The Case For Demographic Optimism

by Yoram Ettinger
Special To The Jewish Week

The all-time record of daily Jewish births at Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital, set on Sept. 21, reflects the substantial rise in Israel’s Jewish fertility. Delivery rooms are functioning at 100 percent capacity.
Anyone claiming that Jews are doomed to become a minority between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean — and therefore the Jewish state must concede geography in order to secure demography — is either dramatically mistaken or outrageously misleading.

An audit of births, deaths, school and voter registration and migration documentation from Israel and the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics certifies a solid 67 percent Jewish majority over 98.5 percent of the land west of the Jordan River (without Gaza), compared with a 33 percent and an 8 percent Jewish minority

in 1947 and 1900, respectively, west of the Jordan River.

The audit exposes a 66 percent distortion in the current number of West Bank (or, Judea and Samaria) Arabs — 1.55 million and not 2.5 million, as claimed by the Palestinian Authority. In 2006, the World Bank exposed a 32 percent bend in the number of Palestinian births. Inflated numbers have provided the Palestinians with inflated international foreign aid and inflated water supply by Israel. It has also afflicted Israeli policy-makers and public opinion molders with fatalism and erroneous demographic assumptions, which have impacted Israel’s national security policy.

Refuting demographic fatalism, the robust growth of Israel’s Jewish fertility (number of births per woman) has been sustained during the last 15 years, while Arab fertility and population growth rate (birth, death and migration rates) experiences a sharp dive.

The number of Jewish births during the first half of 2009 accounted for 76 percent of all births, compared with 75 percent in 2008 and 69 percent in 1995. Unlike all other developed societies, the number of annual Jewish births has grown by 45 percent from 1995 (80,400) to 2008 (117,000), while the annual number of Israeli Arab births has stabilized around 39,000.

The secular, rather than the religious, sector has been chiefly responsible for the Jewish growth. For example, the olim (or, immigrants) from the USSR arrived in Israel with a typical Russian fertility rate of one birth per woman; today, those women are giving birth to two to three children, the typical secular Israeli Jewish birthrate. Moreover, the Arab-Jewish fertility gap shrunk from six births per woman in 1969 to 0.7 births in 2008, with the two converging toward three births per woman.

The Arab fertility rate in the West Bank has declined rapidly (now at 3.5 births per woman), as has been the case in all Muslim countries except Afghanistan and Yemen. In Jordan it is three per woman; Syria, 3.5; Egypt, 2.5; Saudi Arabia, 4; Algeria, 1.8; and Iran, 1.7.

The swift decline in the Israeli Arab fertility rate reflects the impressive Arab integration into Israel’s infrastructure of employment, education, health, trade, finance, politics, sports and culture.
The sharp decrease in West Bank Arab fertility rate is the outcome of modernity. A 70 percent rural majority in 1967 has been transformed into a 70 percent urban majority in 2009, burdened by civil war, terrorism and severe unemployment. Elementary and higher education have expanded dramatically, especially among women. Median wedding age and divorce rates are at an all-time high. In addition, West Bank Arabs have experienced a high emigration rate since 1950, further eroding the population growth rate.

The current 67 percent Jewish majority west of the Jordan River (without Gaza) could expand to 80 percent by 2035, leveraging the aforementioned Jewish demographic tailwind and the potential aliyah resulting from the global economic meltdown and the rise in anti-Semitism (e.g., a half-million olim during the next 10 years from the former Soviet Union).

Baseless demographic fatalism has played a key role in shaping Israel’s state of mind and national security policy. It has eroded the level of confidence in the future of the Jewish state. However, well-documented demographic optimism now confirms that there is no demographic machete at the throat of the Jewish state, that demographic scare tactics are hollow and that Israel’s challenge is not a “demographic time bomb” but rather a demographic “scare crow.”

Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger is CEO of Second Thought: A U.S.-Israel Initiative, which conducts demographic and strategic studies in Judea and Samaria.

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