Figures released today show that Israel’s demographic situation
continues to move in a direction that is positive for the future of the Jewish
state, quite in contravention to the prevailing wisdom about Israel’s
impending demographic peril. Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics has
released the birthrate figures for
2013, revealing that the Jewish birthrate is continuing to rise as the
Muslim birthrate is continuing to decline. While population
projections are by their nature often inaccurate on account of the myriad
unforeseeable variables, it seems that this is a front on which Israelis can
afford to feel some optimism. Yet, despite the growing body of
evidence to the contrary, there is no shortage of voices warning Israel of
imminent demographic doom. This is a central tenant of the
doctrine of the Israeli Left, and it is also a threat with
which President Obama has increasingly been seeking to panic
Israel.
The latest statistics show that in 2013 there were a total of
127,101 Jewish births, as opposed to 34,766 births to Muslim
families. This means that in 2013 the Jewish birthrate
increased by 1.3 percent while among Muslims the birthrate fell by 5.5
percent. The growing Jewish birthrate is in large part being driven by the
ultra-Orthodox sector, however it is also being boosted by Russian
immigrants whose own birthrate is now closer to the Israeli average. Overall,
the percentage of Israel’s population that is not Jewish has risen in recent
years, with Arab Israelis now constituting just under 21 percent of the
population. Yet with the Arab birthrate subsiding, and with that of the Jews
continuing to trend upward, within pre-1967 Israel it appears that the Jewish
character of the state will remain strong. That, however, is without
considering the situation in the West Bank.
The scaremongering that both Obama and Kerry engage in, to say
nothing of the Jewish Lleft in America and Israel, argues
that Israel’s demographic predicament must factor in the entire population
west of the Jordan River so as to include the Palestinians. This
itself is a questionable proposition. Certainly in the case of Gaza there is
no reason the population there should be included in Israel’s demographic
situation. Israel pulled out of the strip entirely in 2005 and the claim made
by some on the left that Israel guarding Gaza’s borders against terrorism
constitutes a continuation of the occupation is unconvincing.
When it comes to the West Bank the matter is slightly more complicated.
The Haaretz-J Street-Beinart mantra, that has now been adopted
by Obama too, is that Israel cannot maintain a presence in
the West Bank and remain both a Jewish and democratic state. This is
also misleading. The democracy argument is particularly flimsy because
the Palestinians are supposed to be able to vote in their own
elections. The fact that the Palestinian Authority never holds any is
beside the point.
That said, even if Israel were to have to include the West Bank
Palestinians in the demographic equation, things are still nowhere near as
bleak as is often suggested. As Uri Sadot wrote in
Foreign Policy in December, if one were to take an upper estimate of
the number of Arabs in the West Bank (some claim over of 2.5 million people)
and add it to the number of Arabs in Israel, then these people would still
constitute less than a third of the overall population. Yet it is increasingly
being suggested that the Palestinian Authority may have grossly misled the
international community about the number of Palestinians that actually live in
the West Bank. A 2006 study by
academics at Bar Ilan University made a strong case for the belief that the PA
may have inflated its population statistics by up to a million people by
double-counting certain groups and including Palestinians living overseas.
This would have the advantage of not only damaging Israeli morale, but more
importantly it allows the PA to extract more funds from the international
community on the grounds it has this much larger population to provide
for.
Caroline Glick, in her latest book The Israeli Solution, points
out that the declining birthrate that we see among Arab Israelis is in actual
fact in line with trends across the Arab world, and is consistent with a
similar trend among Palestinians living in the West Bank. As Glick observes,
there is now parity between Jewish and Palestinian birthrates, with both
having an average of 2.98 births per woman. For Palestinians this is a sharp
decrease from the 4.25 births per woman seen in 2000, while Jewish Israeli
birthrates have picked up from 2.6 births in 2000. Project this pattern
forward and the demographic threat becomes a myth. And in addition it should
be recalled that Israel has regularly boosted its demographic lead with waves
of Jewish immigration. Given the worsening economies and anti-Semitism in both
Europe and South America, there is no reason to think that immigration will
not continue to supplement the Jewish population in Israel.
In 1987 Thomas Friedman gave Israel twelve
years until the demographic bomb went
off. We’re still waiting. Those, such as Obama, who attempt to use
demographics to alarm Israel into rushing into territorial concessions
that could be strategically reckless simply don’t have the stats to backup
their threats.
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