WarSclerotic

The days between Holocaust Remembrance Day and Israeli Independence Day tend to reveal the true faces of the many who oppose the modern era’s biggest humanist endeavor: the movement to bring Jews back to Israel.

The Jewish people have returned home after many years in exile, but our ship, which constantly navigates the tempestuous sea, nearly drowned forever in history’s biggest massacre.

The gates of Israel were shut when the survivors came knocking, but the gates did not shut themselves. The British, and their friends, made sure those gates were locked tight. The U.S. did not lag far behind in the race to win over the hearts of the Arab states, be it out of greed for oil or a fundamental lack of understanding of the global order, and more specifically, of the Middle East. Immigration ships were ejected back into the stormy sea as they tried to enter the land of freedom and equality.

In Israel, a storm raged. The Palmach were ratting out Jews. The “saison” (“hunting season”) — the name given to the Haganah’s suppression of the Irgun’s insurgency against the government of the British Mandate in Palestine — ended, barely, when the Altalena was sunk. A civil war was evaded. The underground movement was made up of three competing organizations (Irgun, Stern Gang, Haganah), but even that was too late, and for a short time. The state was established under smoke and fire, with contempt and denial, despite and in spite of everything. Even then, there were already a thousand reasons why a Jewish state should not be established. Even then there were already demographic arguments, Jewish arguments and democratic arguments against its establishment.

What would the doomsday prophets say to the fact that today, for the first time since World War II and the Holocaust, the number of Jews in the world, and in Israel specifically, is higher than it was before the war? Demographic projections are supposed to be made with trepidation, with acknowledgment that they are just a guess. However, there have been far too many demographers who were not careful. Thus, for example, prominent Jewish demographer and historian Simon Dubnow, who was killed in the Holocaust, wrote in 1898: “The establishment of a Jewish state in Israel is a messianic delusion, because in the year 2000 there will not be more than 500,000 Jews there.”

We mustn’t come out against a forecast made more than 100 years ago, but rather against those who continue to make demographic threats in modern times, while the world, and particularly the Middle East, is undergoing a demographic collapse. The birthrate has dipped below three children per woman, while among the Jews in Israel the birthrate is steady at 3.2.

Israel is blossoming, despite all the fear-mongering. Israel has become an intrinsic part of the global market in every respect: Turkish exports to Israel are up 56 percent while imports from Israel are up 22 percent. The balance of trade between Israel and Britain is at an all-time high (according to the Daily Telegraph). China maintained a balance of trade with Israel of $10 billion in 2013, and Japan is also not far behind. Israel is also preferred by foreign investors — just last year some $12 billion were invested here.

The page is too small to list all the great achievements of the Zionist enterprise. This enterprise is saturated with blood, but from a historical perspective, compared to our people’s darkest times, the flow of blood has certainly stopped.