The Demon of Demography

107

bin order to keep the present percentage advantage of Jews in b“Little Israel,” where will that come from? It is nonexistent— band the Arab population peril exists.

bThere are those who claim that modernization will decrease bthe Arab birthrate. In answer to this one can only point to the bfact that this may indeed be true, but it is more than matched by bthe drastic drop in the Jewish birthrate.

bIn 1978 Minister of Absorption David Levy, a Sephardic bJew and father of eleven children, pointed to the urgent need for bimmigration because “Israel’s biggest contributors to Jewish bnatural increase—the Sephardic couples—are producing fewer band fewer offspring as time goes on.”

bAnd says Zvi Eisenbach of the directorate at the Central bBureau of Statistics: “Levy is right on target, for the fertility rate bof Asian-African Jewish women in Israel has plummeted from balmost 6 offspring in 1955 to 3.66 in 1976” (Jerusalem Post, bMarch 7, 1978). Since then, the general drop in the Jewish bbirthrate has continued, from 3.2 children per family in 1976 b(for all Israeli women) to 2.7 in 1979. Whereas 75,066 Jewish bchildren were born in 1976, only 69,600 births were registered in b1979, despite the increase in the Jewish population. The spec- btacular drop in the Jewish birthrate since 1948 has been almost bsolely due to the negative Ashkenazic influence on the Sephardic bwomen.

bThis influence, both directly through social workers urging bSephardic women to learn birth-control methods and indirectly bthrough the desire to imitate the supposedly more “cultured” bAshkenazim, has led to more than use of the Pill. According to bCentral Bureau of Statistics figures, there was a drop of 9 per- bcent in the number of Jewish marriages between 1975 and 1976 b(it was also pointed out that divorces went up by the same bamount, 9 percent). This trend continues. Despite the increase bin population, 28,583 Jewish weddings were performed in 1975, bbut only 24,500 were recorded in 1979. Tradition for the bSephardic Jews was shattered on all sides, leading to further bdecline in the birthrate. The average male Israeli married at the bvery late age of twenty-seven and the female at twenty-three.

bThis phenomenon was aided by a blatant preferential fac- btor in Israeli life. Young Jewish men and women who reach the bage of eighteen must serve in the army, the men for three years. b