Israel: Difference between revisions

'''[[Useful Notes]]'''

 

* [[Useful Notes/Israelis With Infrared Missiles|Israelis With Infrared Missiles]] (The Israeli Defense Force, the national military of Israel)

* Israeli Political System -- Israel has a Westminister-style parliamentary democracy with universal suffrage and--significantly--a party-list direct-proportional system based on that of [[Useful Notes/The Netherlands|The Netherlands]], with a very low threshold. This explains why their government often seems crazy: coalitions can live or die if as little as 2.5% of the vote swings to one party instead of another.

* [[Curb Stomp Battle]] - The Six Day War. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_day_war Take a look at the statistics]. Consider the geography. This evidently should have ended in about six days, but ''in the other direction''.

* [[Defeat Means Friendship]] - With Jordan and Egypt. Or at least "Defeat means a begrudging mutual acceptance that it would be best if we just settled whatever it takes for us to stop shooting at each other for the time being".

* [[Grey and Grey Morality]] - all over the freakin' place. STRONG [[Internet Backdraft]] warning if you ever try to sort this out.

* [[Enemy Mine]] - Desperate for any support in the face of an ongoing campaign against the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, pro-Israel lobbies have resorted to allying themselves with a sect of Christians in America who believe that when all the Jews are in Israel, and the Palestinians are not, Jesus will return and throw all the unbelievers in the lake of fire.

* [[Hero With Bad Publicity]] / [[Villain With Good Publicity]] - A lot of the buzz surrounding the [[Arab Israeli Conflict]] pertains to exactly which of these Israel is, if any or both. News coverage would have you believe that the Israeli government doesn't give two figs what the rest of the world thinks about its behavior, but within the Israeli public and media at least a popular sport is obsessing over exactly this.

* [[Properly Paranoid]] - Spends a ridiculously disproportionate amount of its budget on its military for some [[Sarcasm Mode|odd]] reason.

** Also, founded in a post-holocaust world. For the first few decades, it was essentially an ''entire nation'' suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, fucking up the country's entire psyche in a myriad of interesting and terrifying ways that are still being studied vigorously.

* [[The Squadette]] - Girls, like most any other Jewish 18-year-old in Israel, get a compulsory drafting into the military where they spend a few years hanging around wearing khaki uniform and holding M-16 assault rifles. Though the majority of them probably fill support roles, it should be noted that some 'support roles' in the army are far, far removed from sitting in some air-conditioned office and filing paperwork. And then there are [[Amazon Brigade|girl-only combat units]]. Legend has it that in the past they tried having mixed male and female combat units, but whenever the girls would get hurt the guys would [[The Dulcinea Effect|drop everything to make sure they are all right]] to the detriment of whatever it was they were supposed to be doing instead.

** That first try was during the 1948 War of Independence, when desperation was the main motivation to include women. There's a mixed-gender brigade or two that got put together in the last decade or so.

* [[Western Terrorists]] - Prior to Israel's foundation (that is, during the British mandate over Israel), [[La Résistance|la resistance]]-esque organizations Etzel and Lehi. Etzel specifically was led by about the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menachem_Begin nerdiest-looking guy ever], under whose command British officers were hung and civilian-filled hotels were blown up. He later shut Etzel down to make a political party out of it, became prime minister and signed the Camp David peace treaty with Egypt.

 

'''Israel and Israelis in Fiction (Outside the context of the [[Arab Israeli Conflict]])'''