Falling birthrates in developed countries have led to numerous proposals, some of which have been implemented, about how to reverse the trend. Catherine Ruth Pakaluk argues that most people seeking to solve the problem are going about it wrong:

South Korea suffers the world’s lowest birthrates—0.71 expected births per woman. In the city of Seoul, that number is just 0.59. The South Korean government estimates that it has spent $210 billion trying to revive its gasping birthrate. The cash hasn’t worked. It hasn’t worked anywhere it’s been tried.

Pronatalist policy proposals in the U.S. make two faulty assumptions about falling birthrates. First, that religious outliers [who have several children] have zero relevance for reviving American families. Second, that we can incentivize anything we want with tax and subsidy schemes.

Pakaluk has spent the past four years traveling around America speaking with women who have chosen to have large families. Many are deeply religious. Among them is Leah, who, along with her husband, embraced Orthodox Judaism while in college:

Leah’s story made it excruciatingly obvious why child subsidies won’t raise the birthrate. Cash incentives can’t answer what needs to be answered: a reason to give up dreams and aspirations that can’t hang on past one or two kids. We know we can incentivize moving away from oil, cigarettes, and Big Gulps. But can we incentivize moving away from careers and interests we’ve prepared women to fulfill from their earliest school days? My research suggested that such a choice comes from deep within. It must be wanted for its own sake, counted as worth the costs, which are personal and subjective.

As we mentioned in yesterday’s newsletter, Israeli special forces carried out a daring boots-on-the-ground raid on September 8 targeting the Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC) in northwestern Syria. The site was used for producing and storing missiles which are then transferred to Hizballah in Lebanon. Jonathan Spyer notes that the raid was accompanied by extensive airstrikes in Syira,and followed a few days later by extensive attacks on Hizballah in Lebanon, one of which killed Mohammad Qassem al-Shaer, a senior officer in the terrorist group’s Radwan force, an elite infantry group. And yesterday, the IDF destroyed a weapons depot, an observation post, and other Hizballah positions. Spyer puts these attacks in context:

The direct purpose of the raid, of course, was the destruction of the facilities and materials targeted. But Israel also appeared to be delivering a message to the Syrian regime that it should not imagine itself to be immune should it choose to continue its involvement with the Iran-led axis’s current campaign against Israel.

Similarly, the killing of al-Shaer indicated that Israel is no longer limiting its response to Hizballah attacks to the border area. Rather, Hizballah operatives in Israel’s crosshairs are now considered fair game wherever they may be located in Lebanon.

The SSRC raid and the killing of al-Shaer are unlikely to have been one-off events. Rather, they represent the systematic broadening of the parameters of the conflict in the north. Hizballah commenced the current round of fighting on October 8, in support of Hamas in Gaza. It has vowed to stop firing only when a ceasefire is reached in the south—a prospect which currently seems distant.