Israel: Are Demographic Changes Threatening Its Survival?
Prof. As’ad Abdul Rahman
The Western/ Aryan non-Semitic Jews, the Ashkenazi who rule the Israeli/ Zionist state, are now petrified from the dire effects produced by demographic changes within Israel and within the Jewish communities in the Western world, especially in the U.S.A. One is the increase in the number of Israeli immigrants leaving Israel to live for good in the West. Another is the number of Israelis migrating to the U.S. being much greater than the number of American Jews migrating to Israel. The cause of such aversion of American and European Jews against migrating to Israel is seen as a result of the fact that Jews around the world no longer hold the same esteem or pride in Israel because its image is gradually taking “the colonial racist tone”. Indeed, the increased number of Ashkenazis migrating from Israel who are mostly secular Jews is depleting the number of secular Jews in Israel who support the democratic principles of a secular/ civil state. After all, their founding fathers initially came to Palestine to flee the religious bigotry of Christians in Europe and their children are facing a losing battle against the far right religious Ashkenazi Jews who are determined to impose their religious bigotry upon all secular Jews and non-Jews as well.
A recent study in the USA clearly shows that American Jews are more and more distancing themselves from their Jewishness by opting to marry non-Jews which is really eroding “the blind support of the state of Israel” that used to be the case in the past. The Israeli paper, Haaretz, recently published a report originally prepared by the New York Times showing “a huge increase in the number of non- religious Jews in America who do not provide any Jewish religious education to their children”. The study reported that “71% of non-conservative Jews are now marrying non-Jews compared to only 17% in 1970”. It further reported that “two thirds of American Jews do not belong to any Jewish religious affiliation nor attend any religious services in any synagogue and one third of American Jews celebrate Christmas as American Christians every year”. The same study reported that “32% of all American Jews who were born after 1980 consider themselves without religion”. According to Haaretz “66% of all Jews do not raise their children to follow a religious life according to the Talmud”. Yet, the astonishing finding in this study is that “83% of all American Jews do not believe the official policy of the Israeli government which claims that Israeli settlements (i.e. colonies) in the occupied territories are vital for Israeli security and survival; but the contrary that the majority believe that these settlements represent the greatest threat against the very survival of Israel”.
The waves of Israeli migrants to America who number 12000 a year made the Israeli writer Avi Shelon write an article with the title “Jews as people are disappearing”. He said “the founding fathers of Israel believed that the establishment of Israel would greatly strengthen the Jewish identity among the Jews of the Diaspora, but it produced a contrary effect as a result of the survival of the state through its military might and huge Western military and financial support which eradicated the bigotry against the Jews around the world as well as the inner fear within Jews for being Jews. They look now at the Jewish state as a mere political entity without any special values”.
The critical political/ demographic change within Israel is the rise of the extreme religious right among the Jews. A study shows that their birth rate is estimated at “3.5% when compared to Arab Palestinians (in Israel) which is 2.5 % and to secular Jews which is only 1.4%”. The ultra-conservative Jews represent now 13% of all Jews in Israel and are expected to reach 35% in 2059. According to the study, “60% of all Israeli officers in the army are ultra-conservative Jews” which vividly explains the ultra-brutality displayed by the Israeli Army against the Palestinians in their occupied territories. The religious and racist bigotry of the ultra- Orthodox Jews is about to make Israel an apartheid state along the lines of the infamous apartheid regime of South Africa.
The increase in the number of the ultra-conservative Jews in Israel has a devastating economic result, because most of them are not tax payers, but welfare receivers whose only task in life is “to breed as many children as possible and to study the Torah in their religious schools”. The burden of supporting the state is now on the shoulders of the secular taxpaying citizens in Israel which in effect is a country dependent on the welfare payments yearly received from the West, especially U.S.A. The more the ultra-religious Jews attain power in Israel, the more the state slides towards bankruptcy economically and morally and the more the world including all secular Jews would distance themselves from Israel. Changing the secular identity of Israel into a religious Jewish identity ruled by the Western Talmud, will eradicate any traces left of the democratic civil principle, which is the heart and foundation of every democratic state in our world. Indeed, Israel’s survival is being threatened by the enemy within, the ultra-extreme religious right with their racist/colonial mentality which is the very seed of destruction that may destroy Israel, if it does not radically change its policies and practices now before it becomes too late.
