Friday, May 2nd, 2008

Jonathan Power

Even Jimmy Carter, who single-handedly (without much Jewish appreciation) has done more to make Israel secure than any other living person, can’t change the march of demographics.

Within the boundaries of the state of Israel and the occupied territories, there are 5.4 million Jews and 4.6 million Palestinians. The Palestinian birthrate is almost three times that of the Israelis. If anything, the Jewish population is starting to fall as an increasing number of Jews decides that Israel has no future for them and emigrate in significant numbers.

The far-seeing Richard Nixon, when asked by Patrick Buchanan and his wife how he saw the future of Israel, turned down his thumb “like a Roman emperor at the gladiators’ arena”.

Perhaps we are witnessing the death of Israel by a thousand cuts, the attrition of conflict and the attrition of population. Maybe after all, the rabbis of Vienna who were sent in 1897 on a fact-finding mission to Palestine to investigate whether it was a suitable place for Jewish settlement were right. They reported back that the “bride was beautiful but married to another man”.

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