t rate of 80,000 in order to keep the
present percentage advantage of Jews in "Little Israel," where will that
come from? It is nonexistent -- and the Arab population peril exists.
There are those who claim that modernization will decrease the Arab
birthrate. In answer to this one can only point to the fact that this may
indeed be true, but it is more than matched by the drastic drop in the
Jewish birthrate.
In 1978 Minister of Absorption David Levy, a Sephardic Jew and
father of eleven children, pointed to the urgent need for immigration
because "Israel's biggest contributors to Jewish natural increase -- the
Sephardic couples -- are producing fewer and fewer offspring as time
goes on.”
And says Zvi Eisenbach of the directorate at the Central Bureau of
Statistics: "Levy is right on target, for the fertility rate of Asian-African
Jewish women in Israel has plummeted from almost 6 offspring in 1955 to
3.66 in 1976" (Jerusalem Post, March 7, 1978). Since then, the general
drop in the Jewish birthrate has continued, from 3.2 children per family
in 1976 (for all Israeli women) to 2.7 in 1979. Whereas 75,066 Jewish
children were born in 1976, only 69,600 births were registered in 1979,
despite the increase in the Jewish population. The spectacular drop in the
Jewish birthrate since 1948 has been almost solely due to the negative
Ashkenazic influence on the Sephardic women.
This influence, both directly through social workers urging Sephardic
women to learn birth-control methods and indirectly through the desire
to imitate the supposedly more "cultured" Ashkenazim, has led to more
than use of the Pill. According to Central Bureau of Statistics figures,
there was a drop of 9 percent in the number of Jewish marriages between
1975 and 1976 (it was also pointed out that divorces went up by the same
amount, 9 percent). This trend continues. Despite the increase in
population, 28,583 Jewish weddings were performed in 1975, but only
24,500 were recorded in 1979. Tradition for the Sephardic Jews was
shattered on all sides, leading to further decline in the birthrate. The
average male Israeli married at the very late age of twenty-seven and the
female at twenty-three.
This phenomenon was aided by a blatant preferential factor in Israeli
life. Young Jewish men and women who reach the age of eighteen must
serve in the army, the men for three years. The young soldier is sent back
into civilian life at the age of twenty-one, and only then can he begin his
career. The Arab is free from military service. He is free to work and
make money at eighteen and to marry early - another factor that is not
immediately perceived in the cold statistics of the Central Bureau.
And then, of course, there is abortion, almost exclusively a Jewish
phenomenon in Israel. Even before the Knesset passed the murderous
abortion law a few years ago, the Ministry of Health admitted that there
were around 40,000 abortions a year. To quote the Jerusalem Post (March
10, 1978): "Many physicians and sociologists believe the actual number is
much higher. With the new liberalized abortion law already in the books,
this rate of 'natural decrease' will grow even more sharply." Indeed, and
so much more so that it is estimated that each year close to 100,000 Jewish
babies are legally murdered in Israel. As the younger generation of
Sephardic Jews comes more and more under the influence of leftists and
the secular educational system, its traditionalism, the greatest factor in
large families, will be eroded even more.
This decline in Jewish birthrate more than matches any drop in the
Arab birthrate which will take generations to be meaningful. Dr. Moshe
Hartman goes even further and claims: "Contrary to expectations,
industrialization and urbanization has not reduced the Arab birthrate,
which is among the highest in the world" (Jerusalem Post, March 3,
1978). The reason is clear. The tremendous economic growth given the
Arab sector by Jewish liberalism has made it possible for the Arabs to
have children without economic struggle. And, of course, that is the
result of the Israeli welfare-state policy which, in the words of Ora ShemOr, "encourages greater reproductivity in the Arab sector thanks to the
monthly grants paid for each child" (Yediot Aharonot, May 8, 1978).
The Jewish subsidizing of the Arab birthrate is only one more
disastrous aspect of a policy that stems from fear of world reaction to
"discrimination" and liberal guilt feelings that, once again, are at odds
with and overcome both Jewish tradition and common sense. What is
even more outrageous is the statement by Dr. Hartman before the
Knesset Committee on Aliyah and Absorption: "Whereas in all countries
suffering from overpopulation, there exists a policy of family planning,
we have no such thing because of political reasons" (Maariv, May 24,
1978).
It is, of course, true that any such plan would never be adopted and
cooperated with by any Arab local council, for they all realize that
population growth is a powerful weapon. But the fact that the Israeli
government hesitates to attempt such a policy, out of fear of its effect on
the Israeli Arabs, shows how strong the growing Arab minority has
already become. That fact is surely not lost on the Arabs of Israel.
Let it never be forgotten, too, that the Israeli Arabs' willingness to
revolt and express their hatred of Israel and Zionism is directly related to
their exploding and yoang population. Both the intellectual fuel and the
unfortunate cannon fodder of revolution come from young people. It is
from them that political extremism emanates, and they are most open to
its siren call. Every revolution is begun and fought by young people. The
enormously high percentage of them among Israeli Arabs is ominous.
Not only has the Israeli government no policy for reducing the
number of Arabs; over the years it has agreed to bring more into the
country or turned a blind eye to their illegal arrival. Immediately after the
1948 war, under the agreement signed in Rhodes, areas in the Triangle
were added to Israel, along with 30,000 Arabs. In addition, as a goodwill
gesture designed to encourage "peace," 40,000 Arabs were allowed to
return from Lebanon, France, and Cyprus under a "reunification-offamilies" scheme. Among those allowed to return were vicious antiZionists such as Greek Orthodox Bishop Maximus Hakim and
Communist leaders, who, it was hoped, would be a "moderating
influence"!
Thousands of residents of the northern Arab villages of Gush Halev
(Jish), Rami, Kfar Yasif, and Eilbon were allowed either to return legally
or to remain after having illegally crossed the border, often with the aid of
"well-meaning" Jews.
Indeed, large numbers of more "well-meaning" Israelis today demand
the return to their homes of the Arabs of Ikrit and Bir'im villages, despite
the warning by Knesset member Amnon Linn: "That would be a green
light for a mass campaign to let all the displaced Arabs inside Israel go
back to their 1948 [border] homes as part of the Harakat el Awda -- the
return movement." More importantly, it would open the door for a
campaign to allow hundreds of thousands outside Israel to do the same.
In the city of Jerusalem, the government has spent a fortune to ensure
its Jewish majority (one more example of the ludicrous contradictions in a
state that is supposedly devoted to reassuring the Arab that he is equal).
Despite all the money and effort, however, the Jews are losing the battle,
and one of the reasons is illegal infiltration of Arabs from the territories,
especially from the area around Hebron. There are some 15,000 to 20,000
of these Arabs living in the Old City as well as in the villages just outside
Jerusalem. Not only does this mean 15,000 to 20,000 more enemies of
Israel inside her borders (and their inevitable army of babies), but as the
Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) Bulletin of October 2, 1975, reported:
"Air photos taken recently by the city authorities revealed that the little
villages around the city have become an ever-thickening Arab wall
between Jewish West Jerusalem and the Judean desert. ...
"The nature of the Arab expansion does, however, alarm some
residents of the newly built Jewish quarters on the outskirts of the city.
These quarters had been intentionally built in the northern, eastern and
southern extremities of the Jerusalem Jewish belt around the Old City. As
the Arab villages expanded, they stretched out toward the new Jewish
quarter, drawing an Arab chain around the Jewish housing projects.”
Why does the Israeli government allow the Arab demographic noose
to tighten around Jewish Jerusalem's neck?
Left-leaning Gil Sedan, a JTA writer, explained it this way: "The city,
deeply preoccupied with a plague of illegal construction by Israeli
contractors, can hardly find the time and manpower to deal with this
problem in the Arab sector. ...”
Are Sedan's incredible lack of proportion, his misplaced sense of
priorities, his characterizing of the Jewish "danger" as more acute than the
Arab one, merely a total failure to understand the Arab menace? Hardly;
in a final burst of political commentary he writes: "... the expansion of
[illegal] Arab suburbs in Jerusalem is something Israel will have to learn
to live with -- unless it wants to ... act counter to the repeated Israeli
argument that Arabs and Jews can live in harmony in Jerusalem.”
Of course, the talk of harmony is ludicrous. The Jewish buses and
cars, on their way to the new Jewish neighborhood of Neve Yaakov,
which are stoned in Bet Hanina and Shu'afat; the attacks on children, the
plague of burglaries and fearful women in East Talpiot, which stands
across from Jabal Mukabber and Arab-A-Sawahre; the tension in the
Jewish quarter of the Old City -- all attest to the Arabs' hatred of their
Jewish "occupiers" and are just a brief hint of what Jewish men -- and
women -- might expect from an Arab victory.
Sedan, the liberal, mas? condone illegal Arab infiltration and building,
must turn a blind eye to Arab violence, because deep in his heart he is
ridden with guilt concerning the Jewish emphasis of Israel and Zionism.
And so, too, the deputy mayor of Jerusalem, Miron Benvenisti, presiding
over a schizophrenic policy under which millions are spent on Judaizing
the city while the fact that Arabs are illegally settling there is ignored. He
told the JTA that he was "in no way perturbed by the increase in
Jerusalem's Arab population." His party's leader, Shimon Peres, on the
other hand, told a party forum on August 25, 1977: " do not want to wake
up one morning to discover that Jerusalem is subject to the demographic
fate of Galilee." What Peres was telling his party members, including all
the Israeli Arabs he hoped to attract, was that he did not want to see too
many Arabs in Jerusalem. But it was Labor that sat quietly by -- and did
nothing -- as the Arabs illegally settled.
The Likud government is just as hapless. "The growth rate of the
Jewish population in Jerusalem is declining steadily despite governmental
policies aimed at increasing the number of Jews who live in the capital" --
the words of Gideon Patt, Likud minister of housing. Does he
recommend the removal of the illegal Arabs? Of course not. And so
millions will be spent annually in a losing battle to keep Jerusalem
"Jewish," because the Jewish leaders are stricken by guilt and fear.
In any case, Jerusalem with its 120,000 Arabs (more than one out of
every four in the populace) spotlights another aspect of the demographic
demon. Not only are the Arabs increasing at an explosive rate, but they
are concentrated in definite areas. In those Israeli areas that border JudeaSamaria, which has already been promised "autonomy," the Arabs make
up much more than their 18 percent of the national population. In
Jerusalem they are 27 percent; in the Triangle 50,000 Arabs sit along the
old pre-1967 "Green Line" border, cheek to cheek with relatives who live
in the "autonomy" region of Samaria, and in the Galilee 300,000 Arabs
already make up a majority in a region that touches Lebanon, the Golan
Heights, and Samaria. The Galilee -- Israel's future Northern IrelandCyprus.
The Galilee. Where Arabs outnumber Jews by a small percentage but
where Arabs make up 75 percent of the hill areas. From the slopes of the
Nazareth hills up to the Lebanon border there are more than one million
dunams (a quarter of a million acres), almost exclusively Arab. Where the
Arab birthrate grows by between 4 and 6 percent a year, among the very
highest rates in the world. Where the Arab population will double in less
than fifteen years. Where in a six-mile radius around the lonely Jewish
town of Carmiel there are twenty-seven non-Jews for every Jew.
The Galilee. Of which Shimon Peres said: "The areas in Israel that are
still unsettled, or settled only in a certain manner, are and will continue to
be a subject for special attention beyond Israel's settlement policy. The
Arab countries which covet areas inhabited by Jews will be all the more
greedy for the completely uninhabited regions and parts where there are
no Jews.”
The Galilee. Where Arab growth gives birth to Jewish fright and
flight. Where the army must build parallel roads that bypass Arab villages
so that Jewish women will not have to go through them at night. Where in
Upper Nazareth apartments stand empty because Jews have left the town
or refuse to go there. Where in the past twenty-five years 10,000 Jews
have come to Kiryat Shmona and left; one-fifth of its homes stand empty;
in July 1979 some 500 families, including 70 teachers, threatened to leave.
The Galilee. An area of which Yehoshua Ben-Porat wrote (Yediot
Aharonot, August 28, 1965): "Another reason offered was 'the claim has
been repeatedly made that Galilee was not intended as part of Israel
according to the Partition Plan, and this continues to feed the hope that a
plebiscite will be held in the area, which is after all Arab and not Jewish.'
Thus 'the problem of Galilee is a Jewish problem ... it is an Arab empire
within our borders ... and those who believe with the government that
military rule alone will liberate [Galilee] are simply mistaken.'“
The Galilee. Where the city of Acre threatens to "go Arabic." And so
MaanV writer Menahem Rahat (May 9, 1977) spoke of "the worrisome
forecast that sees Acre possibly losing its Jewish character and returning
to being a city with a definite Arab population. This forecast is based not
only on statistics that clearly show a trend among Acre Jewish families to
leave the city, along with a reverse trend on the part of Arab families in
the region to move there. It is also apparent from the declaration of
various Arab personalities in the city who speak of the 'Arabization of
Acre.'“
The Galilee. Where the Jews build a small outpost, Tel El - 53 Jews in
the midst of 40,000 Arabs. Where Dr. Amnon Sofer of Haifa University
tells of the Arab village of Sakhnin which has grown to 12,000 people,
adding 500 new ones every year. "To keep up with that it is necessary to
establish two moshavim ["Jewish settlements"] a year in that area," says
Dr. Sofer.
But that is not happening, and Israel faces the real truth of Arab
demography. Of course, the ultimate threat is that of the Arabs quietly
achieving national majority, which will allow them to take control of the
Knesset and legally abolish the Jewish state. The population figures are
all in their favor.
In 1976 the U.S. Library of Congress, in a study of the Arab-Jewish
population, predicted that even if Israel were to give up all the liberated
lands, the Arabs within the State of Israel would become a majority in 100
years. That was based on an annual net immigration of 25,000. Israel is
nowhere near such a thing, and with economic chaos already in the land,
great efforts will be needed to keep the number of emigrants from
exceeding the number of new arrivals. Seventy years is a much more
practical figure for that Arab majority. Why should the Arab grow more
moderate? In the face of the figures that show him moving toward
becoming a huge minority and eventually a majority, why should he
voluntarily throw away his opportunity to rule rather than be ruled or
even to sliare rule? What are 70 years or 80 or 100 to the Arab? If Jews
could dream of the return to Zion and a sovereign Jewish state for 1,900
years, why do we think that the Arab cannot dream and hope and work
toward his return for a century? Why do we think that, in his own way,
the Arab cannot be his own "Zionist"? In the past, among all the Zionist
leaders who deluded the people and themselves, one man, Ze'ev
Jabotinsky, came closest to understanding. But not close enough.
In his classic essay "An Iron Wall," he wrote: "... there is not even the
slightest hope of our ever obtaining agreement of the Arabs of the Land of
Israel to 'Palestine' becoming a country with a Jewish majority. ...
"In our peace proclamations we try to convince ourselves that the
Arabs are either fools easily deceived by a milder interpretation of our
aims or a tribe of mercenary materialists ready to give up their rights to
the Land of Israel in exchange for cultural or economic advantages. ...
"As long as the Arabs preserve a gleam of hope that they will succeed
in getting rid of us, nothing in the world can cause them to relinquish this
hope, precisely because they are no rabble but a living people. And a
living people will be ready to yield on such fateful issues only when they
have given up all hope of getting rid of the alien settlers. ...”
Jabotinsky was absolutely correct. But then he, too, stumbled. He
concluded: "Then only will they begin bargaining with us on practical
matters such as guarantees against pushing them out. ... I am
optimistically convinced that they will indeed be granted satisfactory
assurances and that both peoples, like good neighbors, can then live in
peace.”
It is distressing to find a logical, perceptive man like Jabotinsky
writing such nonsense. Alas, the virus of self-delusion strikes even giants
of intellect. Did not Jabotinsky realize that guarantees against pushing the
Arabs out would eventually lead to an Arab majority through the peaceful
means he applauded? Could he not grasp the fact that it is precisely by
living as "good neighbors" with political rights that the Arabs can
"Palestinize" the Jewish state? Jabotinsky, the product of nineteenthcentury liberalism and committed to "national minority rights," could not
face the contradiction between that and a Zionist state. He, too, fled from
logic and painful reality.
And so, of course, the ultimate threat is the majorityship of Arabs in
the State of Israel which will turn the Jewish state into an Arab one. The
threat, however, is not limited to that. Jews do not have the dubious
luxury of waiting seventy or eighty years to become a minority. Ora
Shem-Or put it this way: "We dare not assume that the Arabs will wait
until they are an absolute majority and the state will fall into their hands
as a ripe fruit. The minority of a million today is not like the minority of a
few million tomorrow. As they grow in numbers and the relative
difference between them and Jews declines, so will grow the pressures.
The confrontation will come years before we reach the 'red line' - the line
of equality in population.”
The confrontation will come as the Arabs of Israel constitute onequarter or one-third of the state. Riots and rebellion will be seen on
television screens all over the world. Bombs will go off, and bloody
clashes between soldiers and Arab civilians will take scores of lives. The
"moderate" Uncle Ahmed Arabs will disappear from the scene, and
demands for the incorporation of the Galilee and the Triangle into a
"Palestinian" state will be heard. World opinion will be galvanized against
Israel, and American Jewry will be torn by debates. In the Knesset the
twenty-five or thirty Arab members will disrupt sessions with demands
for autonomy and proper representation for Arabs. Aliya to Israel will
dwindle to a trickle, for who will wish to leave a non-Jewish land for one
that is headed in that direction? On the other hand, there will be a
tremendous rise in emigration from the country as talented people flee,
causing a serious shortage in manpower in the armed forces and in
technology.
Demands for a greater share in the state, for the right to live in Jewish
cities, for the right to hold top jobs, and for total equality for the Arab in
Israel will lead to mob confrontations and make whole areas of Israel
unsafe for Jews to travel. The frustration and self-control of the Sabra
will explode, and he will, more and more, ask why he must suffer for this
Zionist-Jewish concept that means so little to him anyhow. Greater
intermarriage and intermingling on top of his fear of war and tension will
lead to greater support for a binational state. Jewish support for the state
will dramatically drop off, for it will no longer be the Jewish state.
Long before the arrival of an Arab majority in Israel, there will be
prior demands - all gaining force through the annual, immutable growth
of Arab population: demands for greater political power and
representation in Knesset and cabinet; demands for "autonomy" in the
Galilee and Triangle; demands for the annexation of those areas to any
"Palestine" state that might arise; demands for the return of the
"Palestinian" refugees to their homes and property in Israel.
Demography and democracy. Both combine to prick the illusions and
delusions. Both force the Jew to look honestly at the Jewish state and at
Zionism. Both force him to choose his destiny. There is a contradiction,
and the voices of both are loud and clear. There is the Jewish voice of the
distinct, unique Jewish nation and state. And there is the Arab voice of
"Palestine." Between them there is an irreconcilable difference.
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