Demographic
war against Palestinians
ABCD
The Israeli government has launched an advertising campaign urging Israelis to inform on Jewish friends and relatives abroad who may be in danger of marrying
non-Jews. About half of all Jews outside Israel marry
non-Jews. It is one of several initiatives by the Israeli
state and private organizations to increase the size of Israel’s Jewish
population in the West Bank, in their demographic
war against Palestinians. About half of all Jews in Western Europe and the United States assimilate by
intermarrying, while the figure for the former Soviet Jewry is 80 per
cent.
Israel, whose Jewish population of 5.6 million accounts for 41 per cent of worldwide
Jewry, has obstructed intermarriage between its Jewish and Arab citizens by refusing to recognize such marriages unless they are performed
abroad. The campaign is directed particularly at Jews in the United States and
Canada, whose combined 5.7 million Jews constitute the world’s largest Jewish
population. Immigration rates have steadily declined since a large wave of one million Jews arrived from the former Soviet Union through the 1990s. The absorption figure for last year – at 16,500 – was the lowest since the 1980s.
There is a growing trend of better-off Jews leaving Israel to live
abroad.
