Isn’t it the quality of the children that matters? If they are high IQ (over 115), then they will be a blessing to the nation. If they have IQs under 100, they will be a curse to the Jewish state.
Tal claims people are deterred from addressing demography by “the very virulence of attacks against anyone who challenges such a central principle in the country’s code of ethics.”
Those who critique Beduin birthrates, he says, are said to have racist motives, and those who say Jews should have fewer children are accused of being “anti-Zionist.”
He asserts that the sense of “social justice” among “privileged, liberal intellectuals” makes them fear criticizing haredim and Beduin who have large families.
Steve Sailer notes: “So while the quality of argument in Israel isn’t necessarily all that high on average, look at the quantity. When it comes to arguments about the future, quantity has a quality all its own.”
* The geography of Israel is a lot like the geography of Southern California: Tel Aviv is Santa Monica, the San Gabriel Valley is the West Bank, Lake Arrowhead / Big Bear Lake are the Golan Heights, the Dead Sea is the Salton Sea etc.
* If Israel ever ‘normalized’ relations with the rest of the world – something which will never happen, as the only other ethnicity as stubborn, self-centered and ruthless as Israelis are Arabs, then Israel’s ‘demographic problem’ would be eminently solvable.
As a hi-tech modern state relying on sheer brain-power to make its living in the world, Israel is uniquely placed to find a lucrative niche in today’s ‘globalized’ world – and thus the problem of accommodating a high population density in a rather hot, dry, barren, inhospitable etc land could be handled with solutions such as desalinazation, air conditioning etc, and the marked shift of a once agricultural nation into the ream of a high income high productivity urbanised nation. Think of Israel as a greater LA – before third world immigration destroyed it.
* “Some of the world’s leading Jewish environmentalists feel that the normal rules of demographic restraint should be suspended in the case of the Jewish people.”
That statement sure has a familiar ring to it.
* One thing I’m not sure I’ve ever seen discussed in the media is to what degree is Israel’s ongoing real estate cost crisis caused by “overpopulation”? The conventional wisdom is that it’s due to poor planning, bureaucracy and regulation, fiscal policy, etc, but what if the “poor planning” is because the folks doing the planning 20 years ago learned how to do it from European countries with lower birthrates?
* While Israel is horrendously overcrowded, when you hear Israeli’s complain about it, their problem is not population density or whatever, it’s that the “wrong kind of Jewish people” are taking over.
The “wrong kind of Jewish people”, are Haredim and Hardelim (literally translates to “mustard”). Whenever you hear Israeli’s mention “settlers”, that is code for Hardelim.
Haredim/Hardelim simply cannot coexist with secular/”traditional” Israelis (there is no such thing as secular Mizrahi Jews, so they call themselves traditional). Sadly, secular and traditional birthrates are indeed above replacement but they are on the decline and rapidly outpaced by Haredi/Hardeli births. In fact, 40% of Jewish children born in Israel are born to Haredi/Hardeli families, and the percentage rises about 1 point every year.
In the 90s, there were problems with Haredim taking over neighborhoods but now the Haredim are taking over entire cities. Beit Shemesh was once a center of Israeli decadence but is now under Haredi rule and the secular/traditional are being ethnically cleansed from it. The secular have already given up fighting for Jerusalem and Tel Aviv is also starting to feel the squeeze.
This article mentions emigration, but who is emigrating? I’ll tell you who isn’t: Haredim, Hardelim and Israeli Arabs. They never leave the country as they actually have some real roots in the place. Emigration, or “Yerida” as it is called in Israel, is a totally secular/traditional phenomena, and a growing one at that.
This is not a new issue in Israel. Israelis have been talking about this for 2 decades but after they failed to draft the Haredim into their army 2014 it sunk in for them that they are doomed and now they are in sheer panic. Their days are numbered and they know it so they lash out the only way they know how: by writing stupid articles.
So for all the people here who don’t like Jews, I got some bad news for you: you are about to get A LOT more of them. How does another 5 million sound?
* Israel is 34th in terms of population density, Belgium is about the same and The Netherlands is higher(30).
* A side effect of Israel’s intra-Jewish demographic changes is that the number of people who’d consider solving the Palestinian problem by kicking them out of Israel is growing steadily.
Just give it a little time.
* First, the secular Jewish birthrate in Israel is not declining, it is rising. It is still below the Haredi birthrate, of course.
Second, the Hardal (not “Hardeli” – that isn’t a thing) sector, which are groups of Haredi Jews who have become more Zionist, are not a large part of Israeli society, and they are also pretty much admired by seculars and traditionals because they have decided to pull their part in the military and economy.
Thirdly, the population of so-called ‘settlers’ is dominated by neither of those groups, but rather the National Religious who are entirely different.
Fourthly, religious people – Haredi, Hardal, or otherwise – are absolutely not taking over Tel Aviv. Their presence in the area is restricted to one suburb, Bnei Brak, which also has a huge industrial park.
Fifthly, neither seculars, nor traditionals, nor anyone else, outside of a few far-Left writers for Haaretz, have given up on Israel. Studies have shown that Israeli Jews are the most optimistic people in the Western world. The future will be different than the secular, socialist, past, no doubt, but there are reasons to think that Israeli Jews will make it work. People have been predicting the demographic doom of Israel since before 1948 and they’ve been wrong every time. There are indeed getting to me too many Haredi, but they are one shave and outfit change away from being standard Jews, i.e. people with a 115 average IQ ready for the 21st century workforce.
* “Some of the world’s leading Jewish environmentalists feel that the normal rules of demographic restraint should be suspended in the case of the Jewish people,” Tal writes, “at the very least until pre-World War II numbers are restored.”
I wonder what the response would be if a journalist in the US were to write:
Whites used to be ~25% of the world’s population around a century ago, but now are only ~10%, due to factors such as scapegoating for all the ills of the world, selfless donations to support a burgeoning population in Africa, encouragement by the elites to overwork themselves and pay for illegals and other minorities to have children like a Pez dispenser, etc. So obviously, the rules of normal demographic restraint should be suspended for Europeans and their diaspora, at least until their percentage of the world population returns to the historical 25% level we observed in the past.
* The statistics cited by the Israeli about drastic declines in fertility in Arab countries are mostly fraudulent. There is no evidence of such a decline in the Gulf states, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen or Syria. Meanwhile, the Israeli birth rate has been essentially constant since the early 90s. But wherever they are and whatever they do, even if they recreate the heartwarming density of the ghetto in their own communities, Jews will always be vastly outnumbered by gentiles, so perhaps they should not thirst quite so much for attention, validation and reformation of their neighbours. Less tikkuning the olam please, Jews.
* Seems like Israel needs more Lebensraum. With all the Syrians clearing out, maybe the new Syrian government will return some of Israel’s “rightful property.”
* The Japanese don’t seem to think they need millions of Taharrush gang rapists to save them from demographic decline.
* One odd yet largely unremarked upon aspect of the demographics of Israel is that there’s no large Jewish city in the scenic inland north – the Galilee. The largest Jewish town there is Nahariya, with a population of 50,000 or so. Compare that with the equally remote desert south, which has the city of Be’er Sheva with over 200,000 people. The founders of Israel had a romantic attachment to the idea of settling the desert.
* Most US aid to Israel comes in the form of weaponry, which keeps your military industrial complex humming right along.
Many Israelis (like me and Libertarian-ish former Likudnik Moshe Feiglin) would like you to keep your aid, thank you very much, as it creates an undesirable quid pro quo codependency.
* Yes, Mizrahi average lower, but the Haredi in Israel are probably ~2/3 Ashkenazi if not more. It is also interesting to note that in Israel and France Mizrahi are currently holding their own as far as representation in the high IQ professions, so perhaps IQ testing done a generation ago missed something. Another data point: Thus far there have been only three science Nobel Laureates born in Arab countries (population ~200 million) and two have been Mizrahi Jews (population ~1 million).
* But first of all, the definition of a Hardal Jew (not Hardelin as the previous commenter coined – that isn’t a word) is someone who is Haredi in appearance but also very Zionist, has served in the military, and is more likely to participate in the economy. So to the extent that Hardal numbers are growing, that represents a good demographic trend for Israel militarily. (Whether it is good culturally is another matter of course)
As for the Haredi, one possible outcome, which is already happening to some degree, is that constant Arab attacks on Haredi will push them toward more participatory Zionism and military service. Already a disproportionate number of victims of Arab stabbings and beatings are Haredi, for several reasons including that they are concentrated in working class Jerusalem neighborhoods in proximity to Arab ones, that they are easily identifiable as Jews (and stereotypical ones at that), and that they don’t fight back well because they have no military training.
* Israel is a special case because it is the only high GDP nation in its corner of the world, and furthermore the only high GDP nation which is only nine miles wide and surrounded by hostile people and countries committed to its liquidation.
* I’ll tell you how this ends. Israeli Jews will just take over more Arab land, the same way the Zionist did: by buying it, settling it and conquer what is in between.
