Antoun, first of all thank you for reading. Secondly, thank you for your reasoned response. As you can imagine (and can see by other responses), articles like this frequently elicit responses from trolls that just spew knee-jerk vitriol. And I am glad you are safe.

You wrote a lot and I will try to respond logically.

I agree with you that Israel is a bad shape, and economically it is a catastrophe that may well get worse (side note - I work a lot on this lately here in Israel).

I also (sadly even though I don't want to admit it) kind of agree with you that it may be irrelevant and too late. Extremism and hate from all sides have become the norm.

And to tie it in to the article - because media today is basically just two echo chambers with no nuanced reasoning in the middle - extremisms just begets more extremism and hate just begets more hate... Much like the pendulum swung far left in the US/Canada/Europe it swings far right as a response and so forth.

Regarding your long term predictions - who the hell knows... From what I see Turkey and Syria are about to go to war for reasons I don't really understand... There will be increasing tribal warfare between Christians and Muslims in the Sahel... And I think over the long run Iran and Saudi will just go to war once we reach peak oil...

It's such a damn mess. I wish people on all sides were more rational and strategic, but mass media (and academia and socials) has created a situations where rational is less profitable than "narrative".