ISRAELI POPULATION: BIG AND GETTING BIGGER

On the eve of the seventy-third anniversary of the State of Israel, Israeli population stands on 9.3 million – the Central Bureau of Statistics of Israel informs us nonchalantly. Modesty is a noble quality. Except where it is misplaced. This positions Israel in a very respectable place among the nations of Europe. Many Northern and Central European countries have smaller populations compared to Israel. In fact, Israel is now bigger than Austria and Switzerland and is only slightly smaller than Hungary and Portugal. I plot Israel’s today positioning in Europe below. The European population giants, led by Russia, are placed at the top of the graph, if they are placed inside, everyone else would look miniscule, but I retain them in the table to show the complete European picture.

Indeed, small populations is a European norm, as I wrote elsewhere – a fact regretfully overlooked. Regretfully, because it is quite a window into (1) Israel’s real positioning versus the European nations and (2) the workings of particularism, also known as nationalism – which caused progressive fragmentation of Europe in the 20^th century. In the beginning of the 20^th century Europe contained about 25 sovereign states, 120 years later the same territory contained 46 states – each far more homogeneous in ethnic and linguistic terms than the antecedents. Fragmented Europe that we see today is a result of the preference of each one in the multitude of its nations ‘to dwell alone’. How does it bode for the multicultural agendas? Use your imagination – I would say….Ironically, a famous scientifically-antisemitic composition by Kevin MacDonald (“A People that shall dwell alone”) made a big fuss around ‘Jewish separatism’. Could it be forgetfulness, I wonder….The author could have looked at Europe to learn a thing or two about separatism. Former Yugoslavia would be quite insulted by MacDonald’s excessive focus on Jews in this respect-I know that much…

But Israel’s Independence Day is not an excuse to talk about Europe, its dance of desperation and antisemitism. Let us look into Israel’s future. Let us travel in time – about 30 years from now. It is worth the effort because in 2055 Israeli population is predicted to reach the size of 17 million which will place it at the very top of the list of the European non-giants. Proportionately, Israel’s Arab and Jewish sectors are not expected to change in the next thirty years. The league of the European giants in 2055 will be still led by the same countries as in 2020 yet, with few exceptions, they are expected to shrink in size. Population decline is a European drama number one, parenthetically speaking. Not Israel’s. Not now, not in foreseeable future.