JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

10/24/09 10:57 AM

would american and world Jewry have been better off if israel had not been created?
what has israel given world Jewry and what have they taken?
I vote sadly that world Jewry would be better off today if israel did not exist.

10/26/09 05:05 AM

Your vote, “steve,” would be pretty much alone, at least amongst Jews - of course, you may not be Jewish at all and may pal around with anti-Zionists/antisemites, who of course have the same view as you on this issue.  But Jews don’t take their cue from antisemites.  Most Jews around the world are supporters of Israel and believe in it.  After all, there is place in the world for one tiny Jewish state in the Jewish homeland, and there needs to be no apology for it.  Israel has fulfilled the Zionist dream in many respects: as intended, it has indeed been a refuge for a people who, when there was no Israel, had no refuge offered almost anywhere in the world despite their desperate efforts to flee genocide.  Since then, the Jews of the USSR, of Ethiopia, of the Arab world, all threatened physically and deeply oppressed culturally, have found secure protection, refuge and more than that, happiness and success, in Israel among their own co-religionists.  Israel has been a truly outstanding success in almost all areas, an example of the power of the human spirit that can inspire all humanity, and a source of deep pride to Jews everywhere. 

Following the abyss of the Holocaust, without Israel I think it is unquestionable that the loss of Jewish morale and abandonment of Jewish identity would be far far worse worldwide.  Israel has made a future for Jews, as Jews, much more possible and much more positive.  Israel has helped to further this too by becoming the chief center (with American Jewry but usually much more positively Jewish) for Jewish religious, philosophical and cultural renewal and creativity, changing and greatly enhancing Jewish life in the last two generations.

Besides all this, the Jews of Israel are simply very happy and satisfied people.  My comments in an earlier JTA exchange apply here: opinion polls reveal that Israelis are amongst the happiest and most satisfied population in the world.  E.g., in a poll in July 2007, conducted by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics of over 7,000 people, 83% of Israeli Jews said they were either “happy” or “very happy” with their lives, and around 75% of Israeli Arabs said the same.  Amongst the fervently Orthodox, the figure was an astounding 97%, amongst “traditional” Jews 82%, and amongst the secular, 87%. 

This contentment and success is reflected in one of the lowest suicide rates in the world, and also in one of the lowest rates for alcoholism and drug addiction.  Male life expectancy according to some current authorities is the second highest in the world, and women’s rates are close.  In any case they are extraordinarily high given the often third world countries many Israelis have come from.  Birth rates are well over replacement levels, showing faith in life and the future, and actual purchasing power increases every year.  Israel has weathered the world downturn better than the great majority of other Western nations, growing about 4% per annum during the last two years (in significant part due to Netanyahu’s economic reforms as Minister of Finance under Sharon).  Israel was less than a third world country at its founding, with much of it wasteland and devastated by a desperate war of survival.  The refugees that flooded there often had to live in tents.  It is now a thoroughly modern state filled with the full infrastructure found in Europe and the U.S., and is near to or on a par with them in income levels and prosperity.  Its cafes, restaurants, museums, parks and concert halls are flourishing. 

One of the major reasons for this astonishing success is ideological: people believe in the value of their lives and their society, as Jews and Zionists, and they know from direct personal involvement that they have moral right and justice on their side.  They are proud to be Jews and to be Israelis, and believe in Zionism and the Jewish state as such.  Their liberal democracy is a model for the world, extending full freedoms to all its citizens, Jewish and non-Jewish.  In fact, Israel is the only country in the Middle East in which the percentage of Christians in the population has increased and not declined over the past 60 years. 

As I mentioned, Israel has justified its existence simply by its being a secure refuge for Jews suffering persecution anywhere in the world.  But its positive role in renewal of Jewish culture, both religious and secular, is also a validation of the Zionist enterprise.  Religious Jews know this very well: many of the greatest sages, rabbis and charismatic thinkers in the Jewish world are in Israel, and their works inspire religious Jews everywhere.  Yeshiva studies engage more Jews now than ever before, and many of these yeshivot are in Israel.

Not only religious Jewry has been renewed.  Israel’s mostly secular universities are ranked amongst the best in the world.  Israel’s 5.5 million Jews produce more Nobel Prize winners than the entire Muslim world with its 1.4 billion people.  Israel’s IT centers have revolutionized modern life everywhere; they are literally the equal of Silicon Valley or better, and their computer chips and software probably power or help to power the reader’s own computer.  Their agricultural and medical advances have improved people’s lives over the entire planet.  Israel rejoices in its cult of life, and gives in this as in so many other respects a complete and instructive contrast to their enemies with their self-declared “cult of death.”

10/28/09 04:25 PM

as far as israels suicide rates, I served in the idf and can tell you suicide is a problem in the idf!
the birthrate is high among orthodox it is about zero among secular Jews and it is very high among arabs who are bred by zionists to help create problems for Jews.
if israel did not exist jews from arab countries would not have been expelled and woul dbe thriving today.
russian Jews would have moved to america or europe and ethiopian Jews were happier in ethiopia than in israel. I was friends with some jews from ethiopia when I lived in israel and they told me there was NO famine where they lived in ethipoia. This famine propaganda was put out by zionists to raise money from who? thats right from naive american Jews.
But evan in your solilaqy about israel you have not said what benefits world Jewry has received from the little country becomming a jew zoo of israel.
I can tell you american Jewry would be better off if we had used our money and effort in building and strenghtening our own instead of wasting it on israel.
Yes I mean israel that tells us one day YESHA is ours and builds houses there and says the next day yesha should be judenfrei and destroys Jewish homes that says G-D gave us YESHA and then says we want a 2 state solution and while the scitophrenics that run israel change their minds on what they want their useful idiot spies that run the jewish grouops in america change their minds right along with israel
If I am the only one saying this...Deal with it!!

10/29/09 02:18 AM

I am sorry, steve ariza, but all of your statements are wrong, and can be shown to be such by relevant Israel census reports and the like.  The gross deviance from the reality even puts into doubt your claim to have served in the IDF or lived in Israel at all.  Moreover, the offensively antisemitic language ("jew zoo of israel") and blatantly delusional assertions of sinister Zionist manipulations ("arabs are bred by zionists to help create problems for Jews” ) strongly suggests that you are not Jewish at all, rather you are anti-Jewish but seek to legitimate your hateful views under a “Jewish” blog identity, as quite a few antisemites have done in these blogs.

However, to the demographic facts:  birth rates are not “about zero among secular Jews.” This already shows you are unfamiliar with Israel and have not lived there.  The birth rates in Israel are highest at 4.8 births per woman amongst the Orthodox, but also high amongst the secular with their 2.2 births, a figure which indicators show will increase even from that quite satisfactory level.  It should also be kept in mind that between the 15-20% who are secular and the over 25% who are Orthodox about 60% are “traditionalist,” which means they have religious views and/or practices.  Their birth rates would also be intermediate between the two categories of “secular” and “Orthodox,” sustaining an overall birth rate for Jews around 3%.  These, for example, are the rates of the Russian Jews.  This is confirmed by the most recent Israel Government census reports, and analyses of them.  Quoting Yoram Ettinger, in his article “The Case for Demographic Optimism,” which appeared in The Jewish Week of October 13, just a couple of weeks ago (available on-line),

“The number of Jewish births during the first half of 2009 accounted for 76 percent of all births, compared with 75 percent in 2008 and 69 percent in 1995.

“The secular, rather than the religious, sector has been chiefly responsible for the Jewish growth. For example, the olim (or, immigrants) from the USSR arrived in Israel with a typical Russian fertility rate of one birth per woman; today, those women are giving birth to two to three children, the typical secular Israeli Jewish birthrate. Moreover, the Arab-Jewish fertility gap shrunk from six births per woman in 1969 to 0.7 births in 2008, with the two converging toward three births per woman.

“The swift decline in the Israeli Arab fertility rate reflects the impressive Arab integration into Israel’s infrastructure of employment, education, health, trade, finance, politics, sports and culture.”

However, as Ettinger shows, a steep decline in Arab birth rates and family size has been going on across the Middle East in just the past two decades, as these societies begin to modernize, education spreads, and women begin to take up a more autonomous role in the economic and social life of those countries.  I also recommend the article by Paul Morland, “Defusing the Demographic Scare,” Haaretz for August 5; he makes the same points and shows that Israeli Jews now have higher birth rates than those in several neighboring Arab countries.

Your statements about Ethiopian famine are also absolutely false.  How telling that you even claim: “This famine propaganda was put out by zionists to raise money from who? thats right from naive american Jews.” Truly amazing.  Jews do not control the world’s media, “steve.” Next you will be quoting from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.  There were famines in Ethiopia, and I suggest you do a Google search on the topic.  Ethiopian Jews are certainly happier in Israel than they were in Ethiopia, where they faced frequent famine, desperate poverty, constant discrimination both governmental and societal, and even threats of genocide.  The Beta Israel were dying out in Ethiopia: coming to Israel saved the community.  That the letters they wrote back to their relatives in Ethiopia described a far better situation for them in Israel as Jews and as human beings is proven by the fact that the numbers of Ethiopian Beta Israel and even of Falash Mura (formerly Jewish) wanting to immigrate to Israel kept spiralling upward by thousands every year.  Surveys amongst the Beta Israel confirm their proud and positive affirmation of Israel.  Russian Jews are similarly very positive about Israel and glad to be there.  They have not made Israel a transit point to settlement elsewhere in the West, as they could have done, nor have they returned to Russia: they like it in Israel.  As I wrote before, surveys show that there is a truly impressive consensus from all Jewish groups about how happy and contented they are with their lives in Israel.

You say that I did not show what benefits have come to American Jews from Israel.  Actually, I did.  Read my post again.  The benefits have been enormous, socially, culturally and religiously.  One very dramatic evidence of the positive good Israel does American Jewry is shown by the remarkable effects of the Birthright Program, in which 225,000 young American Jews are treated to short stays in Israel.  They not only show enhanced involvement in Jewish life and religion following this, but their intermarriage rate has plummeted: they want to raise a new Jewishly affirmative generation.  This was shown in a recent JTA article on the subject.  Furthermore, and just in general, the flourishing of Jewish communities anywhere is a boost and good news for Jewish communities anywhere else, since we are Am Echad, one people.