Survey says:

The 82% figure comes from a March 2025 survey by Prof. Tamir Sorek (Pennsylvania State University) with Prof. Shay Hazkani, published in Haaretz. The exact question: do you support the "transfer (expulsion) of residents of the Gaza Strip to other countries?" — 82% of Jewish Israelis said yes.

Expel Arab citizens of Israel too  56% (up from 48% in Pew 2016)

IDF should kill all inhabitants of a conquered city, as at Jericho  47%

• Ben-Gvir's "Disengagement 710" plan (September 2026) targets 250,000 Gazans leaving in year one and 1.86 million within seven years — nearly the whole 2.1 million population.

So there you have it. 1/2 of Israelis support extermination of all the people in Gaza. 

82% support expulsion of all the people in Gaza.

And now stats on population

The numbers, from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (end-2025 brief):

Gaza population now	2.13 million
Decline vs. no-war projection	~254,000 (10.6%)
Population on the eve of the war	~2.2 million
Killed in Gaza	70,942 (18,592 children, ~12,400 women)
Missing	~11,000
Injured	171,195
Left Gaza entirely	~100,000
Internally displaced	~2 million of ~2.2 million

Since then the toll has kept climbing despite the October 2025 ceasefire — Gaza's health ministry reported 74,370 dead as of 10 October 2026, and Wikipedia's running tally puts Palestinian deaths at 75,000+ by late September 2026. Al Jazeera counted 1,460+ killed since the ceasefire began; the BBC reported 900+ this year alone. A peer-reviewed Lancet Global Health field survey found the official toll is an undercount, and some estimates run past 100,000.

Two important caveats on that 10.6% figure:

1. It's measured against a counterfactual projection — where Gaza's population would have been by now with normal growth — not against the pre-war actual. Against the actual ~2.2 million, the net drop is smaller, because births partly offset deaths and emigration.
2. Estimates carry real uncertainty. The defensible range from published sources is roughly 2.05–2.13 million.

Context on what's left behind:

• 39% of Gaza's population is under 15; 14% is aged 0–4. It remains extraordinarily young.
• GDP has contracted 84% versus 2023; unemployment is 78%.
• 94% of hospitals and health facilities damaged or destroyed; only 19 of 36 hospitals partially functioning, with ~2,000 beds for over two million people.
• 179 government schools completely destroyed.

For scale: Gaza is about 365 km². Two million people in that area is among the highest population densities on earth — which is precisely why the "where would they go" question and the emigration debate are so loaded. 

And now Arabs in Israel

By question, from the August 2026 PCPSR poll

Question	%
Negotiations are the most effective route	44% (highest in 4 years)
Armed struggle is the most effective route	27% (lowest in 4 years, down from 41%)
Peaceful popular resistance is the most effective route	19%
Armed resistance has been effective (vs. failed)	50% — exactly split
Support a return to armed intifada	36%
Support Hamas	24%
Oppose Hamas disarming before full Israeli withdrawal	72%
Support two-state solution	44%
Support two-state on 1967 lines specifically	56%

Germany before Germany

This is what Germany looked like before Germany existed.

Hundreds of duchies, bishoprics, abbeys, cities, and tiny lordships were packed into the Holy Roman Empire. Some were even fragmented into several disconnected pieces.

Iain Cameron

19 Letters Book Club

 

language spoken

 

Germanic in the Midwest

 

and then there's this Germany

 Since I uncharacteristically for a Jew say so many nice things about Germany, I'm sharing this:

Let us not forget. 

José Mujica

 

Rabbi Shlomo Goren on conduct during war

Despite the explicit Torah obligation to wage war, we are also commanded to have mercy on the enemy, and even during wartime, only to kill when it is necessary for self-defense for the purpose of conquest and victory; and not to attack non-combatants, and certainly not to strike at women and children who are not participating in the war effort.  With the exception of obligatory wars about which we were explicitly commanded by the Torah in ancient times, "You shall save alive nothing that breathes" (Devarim 20:16), since the enemies of that time also practiced cruelty, and so the Torah was stringent about them.  Nothing may be learned from them, God forbid, about other wars or about our time.  

Rabbi Shlomo Goren, Meshiv Milchama I, p. 14)[7]

Military Rabbinate: Founded and led the IDF Military Rabbinate from 1948 to 1968 (rising to the rank of brigadier-general), personally accompanying troops into multiple wars including the 1948 War of Independence, the 1956 Sinai Campaign, and the Six-Day War. In 1972 elected Chief Rabbi of Israel; the fourth Ashkenazi Jew to hold office.

Live Webinar

 Live Webinar: Exploring Rav Hirsch’s Commentary  Wed, Oct 21 @ 5pm PT, 8pm ET  Join us for a panel on Rabbi Samson Rafael Hirsch’s unique style of biblical interpretation and the significance of his Torah commentary (now available in the Sefaria Library). Attendance is free! 

https://sefaria.formstack.com/forms/exploring_hirsch_commentary

Tsundoku

 Tsundoku (積ん読) is a Japanese word that describes the habit of acquiring books and letting them pile up unread — buying more books than you can actually read, creating a growing stack (or library) of untouched volumes.

Saw this on the web. How true.

 

Kush

Adults are far more stupid than I had anticipated as a child

An absolute war crime: the total destruction of the Palatinate.

 

Auguste Bardamu

@AugusteBardamu

·

9h

Translated from French

The myth of the "Sun King" is a masterpiece of propaganda. Behind the gilding of Versailles, Louis XIV conceals an absolute war crime: the total destruction of the Palatinate. In 1688, the King of France makes a decision of unprecedented brutality to protect his borders. With his Minister of War, Louvois, he orders the region of Germany to be wiped off the map. The directives sent to the generals in the field are explicit and utterly pitiless: "The King's intention is that the Palatinate be ruined from top to bottom." The French army does not stop at occupation. It razes everything. General de Tessé, tasked with carrying out the deed, writes to his superiors himself, terrified by the scale of the disaster he is unleashing: "I do not believe that in eight days my heart will return to its ordinary state." But the machinery of the state crushes everything. Mannheim, Speyer, Worms, and Heidelberg are methodically plundered and then reduced to ashes. Castles are dynamited. Churches are desecrated. Vineyards are uprooted, and grain reserves are set ablaze. The human toll is apocalyptic. More than 100,000 civilians are deliberately driven from their homes in the dead of a freezing winter. Those who try to resist are put to the sword. The others succumb to the cold, typhus, and famine on the roads of exile. From the gilded corridors of Versailles, Louis XIV's own sister-in-law, the Princess Palatine, watches helplessly as her native people are massacred. Her private letters bear witness to the nightmare and the indecency of the court: "I spend my nights weeping. Every day they tell me new horrors about the misery to which my poor compatriots have been reduced." Even in the 17th century—an era when war was notoriously ferocious—this act shocks the world. All of Europe brands the operation as pure barbarism. A savagery so brazen that it unites every European power against France. While the court dances and powders its noses, an entire region of Europe is literally erased from the map on the king's orders. History has remembered the grandiose splendor of Versailles, but its true legacy is shrouded in blood and ashes.

The wise will understand.