The “demographic time bomb” concept accords mythical standards to Arab fertility and European standards to Jewish fertility, ignoring the Westernization of Arab fertility and the surging secular Jewish fertility, while significantly underestimating the potential of Jewish immigration (Aliyah) to Israel, which has been steady and continuous since 1882.
In March 1898, the leading Jewish demographer-historian, Shimon Dubnov, published a demographic projection, aiming to dissuade Theodore Herzl from the vision of the reconstruction of the Jewish State in the Land of Israel: “in 1998, there will be only half a million Jews in the Land of Israel…. Political Zionism is wishful-thinking….” Herzl was not deterred, although there was a meager 9% Jewish minority in the combined area of Judea, Samaria and pre-1967 Israel.
In October, 1944, Prof. Roberto Bachi, the founder of Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, published a demographic projection, intending to convince Israel’s Founding Father, David Ben Gurion, that a population of then 600,000 Jews was not a critical mass for the re-establishment of the Jewish State: “In 2001, there will be, under the best case scenario, 2.3MN Jews, a 34% minority….” Ben Gurion proceeded to re-establish the Jewish State despite the mere 55% Jewish majority in the area partitioned for the Jewish State, and the 39% Jewish minority in the combined area of Judea, Samaria and pre-1967 Israel.
In 1946, Ben Gurion published Israel Trivus document – No Arab Majority in the Land of Israel – which exposed substantial deficiencies in the population censuses conducted by the British Mandate in 1922 and 1931, similar to the deficiencies of the contemporary Palestinian census: the inclusion of overseas residents in the census; the double-count of people moving from rural areas to urban centers; the inflation of numbers by clan leaders for political and economic reasons; the under-reporting of deaths. A June 10, 1993 document of Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics noted that according to Palestinian reporting, Palestinian life expectancy, supposedly, exceeded life expectancy in the USA….