something to chew on overnight:

Somehow, Israel is going to make a push to clean up the contaminated areas, rebuild, and find an environmentally-friendly way (there's not a small green strain in Israel, from what I can see...The total mess in the rivers notwithstanding) to work with the Negev.

The question is, how? And when?

<grin> Thanks Joel. Adding that in...

As far as a green streak, it seems (historically) to go both ways. On the one hand, there's a "back to the land" streak, best found in the kibbutzim. On the other, it's more a thought of domination than stewardship.

Re the haredim (ultra-orthodox): That's a debate I dislike touching, being an outsider. But, I will say this: That is what every group does. The haredim are not particularly unique, and I am unsure how much of a threat they are. They still have to deal with the voters. You're speaking (I'd bet) from the perspective of someone opposed to them...And the reality is, there's a habit of demonization. What's the reality? Shabbat restrictions came up in the late 70s, AIUI. There was actually quite a majority back then, across parties, towards keeping them. The Rabbinate is a bureaucracy like any other, the religious equivalent of the DMV. And most people don't seem to see it as much of a problem, so they don't care. Or if they do care, they don't care enough to speak up.

But, dragging that back to topic: I can't see the situation changing one way or the other. The Rabbinate will probably loosen up, the idea being that compromises must be made in order to preserve the general structure. (Not enough, I suppose, to please Reform Jews, but probably enough that Conservatives could work with them.) It'll just take 20 years. By the 2020s, I figure, the Rabbinate will be wrapping itself in knots over the issues presented by the Awakening and similar, so that nibbles are made to current positions on current issues.

Re Israel as bureaucracy: Not all-powerful, probably. But, more powerful than the UCAS counterpart? Yes. A useful thought is that Shadowrunning could easily fall afoul of the 1945 Emergency Regulations; Something most people would never notice.

Re cyber, miluim, etc: I disagree. One, emigration. How do they know the guy will actually pull their obligation? Two, that's a bit much of an anchor for most people. They'd prefer not to be reminded of their military obligation every time they look at themselves. Three, what do you do when someone retires or is discharged for some reason? Fourth, surgery expenses. Finally, maintenance.

In my next post, I'll wander through history, using SR3 as the starting block. (What that means: No assassination.)

FlakJacket: Shinui had this bright star, then died.

They're not so much secular as anti-Haredi. Even that is fungible, though.

They may wind up flaming out in the next elections, as their anti-Haredi schtick hasn't really had legs.

Re the contaminated areas: That's unlikely. It was the center of the country that got hit. Governmental control will likely have stayed and been harsh.

Now, re power: Fusion is possible, but there's the question of where you'd put them. Ashkelon is vulnerable to rocket attacks from Gaza. Eilat is vulnerable to attacks from Jordan, Saudi, and Sinai.

Solar I could see. Perhaps as a required part of the building code for new structures. Eventually, it'll wind up that there's the electrical grid we all know and love, supplemented by everybody generating their own power. If your solar cells fail, no problem, you pull from the grid and pay back in power later.

Now, history.

2004-2011: Shocked Out of Fantasy

The Libyan chemical strike and the retaliatory nuclear strike in 2004 could be said to have finally crushed whatever remained from the Oslo process of the idea of a peaceful Middle East. The evacuations of much of the center of the country and the expense of remediation were traumatic to many Israelis. In the 2007 elections, the Tekuma (Resurrection) Party wins a slim majority in the Knesset, on a platform focusing on cleaning up corruption and restoring the areas contaminated by the Libyan chemical strike.

Initially, they manage to pull both off; By 2010, much of the center of the country is safe for human habitation, and major anticorruption efforts have brought new credit to Israel in global financial markets. In the retrenchment required by the remediation efforts, Gaza is evacuated of all Jews, as are many small Jewish communities in the West Bank, as settlement focuses on East Jerusalem and large communities in the West Bank.

However, the coming of VITAS begins to end the "happy time". Israel is able to contain the virus; However, it does so only by sealing off Israel and the Golan from its neighbors in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, the West Bank, and Gaza. It is barely a blip to Israelis, who do most of their trade by sea and air, but is crippling to the West Bank and Gaza. In Palestinian refugee camps, the medical system is overloaded, and thousands die within the first weeks. It barely merits a blip on newscasts anywhere, as the rest of the world reels from the impact of the virus.

Nonetheless, by the end of 2011, the virus has begun to burn itself out in the region, and Israel's land borders are reopened. Things look bright.

Then, December 24, 2011 comes.
---

And here I stop for now. Next up, the Awakening.

The Awakening should be interesting. I have to admit, I don't know much about Judaism, but I'm interested to see how the more religious elements of Israel responded to metahumans and magic coming back. I mean, isn't this the religion that gave us Lilith, the demon mother?

IIRC, Lilith is apocryphal.

Maning not part of official canon. It's like BeCKS is to Shadowrun (to use an analogy pertinent to this forum), not part of the official rules, but talked about and used anyways. Lilith is not, technically, an actual judaic mythological figure. The stories she's mentioned in are outside the canon texts, and so aren't counted as authentic or 'real' accounts.

Apocryphal is best defined here. - Thanks to Wikipedia.

And Wikipedia explains Lilith, too. Essentially, Lilith is only mentioned (and not by name, even) in Isaiah. The inference to her in Genesis isn't actually there.

Basically, Lilith has no foundation, anywhere.

Now, re the history. I'm Catholic. My knowledge of Judaism isn't that great.

I'd like help with the Awakening, to cover for that.

Sorry to double post but when the military was in power, do you think that they'd change many of the laws or just use emergency powers and not change things much? One idea I had for them was that they upped the qualifying threshold in the proportional representation system from 2% to something a little higher like 5 or 6%.

This'd introduce a lot more stability in government, stability being something the military always likes, and has the added benefit of reducing the power of the extremist fringe votes. Of course it might mean a loss of playability if you take out all the election wrangling so I'm kinda devided on the idea. :/

Well, that's the thing.

The IDF is wholly unlikely to coup. Why?

Because most of the force is conscripts. Conscripts reflect the society.

This is a society that would be unlikely to give up democracy.

Same thing could be said of Germany and the other countries that had short lived dictatorships.

If things were going completely to hell and people lost faith in the bickering politicians, a general with enough charisma might be able to make the case that action was needed right now and take over for a short stated period - the "I'll get out by such and such a date" definately being needed I'd think.

I think most people understand that politicians will bicker. That's the nature of democracy.

I'd think, also, that in Israel's case...If things got that bad, the Arab states would squish it.

Let's see if we can light some crack up here. I'm going to give the courtesy of giving my opinion and why on the ideas posted instead of purely assinine flaming and belittlement.

1. I am not so sure a democracy adds color to Israel 2070. How about a religious cabal in command of a thourougly efficient military? The Israelis elected Sharon to get tough, this tells me they are tired of the low intensity conflict and want militant leadership to solve the problem once and for all. Israel is a democracy, but under Jewish law. You can't divorce the two aspects. It would be more colorful to say the religious orthodox assumes power in my opinion.

2. I agree that no corp controls Israel. It would be more like Tir Na Nog, where the state runs the show. Economicly back to the 50s? Not a chance in my opinion. The rest of the middle east falls to ruin without oil, but the Israelis are built on cutting edge technology. The economy is robust in 2070. This allows the state to provide for the citizens living in the "promised land".

3. A contradiction with 2. Either they bounce back or they are in the 50s. I say they the most industrious people on earth and bounce back very hard and fast.

4. The low level nepotism is due to the very small size of the population. This does not seem to be important to even mention in SR.

5. Absolutely. The Arabs are out there ready to kill any Israeli that ventures out. They constantly shell and fire rockets into Israel from every border. They have access to plenty of weapons too. Outside of Israel it is basicly a wilderness of desert and roving bands of Jihadis. This adds color and a place to run merc campaigns on either side of the conflict.

6. No, every Israeli carries an UZI or better. Heavy weaponry does not raise an eyebrow. Every citizen is trained for combat and preparedness is the watch word. "Never again".

7. It is too boring to say the Palestinians would still be struggling to carve out more of the promised land. Either they have taken over, there is a third state in Palestine, or they have been evicted and are waging Jihad to reclaim the land is much more fantasy based and fantastic, as always, in my opinion. There is a program to relocate them now. It is nothing new, nor is it something that should shock us considering all the precedent for it.

8. The majority of Israelis are shepardic. Is it worth mentioning at all?

Now on to more comments:

Goddammit, I'm trying to go off of reason, not drooling fantasy, Rory. Go away.

<sigh> Rory is sucking out all my enthusiasm for doing this. I'm wishing a moderator would come by and slap people.

Moving along...

Fusion...I think TA would have been one of the first places cleaned up, for obvious reasons. That said, while there are places to put it (an obvious solution to me would seem to be to have it replace the already old and creaky reactor at Dimona), I can't think of many.

Um, before we were so rudely interrupted, where were we?

I'm sorry but I seem to have read the wrong thread thinking it was the other one about israel erm has Rory taken them all over with the same posts? it shows the power of cut and paste!


torz x

Rory, your style isn't welcomed here. Please stop.

hehehehehe well it needed to be said!

torz x

Thanks torz, that brought a needed smile to my face. If the moderators could help, it'd be appreciated...

Now then, let me restate my 'basic concepts', if you will, for an SR setting I might design:

• I use the basic principles of political science, international relations, and so forth. None of this is likely to change, even with all that SR puts forth.
• Dystopia can be fun, but only up to a certain point. The typical dystopia overdoes it.
• Corporate power has peaked by 2060. It was at its peak until Bug City, after which the phenomenon of Dunkelzahn and the Renraku Arcology provided room for government to reassert itself. The system is now in flux, with nations regaining some of their former prestige.
• Cyberware is not universal. Magic is actually quite rare, given the population percentages quoted by canon SR. Most people - the vast majority in fact - are unaugmented mundanes. (Unaugmented excludes the datajack, which is the only piece of cyberware which I could define as being merely exceptional instead of rare on a larger scale.) It is only because of what shadowrunners do that they see more of either.
• Life for most people in the middle class has changed only in small details from what we know now. Yes, even with magic, metahumans, etc. The basic rhythms of life have not changed. The way people work (as in, psychologically, sociologically) has not changed, regardless of social class.
• Society is neither significantly more socially conservative nor more liberal than what it is now. (SSG be damned, in some respects. Whoever wrote the societies section had been drinking too much from the Michael Moore kool-aid, IMHO.)
• As society globalizes, it will become socially more conservative than what Europeans (in particular) and many North Americans are used to. Why? Because the vast majority of the world is more conservative, and that has not changed with development, defying a lot of theses. But, as I posit above, it will not become significantly more conservative, merely a matter of degrees.
• Dystopia does not mean "the world is shit. Shit is the world. All is Shit." SR society is dystopian in that it is larger, more anonymous. It is dehumanized in the way that the modern city is. That does not mean that Big Brother rules, in corporate or government guise. It does not mean that religion has changed much or is commonly corrupt or has lost influence. It means that life is uncertain, that one cannot predict what the week or month to come will bring, in a societal sense. And uncertainty is the most frightening thing you can inflict on a person or a society.
• SR is a world careening from one crisis to another. Where people have things to latch onto (family, faith), they will. Desperately. That is what people do.
• Democracy, once you get through a generation with it, is unlikely to fall. (Germany is not a counterargument. Weimar lasted 12 years before Hitler.)

Gah, manifesto over.

What does this mean for Israel and generally?

• I would argue that most people in the military do not have cyberware. SOTA 2063 points out why, too. (Even with Israel's system of about two years conscript service, then a month's service called up from the reserves each year, it wouldn't pay for itself.) Most people in the world do not have cyberware. It is not like having 3 heads, but it is not common, and most people in the world still don't like the idea of replacing parts of you with technology (cyber or bio), or "enhancement" like that. The datajack is accepted because it is so necessary and ubiquitous, but even then, it is not entirely liked.
• Set aside the Matriarchy, Religious Theocracy, etc. ideas. (Besides the fact that they sound stupid, things like the Iranian revolution (which is really what the theocracy idea is supposed to create) are the sort of things that happen once, then never again.)
• Generally, the more romantic the notion, the more implausible it actually is.

That does not mean cool things can't happen. One of the things Israel has going for it as setting is that, even with all the misconceptions, everybody knows about it. Most of the people who play SR come from a Western background. Even if you're atheist, it's hard not to have heard stories from the Bible.

This is where a lot of that happened. A lot of the holy sites, besides having a truly awesome background count, probably sit on ley lines (or whatever they're called). I could see an argument that all of Israel is basically criscrossed by em, with Jerusalem being a nexus of em, and the Temple Mount (in a literary nod to its classical status as the center of the world) being the centerpoint of the nexus.

Oh, and before anybody gets any ideas? Keep in mind that there's been a rabbinical prohibition for a long time against Jews stepping onto the Temple Mount; the idea being that nobody knows where the Holy of Holies might have been. Similarly...If we're talking religious fundamentalism, it should also be kept in mind that the orthodox view is that the Third Temple will not be built except when the Messiah comes to Earth. When that happens...We'll really know.

Moving away from crackpot end-of-days fantasies, though, other things you can play with using Israel as a setting:

• The ultimate clash of cultures. This would be a place where the ancient and modern sit cheek-by-jowl, where the Eastern and New Age philosophies that so dominate SR as we know it run headlong into the Monotheistic religions and Abrahamic philosophical ideas.
• This is a place where they'll kill for something that happened hundreds of years ago. Less applicable to Israel than the broader Mideast, but still applicable in an oblique sense. When you run in the shadows here, you're somewhere where people still hold very bitter memories of things that happened in 1929, the 1800s, or even further back. (The fireworks, literal and rhetorical, between the Christian churches of the West and the East must be a sight to behold...)
• Play up the desperate idealism that, until the 1970s, Israel represented in the West. It was very idealistic, very communal...Admired by a lot of people in the West, if not their governments. But it was also a very desperate situation.
• This is a place where the personalities that have made a mark in the past 100 years (from Ben Gurion to Dayan to Rabin in Israel, with Nasser, Arafat, Sadat, King Hussein, and others on the Arab side(s)) have really been larger-than-life in many respects. SR doesn't really do "heroic" or larger-than-life often, but this region and this conflict seem to beg for it. Not anime-heroic, but...bigger than normal.
• The frontier. Not much of it, but there can still be a frontier atmosphere. Along the borders (cattle rustling from one side to the order was not unheard of up til the 1970s), in the Negev settlements...The law isn't far away, but it's not developed, either.
• Oh, yeah. With the IUM, you have all of the borders...warm again. You thought crossing borders in Denver was an adventure (if a hassle)? Here, there's no sector passes. You're not supposed to cross the borders (alive), period. It really is an adventure to cross the borders. A smugglers' paradise (if one way)? Yeah. An infiltration/exfiltration challenge? Yeah.

Rory, you wouldn't happe to be Master Shake in disguise, would you?

Sorry for not adding to the ISrael thread this post:

Maybe you all should come down, take a deep breath and relax. Things seem to become a little ugly here.

tell me about it, i think Penta's idea is great and hope it can be developed further. Please can everyone just drop their personal grievances stop pushing their opinion as the right one and get on with the ideas!

Rory - no i am not personally attacking your ideas but you do need to appreciate other peoples opinions and fellings!

torz x

Edit: On second thought, I don't want to get into this.