The "demographic time bomb" theory grants a mythic dimension to the issue of the Arab birth rate and a European dimension to the Jewish birth rate, while ignoring the westernization of Muslim birth rates and the jump in the birth rate among secular Jews.
It also dismisses the potential of aliyah, which has continued continually since 1882. In 1898, historian and writer Shimon Dubnow published a demographic forecast designed to deter Zionist visionary Theodor Herzl: "In 1998, there will only be half a million Jews in the Land of Israel … Zionist statehood is nothing more than a dream," he wrote.
Herzl was not deterred, even though Jews at the time comprised only 9% of the population in Judea and Samaria, and what would later be the parts of Israel within the Green Line.
In 1944, the founder of the Central Bureau of Statistics, Professor Roberto Bachi, published a demographic forecast to convince David Ben-Gurion, who later became Israel's first prime minister, that 600,000 Jews did not form the "critical mass" needed to establish a state.
"In 2001, there will be 2.3 million Jews in Israel, a minority of 34%," he wrote.
Ben-Gurion was not put off, even though Jews were only a 55% majority within the partition lines and a 39% minority in Judea and Samaria.
In 1946, Ben-Gurion published a document that exposed major problems with the censuses conducted by the British Mandate in 1922 and 1931, which aimed to make the establishment of a Jewish state appear unlikely. Foreign residents were included in the census; residents of villages who moved to cities were counted twice; clan leaders inflated figures for political and financial purposes; and deaths were underreported. These same problems characterize current data from the Palestinian Authority that is not verified by the Israeli establishment.
Indeed, according to a CBS document from June 1993, the Palestinian population registry indicates that Palestinians have a longer life expectancy than Americans.
In 2018, Israel is the only Western democracy and modern economy in the world that is seeing an upswing in birth and immigration rates, which facilitates economic growth with minimal use of foreign labor. In 2016, the Jewish birth rate (3.16 children per woman on average) surpassed the Arab birth rate (3.11) for the first time, confounding the pessimistic predictions of the "demographic time bomb" school of thought. Despite a moderate drop-off in the birth rate among the ultra-Orthodox, the number of Jewish births almost doubled from 80,000 in 1995 to 140,000 in 2017. Arab births, on the other hand, saw a much more modest increase in those same years: from 36,000 in 1995 to 43,000 in 2017.
In 2018, the Muslim birth rate worldwide is seeing rapid westernization (and decline) as a result of migration from villages to cities, greater availability of education and work to women, a rise in the average age of marriage, and the use of birth control. In Iran and Saudi Arabia, the average birth rate is now two children per woman; in Egypt, 3.6; in Jordan, 3.2; and in the PA, three.
This year, the population of Israel stands at 7 million Jews, 130,000 Druze, 130,000 Christian Arabs, 1.6 million Muslims, and another 1.85 million Arabs in Judea and Samaria. The Jewish majority of 65.5% is enjoying a jump in birth rates, especially among the secular, and several hundred thousand more Jews could potentially arrive from France, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Argentina, Britain, and the U.S. thanks to the resumption of a proactive policy on aliyah.
The demographic spike indicates that there is potential to expand the personnel available to the military and the workforce. This should serve as a basis for realistic optimism, economic and military growth, long-term and wise infrastructure planning, and the implementation of policies on demographics that are guided by security considerations. Claims about a "demographic time bomb" are either a drastic mistake or a scandalous deception.
