[i]
                NOTES
 

“Yesha Council”, the umbrella organisation of Israeli ideological settlers, is one of the strongest organisations in Israeli politics. It is known for spreading hard-core right-wing ideology, and opposing any territorial compromise, using the council-taxes paid in the settlements. The name “Yesha” (literally: salvation) makes the initials for the Israelite-based region names of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, now constrained into denoting the modern West Bank and Gaza Strip.

[ii] “My Israel” is a group established by two of Netanyahu’s ex-staff members, and is supported by some of his donors.

[iii] The claim is not unreasonable. Given that the number of Jews and Arabs between the Jordan River and the sea at present is roughly equal, deducting approximately 1.5 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, results in a "Jewish majority" in the rest of pre-1948 Palestine. This will hold even if Israel continues to control the West Bank, or even annexes it.

[iv]The accurate numbers are always disputed and colored with visable political hues. Of the various surveys and countering surveys I can conclude that, to the best of my understanding, the numbers presented in the video are wrong. I would carefully estimate the numbers of Palestinians under Israeli rule in: about 1.6M inside the Green Line, and about 2.1M in the West Bank. This comes to about 3.7M Palestinians vs. 5.8M Jews (and others), not 3M vs. 6M, as shown in the clip. This is certainly not the important point to stress, but the truth must still be told to the Israelis who think it matters.

[v]It is interesting to note how enthusiastically they link the slow decrease in birth to the increase in women education (amongst Arabs), and even dare rule that the latter causes the former. However, at the same time, they completely skip the opposite invited conclusion, to connect the increase in birth of Israeli-Jews, to some possible implication we can assume it has, for instance, on the education, income and status of Jewish-Israeli women.

[vi] The data on Palestinian will to emigrate is also manipulated. In polls, respondents are rarely asked only Yes-or-No questions, but complex answers, such as “not overruling it”, “may have to”, etc. There are also in-depth questions, and different analyses, in addition to the fact that the formulation and timing of a question can dramatically influence the results. More worrying then these distortions, is the fact that the Palestinians who manage to leave tend to be the more pragmatic, educated, and wealthy, leaving behind a more poor, and less educated or pragmatic Palestinian society.

[vii]This is misleading both mathematically and in language. It is not argued that “Jewish-Israeli birth rate is higher than Palestinians’ birth rate”, but that “the gap between the two rates is diminishing”. In other words, the birth-rate of Arabs is still higher than the Jewish one, and it will take decades until they become equal (if the trends persist). The real question should have been what will happen first: that the two ratios will come to equivalence, or that there will be a non-Jewish majority, when following the absolute real numbers. You can make the calculations yourselves if you feel like it, but remember that this too ignores the possibilities of Arabs and Jews voting for the same parties, or in different participation rates, or of anything that may change the trends in such forecast.

The accompanying image is a screen-shot of a clip by the Yesha Council, addressing the Jewish public's “nightmares about the demographic demon” in a light-hearted manner.

Eyal Clyne is an Israeli researcher of society in Israel-Palestine. He focuses on the conflict and other Israeli political issues. Some of the posts on his Hebrew blog appear also in English and elsewhere, and some of his pieces for JNews are also cross-posted with other sites.