Volume 112,  January 21, 2010
The Committee for Truth and Justice
Seeking Justice Through Truth

      During our presentation at Discovery Day at the JCC the issue of the "demographic time bomb" was brought up by a supporter of J Street. This "time bomb" is used by anti-Israel forces to attempt to pressure Jews and Israel supporters to favor the Peace Now position of surrender. That is, this issue is used to convince Israel supporters that the war is lost, it is just a matter of time, so it is best to just give it all up to Israel's enemies. This defeatest position is not only based on false information, but it is logically inconsistent.  

   The demographic time bomb refers to the comparison of the Jewish population growth in Israel and the Arab population growth in the disputed territories. Since supposedly the Arabs in the territories have a higher growth rate than the Jews of Israel, if Israel annnexed the territories it would not be long before the Arabs outnumbered the Jews in this land and new Israel due to democracy would no longer be Jewish. 

   The articles below for the most part address the false information that the "time bomb" is based on, but we would like to address other issues: the Israeli time bomb and other solutions.

1. Israeli time bomb: If the demographic time bomb supporters are correct about the Arab time bomb in the territories then there also should be a time bomb regarding the Arabs in Israel. That is, if the Arab growth of the territories would cause the end of a Jewish democratic Israel if Israel annexes the territories, then the same will happen by the Arabs who now live in Israel. Now over 15% of the Israeli population are Arabs. Therefore, if the Arabs in the territories pose a demographic time bomb then so do the Arabs now living in Israel. So how does giving up all of the territories to the Arabs solve any problems?

2. Other issues:

a. Just because the Arab growth may outpace that of Jews, this has no bearing on what the solution to the Arab-Israel conflict should be. If Arabs continue to live by the creed that a Jewish state of Israel in the Middle East must end, demographics are irrelevent. Even if the Jews remain a large majority, there will be no peace if Arabs keep this creed. The issue regarding peace, is peace, not demographics. That is, the numbers on the ground, the land mass occupied, are not the main issues of this fight and solving these will not solve the problem, therefore the issue of demographics is irrelevent, This issue is simply a smoke screen to provide a justification by the Peace Now crowd to surrender to the Arabs.

b. There are other solutions that again have no relationship to demographics. For example, what if the Arabs decided to have real peace and committed to having a large population of Jews in their new state of Palestine just as Israel has a large population of Arabs in Israel. These Jews would have equal rights with Arabs just as the Arabs have equal rights in Israel. While this solution sounds ridiculous with regard to the Arabs, it is only ridiculous because the world has long given up expecting Arab and Muslim countries to be like other  modern countries with regard to equal rights. The world has given up on the idea that non-Arabs and non-Muslims should be able to live in peace with full citizenship and equal rights in Arab or Muslim countries. But just think what would happen if the world treated Arab and Muslim countries the same way as it treats Western modern countries. Just think if the world held Arab and Muslim countries to the standards of the 21st century.

  There is no reason, except for anti-Semitism, racism, discrimination, persecution, etc, why the 250,00 Jews now living in Judea and Samaria should not be able to stay in their homes whether their land is called Israel or Palestine. Many and probably most of these Jews living in Judea and Samaria love their land because of the Biblical heritage of these lands not because it is part of Israel. If these Jews living in a new Arab country of Palestine had the same rights and priveledges and protections as do Israeli Arabs and dual citizenship, it is likely that the majority of these Jews would rather stay in their homes and live in a free democratic Arab state than be expelled as happened to the Jews of Gaza. Jews of Hebron live there because it is Hebron, Judaism's second holiest site, not because it is in the modern country of Israel.

4. Another possibility that is beyond the "demographic time bomb" is that the disputed territories become part of Jordan. Jordan is on 75% of the original British mandate of Palestine. Jordan is already Palestine, and most of its citizens of Jordan are in fact Palestinian Arabs. The leaders of Jordon, i.e. the Hussein clan, are from Iraq not Palestine.

  There are many other solutions that are beyond the "demographic time bomb" so this issue is a red herring. This issue has no validity, is illogical and irrelevent, but is used by the Peace Now and J Street crowd to try to scare Jews into surrender.   

CTJ

Defusing the Demographic Time Bomb

by Bennett Zimmerman and Michael Wise
inFocus
Spring 2008

http://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/111/defusing-the-demographic-time-bomb

In an historic and pivotal speech before the Knesset in May 2003, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon shocked his nation by announcing that Israel would withdraw from the Gaza Strip and large parts of the West Bank to demographically defendable lines in light of forecasts that Israeli Jews would soon lose their majority west of the Jordan River.

This was a striking turnabout for Sharon, who had established his reputation as a security hawk, and was widely considered to be the father of Israel's settlement movement. After decades of backing the settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the former general was convinced that Israeli control in the disputed territories would soon force Israel to choose between its Jewish character and its vibrant democracy.

Subsequent Israeli policy has been built upon the same premise. Israel's current prime minister, Ehud Olmert, continues to believe that Jews will soon be outnumbered in their own land. This has been an important rationale for the renewed land-for-peace negotiations with the Fatah-backed Palestinian Authority in which Israel is considering painful concessions that may impact its long-term security. However, the forecasts, based largely upon numbers provided by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), are wrong.

The New Palestinian Census of 2007

The newest Palestinian census, released in February 2008, reported that there are now 3.71 million persons living in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. However, this figure includes persons living overseas, persons twice counted, and projections that have spooked successive Israeli governments in recent years.

According to corroborative reports gathered from the PCBS, other Palestinian Agencies, Israeli authorities, and third parties, the recent Palestinian census numbers themselves are still inflated by as many as 1 million persons. After removing twice-counted persons and individuals not currently living in the territories, the population of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip totals no more than 2.7 million people.

Original Sin: The Palestinian Census of 1997

The current PCBS data is wrong because it does it not reflect corrections the PCBS itself noted in its original census of 1997. That census included Palestinians who had left over the years, but who were issued identification cards during Israel's Civil Administration. According to the Oslo Accords, these persons had preferential rights to return to the territories. However, the PCBS included these individuals in their figures even if they were absent for decades. Using this data, the PCBS arrived at a faulty estimate for the West Bank and Gaza population totaling 2.8 million persons.

International supervision, however, required the PCBS to define the methodology that helped it arrive at its final numbers. Once it was understood that the PCBS augmented its numbers by including 325,258 residents living abroad, and 210,000 Jerusalem Arabs already counted by Israel, it was clear that the PCBS 1997 Census should have totaled 2.2 million persons. This number essentially confirmed Israel's estimated figure of 2.1 million persons living in the territories, based upon school records, the re-issuance of identification cards, and Israel Border Police records.

Curiously, the Israeli government did not adopt the adjusted figures. Rather, successive Israeli governments worked with the faulty data first provided by the PCBS.

Projecting an Expanded Population

Successive Israeli governments also accepted at face value other faulty data produced by the PCBS, including projections for a rapidly-expanding population base. Not only were the projections based upon the incorrect numbers furnished in the 1997 PCBS census, but they were also based upon inacurate projections of growth for non-residents, as well.

For one, the PCBS harbored incorrect assumptions about population projection. The overall growth projections became so great that the West Bank and Gaza Strip were commonly described as experiencing "the highest birth rates in the world." However, a recent World Bank report noted declining student enrollment, as did annual reports of the Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Education. These, in turn, confirmed lower birth levels as recorded by the Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Health.

Over an 11-year period, however, the Palestinian Census Bureau estimated 560,000 more births than recorded by the Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Health. Furthermore, a simple fact check at the United Nations website revealed that fertility rates ranked 20th for the Gaza Strip and 50th for the West Bank. An American University of Beirut study also corroborates a significant decline in Palestinian fertility levels, especially in the West Bank, based on extensive and large-scale household interviews and registration records of births (including overseas residents).

There were also wrong projections for immigration. While Israeli border records indicated that the territories were experiencing net emigration between 10,000 and 20,000 persons each year, the PCBS figures included a 1.5 percent growth rate each year for non-existent immigration. In fact, over an 11-year period, the PCBS included in their projections 458,000 immigrants who did not arrive, and failed to remove from the PCBS projection 170,000 emigrants. Nor did the PCBS remove the 105,000 Palestinians who officially moved to Israel.

The PCBS defended these faulty numbers with arguments about the "right of return" for those who had been abroad for years. This only underscored the lack of professional standards employed. Israel, for example, regularly subtracts residents who leave the country for a period of one year from its population count. It only adds them again when they reestablish residency.

The most recent Palestinian census also raised a red flag when it counted 208,000 Arabs living in Jerusalem. Israel currently reports that 254,000 Arabs live in Jerusalem. The discrepancy suggests that the PCBS calculated 46,000 Jerusalem Arabs living in adjacent West Bank suburbs. If so, those residents may have been counted twice; once by the PCBS census excluding Jerusalem and once by the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics (ICBS).

Shifting Demographic Momentum

Today, in Israel, there are 5.7 million Jews and 1.45 million Arabs, with another 1.5 million Arabs living in the West Bank. With the Gaza Strip fenced off and separated from Israel, Jews now enjoy a 2 to 1 majority in Israel and the West Bank.

The demographic momentum has also recently shifted. Since 2000, Jewish fertility and immigration have been above, and Israel Arab fertility has plummeted below, all scenarios considered by Israel's demographers and the ICBS. Specifically, Jewish births have grown by 40 percent since 1995, while total Arab births have fallen back to decade-ago levels throughout Israel and the West Bank.

Large segments of the Orthodox Jewish population display the highest fertility rate at 4.8 births per woman, followed by Arab groups at 3.5 births per woman, while the large secular and traditional Jewish majority displays rising fertility rates of 2.2 births per woman. The latter group has become the determinant factor propelling Jews beyond the modest expectations set by Israeli demographers.

Moderate but persistent net aliyah (new Jewish immigration minus emigration plus returning Israelis) at current levels of 20,000 per year are sufficient to keep Israel's Jewish majority steady until 2025, when the current Jewish baby boomers begin to have children. The bottom-line shows Jews holding a strong demographic advantage today in Israel and the West Bank, exclusive of the Gaza Strip.

Establishing Defendable Political Borders

Israel's strong Jewish majority should be considered an historic 120-year achievement of modern Zionism, and not an advantage to be traded away.

Only one scenario exists by which Jews can lose their strong position: open Arab migration into the West Bank. Israel must not allow a situation whereby West Bank Arabs link up politically with Arab populations beyond the Jordan River. In this scenario, Israel could face a renewed demographic challenge.

West Bank Arabs currently encompass only 16 percent of the total population in Israel and the West Bank. The Jewish state can thus weigh its options on how to deal with this territory. It need not tolerate strategic Arab threats against her democracy based on false projections.

Armed with false figures, Israel's political leaders could make needless concessions while negotiating Israel's final borders. Armed with correct ones, Israel has an opportunity to confirm and protect the strategic demographic advantage it enjoys today in Israel and the West Bank.

The correct numbers, and not dramatic claims of a "demographic time bomb" that have so thoroughly terrified Israeli leaders for more than a decade, should provide a firm foundation for Israel to create solutions for peace and security from a position of strength.

Bennett Zimmerman and Michael Wise are with the American-Israel Demographic Research Group (AIDRG).

  There is no demographic time bomb

By Ted Belman

Jews in Israel and the Diaspora follow the peace process closely and a majority of them favour the two-state solution. As Yoram Ettinger explains below, this is due in part to their fear of the alleged Demographic Time Bomb.

Yoram Ettinger explains.

1. Support – among Israeli Jews – for the proposed Palestinian state (“Two States Solution”) is soft and reluctant, according to a March 31-April 1 poll conducted by the Tel Aviv University Center For Peace Research.

2. The establishment of the proposed Palestinian state is supported by 68%, many of whom – other than the Israel’s traditional Left – subordinate their security and historical concerns to their demographic concern. However, the demographic scare has been debunked by the Bennett Zimmerman-led American-Israel Demographic Research Group (AIDRG), as summarized below.

3. 55% of Israeli Jews define Judea & Samaria as “Liberated Territory,” compared with 32% who consider it “Occupied Territory,” in defiance of a 15 year old Political-Correctness promoted by Israel’s government, media, academic and k-12 education systems.

4. 57% of Israeli Jews do not accept the “Green Line” as Israel’s border, compared with 23% who accept it.

5. 49%:43% oppose an agreement, which entails painful concessions - a code name for substantial withdrawals.

6. 47%:40% of Israeli Jews consider the 1993 Oslo Accord a mistake.

7. 75% of Israeli Jews don’t believe that negotiation would lead to an agreement with the Palestinians. 75% believe that even if an agreement would be concluded, the Palestinians would not consider it an end to their conflict with Israel.

8. Most Israeli Jews oppose the tangible – potentially lethal - consequences of the “Two State Solution.” Their soft & reluctant support of the “Two State Solution” has been based on unfounded demographic fatalism. It has benefited from the absence of a systematic, full scale educational media campaign, highlighting historical, security and demographic aspects of Judea & Samaria mountain ridges (the “Golan Heights” of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and the 9-15 mile sliver along the Mediterranean, surrounded by the conflict-ridden, volatile, violent, non-compliant Arab Mideast, which is yet to experience inter-Arab peace).

The American-Israel Demographic Research Group (AIDRG)

Key Findings - April 2008

Western taxpayers have provided, since 1994, a multi-billion dollar foreign aid to the PA, based on dramatically inflated Palestinian numbers. President Bush stated that Prime Ministers Sharon and Olmert argued that Israeli territorial concessions were required, in order to spare Israel a demographic calamity. Really?

I. AIDRG documents a 1.1MN (46%) inflation in the official number of Palestinians in Gaza, Judea & Samaria (2.7MN and not 3.8MN) and a 53% inflation in the official number of Palestinians in Judea & Samaria alone (1.5MN and not 2.3MN). The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) includes in its census some 400,000 overseas residents, 200,000 Israeli (Jerusalem) Arabs who are also counted as “Green Line” Arabs, ignores about 200,000 emigrants (since 1997), etc. The World Bank documents a 32% gap between the PCBS and the Palestinian Ministry of Education - documented – number of Palestinian births.

II. A long-term 67% Jewish majority on 98.5% of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean (without Gaza). A long-term 60% Jewish majority west of the Jordan River compared with 33% and 8% minority in 1947 and 1900 respectively.

III. Arab fertility rate (within the “Green Line”) has declined 20 year faster than conventionally projected – due to modernity and integration - while Jewish fertility rate is rising.

IV. A 40% rise in annual Jewish births (from 80,400 to 112,000) and a stagnation of annual Arab births (39,000) in the “Green Line” during 1995-2007. Arab-Jewish gap of fertility (number of children per woman) reduced from 6 in 1969 to 0.8 in 2006. Arab fertility rate has declined, in Judea & Samaria, to about 4.5 since its peak (about 8) in the late 1980s.

V. Arab-Jewish fertility rates have converged in Jerusalem – 3.9 children per woman – for the first time since 1948.

VI. Net annual emigration of over 10,000 has characterized Judea & Samaria (mostly) and Gaza Arabs since 1950: 12,000 in 2004, 16,000 in 2005 and 25,000 in 2006.

VII. The Jewish State has benefited from annual Aliya (immigration) since 1882. Repeatedly, since 1948, Israel’s demographic establishment has projected no waves of Aliya.

VIII. Secular Olim (immigrants) from the former Soviet Republics experience fertility increase from the Russian rate of one child per woman toward the average secular Israeli rate of 2.2.

IX. Repeatedly, projections of demographic doom have been refuted by robust Jewish demography between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. For example, Ben Gurion was urged by Israel’s demographers to delay declaration of independence, lest the 600,000 Jews of 1948 become a minority by 1967!

X. There is a demographic problem, but it is not lethal, and the demographic trend is Jewish and not Arab. The demographic momentum is shifting from the Arab to the Jewish sector. Demography constitutes a strategic asset, not a liability, for the Jewish State.

——————————————————————————————————–

As Israelis come to understand there is no demographic time bomb, they will be more inclined to vote in favour of annexation. But many will still favour the two-state solution because they do not want another 1.5 million Arabs in the country even if Israel gets to keep the Westbank and Jerusalem.

But what happens if that ratio is improved by offering incentives to Arabs to emigrate and by expelling everyone connected to terror.

And what if a constitution is passed which protects Israel as a Jewish state and new citizenship rules are passed which require a loyalty test, knowledge of Hebrew and National service.

This suggests they will strongly support annexation of Judea and Samaria rather than accept painful concessions.

  

‘Demographic time bomb’, Olmert's greatest fear, is proven a dud — but his continuing to seek instant solutions will guarantee terror

By Caroline B. Glick




When one considers why it is that Israel is failing so abjectly where the US is succeeding so notably, the answer cannot be found by merely comparing Israel's international weakness to America's international strength


http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Apparently, the Olmert government's answer to the specter of Hamas's projected electoral achievement in elections to the Palestinian parliament is to advance the electoral fortunes and legitimacy of the imprisoned mass murderer and Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti.


On Sunday, in an unprecedented step, the government allowed Al-Jazeera and Al Arabiya reporters to interview Barghouti in his prison cell. There he extolled terrorism, explained that the Fatah platform calls for terrorism in parallel with negotiations, pressed for a continuation of the Palestinian terror war against Israel, and promised Palestinian voters and the Arab world writ large that Fatah could be counted on to destroy Israel.


Barghouti's interview followed a January 11 Al-Jazeera interview with "moderate" Fatah strongman Jibril Rajoub, who stressed that Fatah never disagreed with Hamas on the importance of continuing terrorism.


It is hard to know which move is dumber: Israel's facilitating the participation in the elections of Hamas — a terrorist organization dedicated to the annihilation of Israel — or the government's pinning its hopes for a future peace process on the victory of Fatah, an even larger terrorist organization similarly dedicated to Israel's annihilation.


IN HIS cabinet meeting on Sunday, Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert instructed his ministers not to make any statements regarding the Palestinian elections ahead of today's poll, lest Israel be viewed as "meddling" in the affairs of the Palestinians. Here, as usual, Olmert missed the point. Given that all the contenders in the elections are terrorists, Israel should be taking every opportunity to point out to the world and its own citizens what these elections say about the nature of Palestinian society.


As soon as the government determined to aid the elections as if they represented a step toward the establishment of a democratic Palestinian government, Israel essentially took the position that terrorists have legitimacy. The fact that anyone would accuse Israel of "meddling" in the Palestinian elections means that the international community, led by the US, has bought into the perfidious notion that Palestinian terrorists are legitimate actors.


That Olmert fears Israel being construed as "meddling" in these elections just serves to show that he too believes there is something legitimate about people whose chief goal is the eradication of Israel and the mass murder of its citizens.


SPEAKING AT the annual Herzliya Conference on Sunday, Dr. Yuval Steinitz, chairman of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, provided a candid depiction of Israel's strategic achievements vis-a-vis Palestinian terror. In his words, "We won on the tactical battlefield, but we have failed and continue to fail on the strategic level of the war."


Comparing Israel's campaign against Palestinian terrorism to America's campaign against al-Qaida, Steinitz explained that Israel's terror-fighting capabilities are superior to the Americans' in everything related to intelligence gathering and targeted strikes against terror commanders as well as with regard to limiting collateral damage. At the same time, on the strategic level, the US is well on its way to defeating al-Qaida, while Israel is losing its war against the Palestinian terrorists.


Today, Steinitz noted, no government in the world is willing to acknowledge any connection to al-Qaida. And after the US toppled the Taliban in Afghanistan, al-Qaida lost its main geographical base for training and indoctrinating its fighters.


Indeed, the fact that the US's dismissal of Osama bin Laden's offer over the weekend of a truce evinced no international outcry against American rejection of a "negotiated settlement" with al-Qaida demonstrates that the terror group's international standing is extremely weak.


At the same time, after five years of the Palestinian terror war, the stature of Palestinian terrorism in general, and Hamas terror specifically, has never been better. Hamas commanders, Steinitz noted, are enthusiastically feted in Cairo, Damascus and Teheran. Its leaders hold dialogues with European negotiators.


HAMAS'S EXPECTED strong showing is leading both the international media and the EU to discover a newfound and thoroughly illusory Hamas pragmatism. Moreover, Hamas has active, open terror bases in Gaza and is openly augmenting its capabilities in Judea and Samaria. Fatah's Aksa Martyrs Brigades and the Islamic Jihad enjoy a similar status.


When one considers why it is that Israel is failing so abjectly where the US is succeeding so notably, the answer cannot be found by merely comparing Israel's international weakness to America's international strength.


For the past five years successive Israeli governments have refused to fight Palestinian terrorists to strategic victory and have consciously augmented rather than constrained their abilities. In Hamas's case, Israel has encouraged Egypt to conduct continuous negotiations with its leaders while hosting them in Cairo, and has done little to disabuse the Palestinian Authority of its claim that it is acceptable to collaborate with Hamas in order to avert internecine violence in the PA-ruled areas.


ISRAEL'S REFUSAL to contend politically with the fact that both Fatah and Hamas are dedicated to its destruction stems mainly from domestic considerations. The most remarked of these is the Israeli fear that in just a matter of years there will be an equal number of Arabs and Jews living in Judea and Samaria and sovereign Israel. The argument that demographic realities will force Israel in a number of years to choose between remaining a Jewish state or remaining a democracy has been the main rationale proffered for Israel's refusal to defeat Palestinian terrorism.


Whether there was ever any logic to the argument may well be doubted. After all, territorial concessions to the Palestinian Authority have not altered the number of Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel, or the number of Jews and Arabs living west of the Jordan River.


In any event, the demographic argument was rent asunder last January, when a group of Israeli and American researchers conducted a detailed examination of the data upon which the dire forecasts were based. In a study they presented both in Washington and the Knesset and published on the Internet at www.pademographics.com, the team found that Israel had been basing its policies regarding the Palestinians on faked numbers concocted in 1997 by the PA Bureau of Statistics. The Palestinians had managed, by double-counting Arab residents of Jerusalem, counting Palestinians who moved out of the areas, inflating immigration statistics and birth rates and deflating death rates, to artificially add more than one million people to their count.


AT THE Herzliya Conference on Tuesday morning, the team's chief researcher, Bennett Zimmerman, presented its newest findings. Over the past several months, the team has analyzed Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics population forecasts for Israel and Judea and Samaria for 2025. In its new report, the team found that the ICBS ignored the fact that over the past several years, fertility rates among Israeli Jews have been rising and that fertility rates among Arabs in Israel, Judea and Samaria have been decreasing. That is, the ICSB's data do not reflect current population trends.


The team reconfigured the projections for growth among Israeli Jews and Arabs in Israel, Judea and Samaria, based on current rates, and found that most likely, in 2025, inside Israel, Jews will comprise 77 percent of the population (as opposed to 81 percent today); and taken together with Judea and Samaria, Jews will comprise 63 percent of the population as opposed to 67 percent today.


That is, while demography may well be an issue of concern, it will be more than a generation before it produces significant change, if ever. It is questionable whether a set of circumstances will ever exist where Israel would be advised to transfer territory to its terrorist enemies; certainly there is no reason to rush and do so in the face of a demographic "time bomb" whose fuse is so long-burning.


What the actual population data show clearly is that Israel's Jewish majority is secure for at least another generation, and probably well beyond that.


Instead of panicking and reaching for instant and illogical solutions to its problems, Israel has to return to a patient and steady approach to victory. It is the only way for it to destroy terror groups and allow a different Palestinian polity to emerge before determining the fate of Judea and Samaria. That, as Nobel Laureate Professor Robert Aumann noted in his speech to the conference on Saturday night, is the only way for Israel to ever achieve peace.