Statistics Bureau: 75 percent of Israeli citizens are Jewish

Last update - 17:53 18/04/2010
By Haaretz Service

On Israel's 62nd Independence Day, the number of Israeli citizens in the country stands at more than 7,587,000, of which 75 percent are Jewish, the Central Bureau of Statistics reported on Sunday.

In 1948, the year of the Declaration of Independence, there were a total of 806,000 citizens in Israel, the Bureau reported, adding that Tel Aviv was the only city home to more than 100,000 residents.

According to the Statistics Bureau, today there are more 14 cities across Israel with more than 100,000 residents. Six of those cities are home to more than 200,000 residents.

The bureau also reported that 70 percent of the Jewish citizens living in Israel today were born in the country; at least half of those are second generation (or more) Israelis. In 1948 only 35 percent of the country's citizens had been born in Israel.

Since Israel's 61st Independence Day last year, more than 159,000 babies were born in Israel, while more than 39,000 people died in the same year, the report showed.

The country also absorbed more than 16,000 immigrants in the last year, while more than 10,000 Israelis left the country to live abroad.

Question: How can 75% of the population of a state that calls itself "the only democratic state in the Middle East" also call itself a "Jewish" state? A quarter of the Israeli population is not Jewish, so where do they fit in to a "Jewish" state?
This discrepancy between Jews and non-Jews in Israel will only increase in time and yet we do not see any Jewish recognition of this problem wherein by 2050 Jews will be outnumbered by non-Jews in Israel. Indeed, we see a continual provocation of Arab Palestinians and Arabs in general in the Middle East by Israeli acts of aggression and continual stealing of the land of Palestine. Does Zionism inspire religious and national insanity and an inability to deal sanely with the inevitable return of Arab population dominance?