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The Myth of the Inevitable Jewish Minority in Israel
(Boston Globe) Jeff Jacoby - It's an old refrain, erroneous but popular: Israel must make peace with the Palestinians before high Arab birthrates turn the Jews into a minority in their own land. This ominous "demographic argument" rests on an obsolete stereotype of Arab women as baby mills, outbreeding their Jewish sisters. In the 1960s, the fertility rate for Israeli Arabs (9.2 births per woman) soared far above that of Israeli Jews (3.4 births per woman). Within Israel, the birth rate among Muslims is now at 3.5 children per woman. It is even lower for Palestinians in the West Bank - just 2.9, according to the CIA Factbook. The bottom line is that the 6.3 million Jews living in Israel and the West Bank represent 66% of the area's population (not including Gaza).