From Israel Hayom, the largest daily circulation newspaper in Israel:
Demographic optimism in the new year
On the eve of the Jewish New Year 5772, the Jewish fertility rate of 2.97 births per woman exceeds the fertility rates in most Arab countries.
In defiance of conventional wisdom, Israeli Jewish fertility has been robust — primarily due to a surge in secular Jewish birth rate — while in the Muslim world rapid modernization has led to a sharp decline, down to 1.7 births per woman in Iran, 2.8 in Jordan, 2.5 in Egypt, 2.5 in most Persian Gulf states (except for Saudi Arabia, with 4 births per woman), and 1.9 in North Africa.
Since the 1940s, Israel’s demographers have maintained that Jews are doomed to become a minority between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, and that it is incumbent on the Jewish state to concede Jewish geography (Judea and Samaria) in order to secure Jewish demography.
In fact, Professor Roberto Bacchi, the founder of the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics and the mentor of contemporary Israeli statisticians and demographers, projected in 1948 that by 2001 there would be no more than 2.3 million Jews in Israel — a 33% minority west of the Jordan River.
However, all demographic prophecies of doom have crashed on the rocks of reality. West of the Jordan River (in the combined area of Judea and Samaria and pre-1967 Israel), Jews have gone from a minority of 8 percent in 1900 and 33% in 1947 to a solid majority of 66% in 2011, comprising almost six million people. The current demographic tailwind should further expand the Jewish majority.
From 80,400 births in 1995, the number of Jewish births surged by 56% to 125,500 in 2010, while the annual number of Israeli Arab births stabilized due to their successful integration into Israel’s infrastructures of health, education, employment, finance, medicine, politics, sports and the arts. Israel’s Jewish-Arab fertility gap was reduced from six births per woman in 1969 to 0.5 in 2011, trending toward a convergence at three births per woman.
In 2011, the number of Arabs in Judea and Samaria is inflated by almost 1 million people (1.6 million, not 2.55 million) through the inclusion of nearly 400,000 overseas residents who have been away for more than a year, and by a double-count of 350,000 ID card-carrying Jerusalem and West Bank Arabs who are counted as Israeli Arabs by Israel and as West Bank residents by the Palestinian Authority. A September 2006 study by the World Bank documents a 32% inflation in the number of Palestinian births.
West Bank Arab fertility is declining faster than it is among Israeli Arabs, resulting from an accelerated urbanization process (from a 70% rural society in 1967 to a 78% urban society in 2011), an expanded education and career mentality among women, reduced teen pregnancy, institutionalized family planning, and other factors.
In addition, Judea and Samaria Arabs have experienced an annual net-emigration since 1950 (16,500 in 2010, 17,000 in 2009 and 17,000 in 2008). At the same time, Jews have experienced annual net-immigration (aliyah) since 1882, boosted by periodical waves of aliyah, in defiance of Israel’s demographic establishment. For example, during the 1980s, Israel’s demographic profession underestimated the number of Soviet Jews by 50%, stating that no massive aliyah was expected, even if Moscow opened its gates. More than 1 million olim (immigrants) nevertheless arrived.
An 80% Jewish majority in the combined area of the West Bank and pre-1967 Israel is attainable by 2035 in light of the current demographic trend, bolstered by a unique aliyah potential of 50,000 olim annually. It requires Jerusalem to declare aliyah the top national priority, leveraging the relative strength of the Israeli economy, whose credit rating was recently upgraded by the Standard & Poor agency — the intensified anti-Semitism in the former Soviet Union, Western Europe and Argentina, and expanded Jewish education in the U.S.
Anyone claiming that Jews are doomed to become a minority west of the Jordan River and that, therefore, the Jewish state must concede Jewish geography in order to secure Jewish demography, is either dramatically mistaken or outrageously misleading.
No hat tip to Max Blumenthal’s twitter account?
>> re question as to whether the “Jewish state must concede Jewish geography Jewish geography in order to secure Jewish demography.”
Unbelievable. Adam asks how this would go over it it had been in reference to Blacks in the US. Another thought experiment asks after a reaction should it have been about Jews and admission to Waspy clubs or New England grad schools. To wit, an update from the Dean of Admission: “It appears, based on incoming applications, that Jews are declining as a proportion of overall enrollment. We find this an encouraging trend, obviating the need to take more definitive measures to ensure ethnic balance at our school.”
eee once said he agreed with the maxim that what was good for the goose is also good for the gander. I agree. -N49.
“Imagine if this article was about whites and blacks in the US”
Yeah, I know. I’ve started using a new method to clear my mind of the MSM and neocon bias in the articles I read online. I just interchange the words “Palestinians” and “Jews/Israel” in the articles. The prejudice is so very clear after you try this. Very enlightening and disturbing!
Interesting. This info will probably help the “Greater Israel” forces vs. those who’ve supported a two-state solution (or better, endless discussion thereof) as a way of avoiding the “demographic timebomb” (=a Palestinian majority).
From Matteo Mazzoni, “Per un’Italia sempre più “grande”. Demografia e potere: politiche pronataliste e rappresentazioni di genere durante il Ventennio fascista” [“For an ever ‘greater’ Italy.” Demography and power: Pronatalist policies and gender representations during the Fascist Period]
http://www.demolab.org/testi/8DemografiaFascismo.pdf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lP7n4nyCEU