The Demographic Doom Bomb (DDB) threat is dropping once again. The DDB was first dropped on David Ben-Gurion, back before the rebirth of the Jewish state. Ben-Gurion was told then that Jews will become a minority in their own land in the not-too-distant future.

Today, everyone who will listen – and too many are listening – is told that soon Jews will be a minority in their own land, and that is true with a vengeance if the disputed territories are annexed.

But the people lobbing the DDB are relying on population numbers from the Palestinian Arab census bureau. That center makes several (intentional or otherwise) errors: it undercounts Arab deaths, it over counts Arab births, it double-counts Arabs, it fails to count altogether Arab emigration and it counts  Palestinian Arabs living abroad.

At the same time, that census bureau undercounts the rocketing Jewish birthrate and the ever-continuing and increasing rate of Aliyah. And upon what do the Israeli Jewish demographers rely for their predictions? Why, the Palestinian Arab numbers, of course.

In 1944, an Italian demographer, Roberto Bacchi, informed Ben-Gurion that the Jewish state would be a non-starter. Bacchi warned Ben-Gurion against the undertaking because the 600,000 Jews ready to pioneer was not a sufficient critical mass.

By the 1960′s, according to Bacchi, the Jews will be a minority in the state. In his best case scenario – about which Bacchi was not sanguine - by 2001 there would only be 2.3 million Jews in Israel.

Well, Bacchi was wrong then and so are his demographic theory heirs, Sergio DellaPergola of Hebrew University and Arnon Sofer, of Haifa University. Those two continue the doom and gloom prognostications, even though it’s consistently been proven wrong by reality. But the predictions have taken root and multiplied, more rapidly than have the non-Israeli  and Israeli Arabs in their predictions.

The reason this is relevant today, in 2015, is that the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics just released a new report. It contains projections based on 2014 data. These data, like Bacchi’s information, are wielded as kryptonite to subdue any thoughts about Jewish sovereignty in parts of the Middle East. Back in the ’40′s it was used to deter any thoughts of a Jewish state in the region at all. Now it is being used to forestall talk of annexing territory beyond the Apartheid Green Line, beyond which all foes and even some friends demand no Jew should live.

After reading one article in particular which continued the tradition of treating the truth as false and the flawed as truth, The Jewish Press sought some answers.

In a wide-ranging interview, former Ambassador and ardent iconoclast Yoram Ettinger of the American-Israel Demographic Research Group once again patiently shared why the “official” Israeli numbers are so skewed, and what that means for everyone’s understanding of the DDB. Ettinger was skewered in some articles by Bacchi’s disciples. But that’s okay with Ettinger, so long as he’s allowed to respond.

Bacchi’s disciples, according to Ettinger, get their numbers wrong primarily for the same reasons he did: they failed to comprehend the enduring lure of Aliyah, and they failed to understand fertility reality both for Jews who make Israel their home and the same for Israeli Arabs.

They all vastly underestimate the will of Jews to make Aliyah to a hostile, largely inhospitable region. But Ben-Gurion and his peers built it, and boy did Jews come. And they are still coming. They are coming in numbers Bacchi could never imagine, and they keep coming despite DellaPergola and Sofer’s refusal to acknowledge that reality.

The other reason their numbers are off the mark is that, despite their insistence to the contrary, the birthrate for Israelis is not consistent (as in downward spiraling) with the rest of the West, while the birthrate for Arab Israelis and those living more western-style lives is.

After several days of heated debate over Secretary of State John Kerry’s statements that Israel will become an Apartheid State unless it not only permits the creation of a Palestinian State, but does so under a timetable set by the United States, made at the Trilateral Commission meeting on Friday, April 25, the State Department issued a statement late on Monday. The statement was an effort to clarify the situation.

What Monday’s statement says is that Kerry loves the Jewish State – everyone who knows him knows that. And not only does Kerry love Israel, but he – unlike those rogues who are now calling on him to resign or be fired or face a phalanx of paddles – has actually worked to help Israel save itself from its elected leader, er, no, save itself from those evil settlers, no, that’s not right, darn it, he’s worked hard to facilitate a Two State Solution in order to secure peace in the region at some point during his tenure.

And although Kerry may have used the words Apartheid State to depict what Israel will become unless it listens to Papa John, he now insists he neither believes nor has he ever said that Israel is now or intends to become an Apartheid State. Despite his claim that he did not use variations of the term, Kerry nevertheless regrets using the word “apartheid” at all in relation to Israel because “it’s a word best left out of the debate” by Americans.

What Kerry did not say that he did not say is that Israel will become an Apartheid State unless it follows the path chosen for it by the U.S. and the Europeans. And, of course, he felt compelled to blurt out a pouting, “but they said it!” Kerry specifically referenced that non-dynamic duo of losers Tzipi Livni and Ehud Barak and the singular crook and about to be jailbird Ehud Olmert, the three (failed) Israeli politicians who have also suggested, as Kerry admits by omission he did, that Israel will become an Apartheid State unless it embraces his preferred Two State Solution on his preferred timetable.

Whether or not Monday’s statement will smooth over the ruffled feathers of those who spoke out against Kerry’s use of the offensive epithet in connection to Israel will provide fodder for tomorrow’s news cycle.

This is the full statement from Secretary Kerry:

On Support for Israel

For more than thirty years in the United States Senate, I didn’t just speak words in support of Israel, I walked the walk when it came time to vote and when it came time to fight. As Secretary of State, I have spent countless hours working with Prime Minister Netanyahu and Justice Minister Livni because I believe in the kind of future that Israel not only wants, but Israel deserves. I want to see a two state solution that results in a secure Jewish state and a prosperous Palestinian state, and I’ve actually worked for it.

I will not allow my commitment to Israel to be questioned by anyone, particularly for partisan, political purposes, so I want to be crystal clear about what I believe and what I don’t believe.

First, Israel is a vibrant democracy and I do not believe, nor have I ever stated, publicly or privately, that Israel is an apartheid state or that it intends to become one. Anyone who knows anything about me knows that without a shred of doubt.

Second, I have been around long enough to also know the power of words to create a misimpression, even when unintentional, and if I could rewind the tape, I would have chosen a different word to describe my firm belief that the only way in the long term to have a Jewish state and two nations and two peoples living side by side in peace and security is through a two state solution. In the long term, a unitary, binational state cannot be the democratic Jewish state that Israel deserves or the prosperous state with full rights that the Palestinian people deserve. That’s what I said, and it’s also what Prime Minister Netanyahu has said. While Justice Minister Livni, former Prime Ministers Barak and Ohlmert have all invoked the specter of apartheid to underscore the dangers of a unitary state for the future, it is a word best left out of the debate here at home.

John Kerry
Secretary of State
Washington, DC
April 28, 2014

Three Jewish families moved into the “Peace House” in Hebron Sunday after receiving approval from Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, five years after his predecessor in the Olmert government brutally expelled dozens of Jews from the building.

The entry of Jews, with the official backing of the Supreme Court, represents a turning point for the rights of Jews to live in Judea and Samaria and against the Palestinian Authority-media-political-judicial torture chamber that has mangled  normalcy to the point it cannot be identified..

A Jew, reportedly a religious American of Syrian descent whose ancestors escaped the Arab pogrom in Hebron in 1929, purchased the building seven years ago from Arabs for approximately $1 million.

The Arab seller, a Jordanian, had sold it through a third party and did not realize that the building eventually would end up in the hands of Jews. The Palestinian Authority, banking on Jordanian law, makes a sale of property to Jews punishable by death, one of their principles of being a “peace partner.”

The Peace House is a four-story building that housed 25 Jewish families and yeshiva students until the government ordered them out in 2008, less than year after the purchase, because the legality of the purchase was questioned and their presence was deemed as endangering security

The building is called the “Peace House,” but Israel’s center-left media have insisted on calling it the “The House of Contention,” past of their propaganda machine to show that anything that settlers do is harmful for peaceful relations with Arabs.

If the Jews simply would leave Hebron, and all of Judea and Samaria, and live in Tel Aviv and the Negev, there would be no problems.

That is the formula that has been marketed for decade, despite the War of Attrition on the 1960s when Arabs from Jordan and Egypt constantly attacked Jews, despite the  Six-Day War when seven Arab nations circled Israel like vultures ready to pounce, and despite the Israeli government’s expulsion of Jews from Gaza in 2005 to make Israel safe for Hamas to attack with tens of thousands of missiles.

Welcome to the “peace process.”

That is why peace process lovers Amir Peretz and Ehud Barak, defense ministers  in the corrupt Olmert government, did everything they could to keep the Jews out of the building. Barak brought in the goon squads to violently expel Jews who had been living in the Peace House. The police swarmed in after he tricked the Jews to believe negotiations would be held before any police action would take place.

The building has been bought in 2007. After the initial purchase, the courts played along with the Arabs and Peace Now, accepting their appeals and questioning the legality of the transaction, until finally deciding that a lower court would have to decide on who really owns the building, but until then, no one could live there.

A lower court ruled last year that the Jews indeed legally purchased the building, but that decision was appealed to the Supreme Court, which last month rejected the petition.

Since the Defense Minister is the ultimate authority in Judea and Samaria, at least until it is annexed and placed under Israeli sovereignty, court approval of the sale does not mean the Jewish owners could move in. Unlike Peretz and Barak, who made lives miserable for Jews before resorting to force, Ya’alon signed on the dotted line Sunday after the owners paid the final $300,000 that was owed to the Arab seller

The three-justice panel that ended the ordeal exhibited rare common sense. Justice Daphne Barak Erez, who is considered a liberal and  a court activist, wrote that both sides in the dispute have emotional and ideological issues, but they are not in the purview of the courts.

A pro-Palestinian group in Canada, calling Ehud Barak an “Israel war criminal,” is protesting a visit by the former Israeli prime minister.

The Canada-Palestine Association is among pro-Palestinian groups in British Columbia protesting an economic conference to be held in suburban Vancouver at the end of the month that Barak is scheduled to attend. It said in an open letter that bringing Barak to the Surrey Regional Economic Summit was “like inviting a bank robber and killer with blood on his hands to address the banking industry.”

City Councilor Linda Hepner of Surrey told the Canadian Jewish News that the economic summit was nonpolitical and the protests of the Canada-Palestine Association, the Canadian Boat to Gaza and Independent Jewish Voices were not influencing them.

“It’s all about an economic summit, not a political platform,” Hepner told the Canadian Jewish News. “We’re thrilled to have the three former prime ministers here for the occasion.”

Barak will be joined by former Australian Prime Minister Jullia Gillard and former Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou on Feb. 27.

The letter criticizes Barak for the 1988 assassination of Khalil al-Wazir, the co-founder of the Palestinian political party and terror movement Fatah, and for alleged “war crimes” committed during Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip during the winter of 2008 and 2009, during which Barak served as Israel’s defense minister.

Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates wrote in his new book that he once tried to ban Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu from the White House, when he was President George H. W. Bush’s national security adviser, because of what he said was the Prime Minister’s “arrogance and outlandish ambition.” Netanyahu was deputy foreign minister at the time.

Gates writes openly about his disgust with Netanyahu in his book “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War.”

“I was offended by his glibness and his criticism of U.S. policy — not to mention his arrogance and outlandish ambition — and I told national security adviser Brent Scowcroft that Bibi ought not be allowed back on White House grounds.” Gates wrote.

On the other hand, Gates said he felt very close to Ehud Barak, who was former Defense Minister and was Prime Minister for less than two years.

The old idiom “you are known by the company you keep” speaks volumes about Gates. Barak was up to his neck in making deals with the military industrial complex and served as an adviser for defense firms after his first fallout with the Labor party following his landslide loss in his re-election bid against Ariel Sharon in 2001.

Gates’ loathing of Netanyahu continues to this day. He wrote in his new book, “I, as a very strong friend and supporter of Israel, believe Jerusalem needs to think anew about its strategic environment. That would require developing stronger relationships with governments that, while not allies, share Israel’s concerns in the region, including those about Iran and the growing political influence of Islamists in the wake of the Arab Spring. … Given a Palestinian birthrate that far outpaces that of Israeli Jews, and the political trends in the region, time is not on Israel’s side.”

If he had his facts right, he would know that  statement about the birth rate simply is not true.

Ehud Barak’s apartment in the exclusive Akirov Towers. It’s an expensive neighborhood to rent in for a simple Marine guard.

The US spy scandal goes from bad to worse according to a Yediot Achronot report that says the US rented an apartment across the street from then Defense Minister Barak, apparently to spy on him.

The apartment housed a single US Marine, whom Israeli Intelligence noted in 2007 had brought in an unusually large amount of electronic equipment into his apartment. The US claims the marine was simply an embassy guard.

In light of all the spying the US has been doing on Israel, Israeli officials have been calling for the release of Jonathan Pollard.

In response to the murder of IDF soldier Gabriel Kobi on Sunday, in Hebron, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has given orders to act immediately and permit the return of Jewish residents to the “Patriarch House” in Hebron.

Netanyahu said, “Whoever tries to uproot us from the city of our forefathers will achieve the opposite. With one hand we will fight terror, and hurt the terrorists, and we will continue with the other hand to strengthen the settlements.”

Under the previous government, former Defense Minister Ehud Barak evicted the Jewish residents of the “Patriarch House”, with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s tacit approval. A court determined that the sale of the “Patriarch House” to the Jews of Hebron was legal, but they required the Defense Minister’s signature, which wasn’t forthcoming.

The Hebron Jewish community blessed the Prime Minister’s decision to restore Jewish residency in the legally purchased property. The community added that the government is fulfilling their historical and moral duty to return Jews to the city of our forefathers, and should take all necessary steps. Security should be increased so that Sgt. Gabriel Kobi is the last victim.

If and when Jewish residents are actually allowed back into “Patriarch House”, we’ll let you know.

Only one question remains, why did a soldier need to be killed for Netanyahu to finally correct this injustice he permitted in his previous government?