Demographic trends in the Land of Israel

As this study clearly documented,
“the shifting sands of demography”
in the Middle East work in favor
of the Jewish state,
not against it, as Mr. Emanuel argued.

Doomsday scenario?:
Demographic time bomb?Read it all!

via
daledamos.blogspot.comvia
Demographic Trends in the Land of Israel
(excerpts)
Yakov Faitelson
January 15, 2011
@
theettingerreport.com

via
israelmatzav.blogspot.com

Clearly, Obama and Rahm Emanuel anchored their arguments in the conjured estimates of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. A 2006 World Bank study found a “32% ‘inflation’ in the number of Arab births, ” alleged by the Palestinians.

A more recent comprehensive study on Jewish-Arab Demographic Trends in the Land of Israel, published earlier this year by Yakov Faitelson, found that “ in 2011 there is a 66% Jewish majority … in the combined area of pre-1967 Israel, Judea and Samaria.”

The study demonstrated that “Despite 120 years of demographic calamity projections, the Jewish population in the Land of Israel succeeded to grow from a 5% minority to a 60% majority.”

“In 2010, the Jewish fertility rate is 63% higher than Lebanon’s, 53% higher than Iran’s, 33% higher than Turkey’s and Kuwait’s, 23% higher than Saudi Arabia’s, slightly higher than Egypt’s and only 7% and 4% lower than Jordan’s and Syria’s respectively.” “Israeli Arab fertility rate has collapsed since the 1970s [due to a most successful integration into the infrastructures of education, employment, finance, politics, culture, sports, etc.]…It declined to 3.5 births per woman in 2009.”
“In 1995, there were 2.34 Jewish births per 1 Arab birth. In 2009-10, there were 3.12 Jewish births per 1 Arab birth.”

“The demographic trends within pre-1967 Israel are identical to those in Judea and Samaria…but, in a much faster pace. The fertility rate of Judea and Samaria Arabs dropped from 6.44 births per woman in 1990 to 3.12 births in 2010…lower than Israeli Arabs and substantially lower than the Jewish fertility rate in the Jerusalem region.”

1.  "Despite 120 years of demographic calamity projections, the Jewish population in the Land of Israel succeeded to grow from a 5% minority to a 60% majority."
2.  "The expanded Jewish population (6,122,000) grows faster than the highest scenario of the 2007 projection made by Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics.  The Arab population (1,573,000) grows in accordance with the lowest scenario."
3. "According to the UN Population Division, the overall Middle East fertility rate peaked during the 1950s (6.33 births per woman) and declined gradually to 2.95 births in 2010."
4. "The Jewish fertility rate has risen since 1995, reaching 2.9 in 2010."
5. "In 2010, the Jewish fertility rate is 63% higher than Lebanon's, 53% higher than Iran's, 33% higher than Turkey's and Kuwait's, 23% higher than Saudi Arabia's, slightly higher than Egypt's and only 7% and 4% lower than Jordan's and Syria's respectively."
6. "The growth in Jewish fertility is driven by secular and not by religious or ultra-religious Jews. Since 2003, there has been a decline in ultra-religious fertility…The surge in secular fertility is driven mainly by the Olim (immigrants) from the former USSR…Their children and grandchildren has adopted typical Israeli fertility rates. According to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, Israeli-born Jewish fertility rate was over 3 births in 2009."
7. "Israeli Arab fertility rate has collapsed since the 1970s [due to a most successful integration into the infrastructures of education, employment, finance, politics, culture, sports, etc.]…It declined to 3.5 births per woman in 2009…By 2009 only 8.4% of 15 year old Arab women did not enroll in school."
8. "In 1995, there were 2.34 Jewish births per 1 Arab birth. In 2009-10, there were 3.12 Jewish births per 1 Arab birth."
9. "The demographic trends within pre-1967 Israel are identical to those in Judea and Samaria…but, in a much faster pace. The fertility rate of Judea and Samaria Arabs dropped from 6.44 births per woman in 1990 to 3.12 births in 2010...lower than Israeli Arabs and substantially lower than the Jewish fertility rate in the Jerusalem region."
10. "Net-emigration from the Palestinian Authority was 321,239 during 2007-1994, averaging about 23,000 annually."
11. "Mustafa Khawaja of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics: Net-emigration in 2007 reached about 60,000…Jordan recorded 44,000 and 63,000 net-emigration, during the first eight months in 2009 and 2008 respectively, through its-controlled international passages along the Jordan River."

This Is How Russia Disposes Of Its Dated Nuclear Submarines

(businessinsider) The question of how to dispose of nuclear-powered equipment and irradiated waste has been a nagging companion for the world’s advanced navies for decades, and in the case of the former Soviet Union one of its solutions was evidently to sink it into the Arctic Ocean.
Information now provided to the Norwegian daily Aftenposten by Russia’s authorities catalogue “enormous quantities” of Soviet-era nuclear reactors and radioactive waste dumped into the Kara Sea over the course of decades, far worse than previously known, and which include the experimental K-27 submarine that was eventually scuttled in 1981 once repairs to its liquid metal nuclear power plant were deemed impossible to complete.
That scuttling operation was allegedly performed at a far shallower depth than the International Atomic Energy Authority's guidelines of 3,000 meters, and although its two experimental VT-1 reactors were
sealed to avoid radioactive pollution there are now questions as to the real danger of contamination. According to the Bellona Foundation, a Norway-based environmental NGO with a long history of involvement with the Soviet Union’s nuclear dumping grounds, information that the K-27’s reactors could re-achieve critical status was released during a seminar with Rosatom (Russia’s nuclear regulatory body) in February of this year.
Norway’s Minister of the Environment, Bård Vegar Solhjell, immediately played down any dangers revealed by the report, though Bellona itself believes that the gradual publication of information by Russia is
intended as a quiet call for help in dealing with a huge (and expensive) issue. In addition to the K-27 submarine, officials confirmed to Aftenposten the existence of some 17 thousand containers of radioactive waste, 14 nuclear reactors (five with spent nuclear fuel) and 735 pieces of radioactively contaminated heavy machinery.
An editorial in Aftenposten mentions that as recently as 2006 Russia detected no leaks emanating from the K-27 submarine, and the country has assembled a commission to map the nuclear waste outlined in its
report. Meanwhile, a Norwegian-Russian effort is set to begin charting nuclear waste in the Kara and Barents Sea, which was used as a radioactive dump by the Soviet Union into the early 1990s in violation
of the London Convention of 1972.
Exxon Mobile and Rosneft signed a deal in April of 2012 to jointly develop oil reserves in the Kara Sea, a prospect which may hold more than 37 billion barrels. According to Bellona’s Igor Kurdrik, Russia therefore has a vested interest in charting and cleaning up the area’s radioactive waste
before oil extraction begins.
Throughout its history with nuclear propelled submarines the Soviet Union’s Northern Fleet lost a total of four of its vessels, though with the exception of the K-27 all others were lost in maritime accidents.

White House denies telling Iran it will not back Israel

Report: US tells Iran it won't back Israeli strike so long as Tehran doesn't hit US interests

(Israel Matzav: Breaking: White House denies telling Iran it will not back Israel) Israel Radio reports (2:00 am) that the White House has denied that it sent a message to Iran through two European governments that it would not back an Israeli attack on Iran if Iran does not attack US installations in the Persian Gulf, as was reported on Monday by Yediot's Shimon Schiffer.

(Carl)Just when you thought that President Hussein Obama could not shove Israel any deeper under the bus.... Yediot's Shimon Shiffer reports at YNet that President Obama has sent a message to Iran via two European countries that he will not back an Israeli strike against the Mullahcracy's nuclear weapons program so long as Iran does not attack US interests in the Persian Gulf.

The United States has sent a message to Iran, via two European nations, saying that it will not back an independent Israeli strike against the country's nuclear facilities as long as Tehran refrains from attacking American interests in the Persian Gulf, Yedioth Ahronoth reported Monday.
According to the report, Washington has used covert back channels in Europe to clarify that the US does not intend to back Israel in a strike that may spark a regional conflict.
In return, Washington expects Iran to steer clear of strategic American assets in the Persian Gulf, such as military bases and aircraft carriers.
Israeli officials reported of an unprecedented low in the two nations' defense ties, which stems from the Obama administration's desire to warn Israel against mounting an uncoordinated attack on Iran.

There is nothing - NOTHING - this charlatan will not do if he believes it will put him in a better position to be reelected. And his campaign still goes around saying that his security cooperation with Israel is 'closer than ever.' What a damned liar.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said Monday that "There is absolutely no daylight between the United States and Israel when it comes to preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon."
Carney said that all options remain on the table for Iran. He said the "window for diplomacy remains open," adding that the diplomatic process remains the best way to deal with the Islamic Republic, though "that window will not remain open indefinitely."

That window only needs to remain open long enough for Israel to be outside the zone of immunity - when Iran moves all of the major portions of its operation underground. We're probably 3-6 months from that point. After that, Israel is dependent on Obama's tender mercies (or those of Mitt Romney - which are probably much more pro-Israel), and we may face a high price in exchange for the US standing alongside us.
Obama is not only not standing beside Israel. He is doing everything he can to hurt our chances of taking Iran's nuclear weapons out. Even if he did not plan to come to our aide, telling Iran that explicitly only makes things worse.
And you thought Jimmy Carter was despicable? This guy brings things to a whole new level.

something tells me Obama is done courting the Jewish vote. Michigan is a swing state too.

Obama Admin to forgive $1 billion in Egyptian debt.

Obama Admin to forgive $1 billion in Egyptian debt(mfs-theothernews.com)HT: IsraelMatzav.The United States will forgive $1 billion in Egyptian debt as part of a package that includes a $4.8 billion International Monetary Fund loan to the newly installed Islamist regime.

Nearly 16 months after first pledging to help Egypt’s failing economy, the Obama administration is nearing an agreement with the country’s new government to relieve $1 billion of its debt as part of an American and international assistance package intended to bolster its transition to democracy, administration officials said.
The administration’s efforts, delayed by Egypt’s political turmoil and by wariness in Washington about new leaders emerging from its first free elections, gained new urgency in recent weeks, even as the United States risks losing influence and investment opportunities to countries like China, which President Mohamed Morsi chose for his first official visit outside of the Middle East.
In addition to the debt assistance, the administration has thrown its support behind a $4.8 billion loan being negotiated between Egypt and the International Monetary Fund. Last week it dispatched the first of two official delegations to work out details of the proposed debt assistance, as well as $375 million in financing and loan guarantees for American financiers who invest in Egypt and a $60 million investment fund for Egyptian businesses.
The assistance underscores the importance of shoring up Egypt at a time of turmoil and change across the Middle East, from the relatively peaceful uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia to the still-unfinished transition in Libya, and from the showdown over Iran’s nuclear program to the war in Syria. Given Egypt’s influence in the Arab world, the officials said, its economic recovery and political stability could have a profound influence on other nations in transition and ease wariness in Israel about the tumultuous political changes under way.

There's just one small catch.... Congress has put some restrictions in place on aid to Egypt.

The administration is negotiating whether to waive some debt payments altogether or allow “debt swaps,” in which the money that would otherwise pay down the American debt instead is spent on training and infrastructure projects in Egypt intended to attract private investment and create jobs. Congress has attached conditions to American assistance in Egypt, requiring Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to certify, among other things, that the country continues to abide by its treaty with Israel.
American and Israeli officials, including Ambassador Michael Oren, have sought to assure members of Congress that assistance should proceed, despite reservations about the Muslim Brotherhood’s political rise, the officials said.
They have argued that persistently high unemployment, especially among women and young people, could undermine Mr. Morsi’s government, causing further instability in Egypt and beyond. “Things are going to head in the wrong direction if you don’t find a way to create jobs,” another administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the administration’s internal strategy.

I wonder whether Egypt's liberal democracy advocates agree with that assessment. Hmmm......Obama: "But I’m also mindful of the proverb, “A man is judged by his deeds, not his words.” So if you want to know where my heart lies, look no further than what I have done — to stand up for Israel."Read the full story 

Israeli Model Who Dated Saif Gaddafi Calls on Tony Blair to Save His Life

(Israelly Cool / Daily Mail / Algemeiner)Saif al-Islam Gaddafi's house on Winnington Close, Finchley, London. Photo: Grim23.
Israeli model and actress Orly Weinerman has revealed a six year relationship with son of Muammar Gaddafi, Saif al-Islam, and issued a plea to Tony Blair to help save his life according to the Daily Mail.
The younger Gaddafi, who is said to be held by rebel forces, now awaits trial in Libya for his brutal role in attempting to suppress the country’s recent uprising, a crime for which he faces the death penalty.
Now Weinerman, who was involved romantically with the tyrant’s son since 2005, when they were introduced in London, has called on the former British Prime Minister, who she says was an old friend of Saif, to intervene on his behalf.
“Saif worked closely with Mr Blair before he was captured. The two are old friends – it is time that Mr Blair returned some loyalty. Mr Blair is a man of God – as a Christian he has a moral duty to help a friend in need,” she said, according to the Mail.
“You should just ask Mr Blair what a serious, honourable person he is. The ICC has let him down, and so has the international community. Killing him will achieve absolutely nothing, beyond punishing him for who his father was. Absolutely everything must be done to save him,” Weinerman added.
The Israeli model claims that they even considered marriage at one point, but that their relationship ended after the violent uprising in Libya last year.
Weinerman says that their relationship was strained from the start because she was Jewish, which would be opposed in an Islamic country like Libya. Her parents and the Israeli press were critical of the relationship.

Her parents – her father is a green energy consultant and her mother a pianist – were also opposed to her converting to Islam, she said, and her relationship with Saif came in for much criticism in the Israeli press.
‘It was something we had to deal with,’ said Miss Weinerman, who is now based in her home city of Tel Aviv.
‘The fact that Saif was prepared to involve himself in a loving relationship with a Jew is a measure of how open and civilised he is.
‘He judged people for what they are – not what people perceive them to be. Saif never made an issue of my religion, or the country I came from.’
She had previously denied having any contact with Saif, after publications including Germany’s Der Spiegel reported their romance in 2006.
Saif’s reputation is as a notorious womaniser, and he has been photographed surrounded by gorgeous women.

Another stupid Jew who is too open minded for her own good. It is sad that Jews like this are holding other Jews accountable for a level of scrutiny that no one can live up to... Where were the Jewish and Israeli girls in my life? Dating my murderers with an open mind. Meanwhile most of my relatives have given me the silent treatment because I didn't vote for Obama... who gave most of the world over to the Muslim Brotherhood...that defeated Qaddaffi. Bitches and feminists will be screwing the Muslim Brotherhood shortly and giving me the hairy eyeball for any scrutiny.

“Current Laws on All Forms of Pornography and Obscenity Need to Be Vigorously Enforced”

(Eugene)So says the Republican Party Platform, and this leads me to questions I asked in 2004, when the Bush Administration called for a pornography crackdown.
As we know, there’s lots of porn of all varieties out there on the Internet, including porn that might well be seen as offensive to “community standards” in at least one American state (the standard that would be applicable under the plurality view in Ashcroft v. ACLU (I) (2002), if prosecutors choose to bring a case in that state), or perhaps even under some “national community standard” (the alternative standard urged to varying extents by the other opinions in that case). In principle, the government might well be able to prosecute many American pornography producers and distributors under current obscenity laws.
But even if every single U.S. producer is shut down, wouldn’t foreign sites happily take up the slack? It’s not like Americans have some great irreproducible national skills in smut-making, or like it takes a $100 million Hollywood budget to make a porn movie. Foreign porn will doubtless be quite an adequate substitute for the U.S. market. Plus the foreign distributors might even be able to make and distribute copies of the existing U.S.-produced stock — I doubt that the imprisoned American copyright owners will be suing them for infringement (unless the U.S. government seizes the copyrights, becomes the world’s #1 pornography owner, starts trying to enforce the copyrights against overseas distributors, and gets foreign courts to honor those copyrights, which is far from certain and likely far from cheap).
And even if overall world production of porn somehow improbably falls by some substantial amount, will that seriously affect the typical porn consumer’s diet? Does it matter whether you have, say, 100,000 porn titles (and live feeds) to choose from, or just 25,000?
So we have three possible outcomes:
(1) The U.S. spends who knows how many prosecutorial and technical resources going after U.S. pornographers. A bunch of them get imprisoned. U.S. consumers keep using the same amount of porn as before. Maybe they can’t get porn on cable channels or in hotel rooms any more, but that’s so twentieth century; instead, consumers will continue to be able to get more than they ever wanted on the Internet. Nor do I think that the crackdown will somehow subtly affect consumers’ attitudes about the morality of porn — it seems highly unlikely that potential porn consumers will decide to stop getting it because they hear that some porn producers are being prosecuted.
The only potential benefit: If you think the porn industry is very bad for porn actors, you’re at least sparing Americans actors that harm, and shifting it off-shore instead. But that has little to do with “Making the Internet Family-Friendly,” which is what the platform bills the “vigorous[] enforce[ment]” policy as relating to. And as to changing what’s available on the Internet, the investment of major prosecutorial resources yields a net practical benefit of roughly zero.
(2) The government gets understandably outraged by the “foreign smut loophole.” “Given all the millions that we’ve invested in going after the domestic porn industry, how can we tolerate all our work being undone by foreign filth-peddlers?,” pornography prosecutors and their political allies would ask. So they unveil the solution, in fact pretty much the only solution that will work: Nationwide filtering.
It’s true: Going after cyberporn isn’t really that tough — if you require every service provider in the nation to block access to all sites that are on a constantly updated government-run “Forbidden Off-Shore Site” list. Of course, there couldn’t be any trials applying community standards and the like before a site is added to the list; that would take far too long. The government would have to be able to just order a site instantly blocked, without any hearing with an opportunity for the other side to respond, since even a quick response would take up too much time, and would let the porn sites just move from location to location every several weeks.
Sure, that sounds like a violation of First Amendment procedural rules, even when the government is going after substantively unprotected obscenity. Sure, that would make it easier for the government to put all sorts of other sites on the list. Sure, it’s a substantially more intrusive step than any of the American Internet regulations we’ve seen so far, and is substantially more intrusive in some ways than nearly all speech restrictions in American history. (I say in some ways, not in all ways, since it would have a limited substantive focus — but the procedure would be highly restrictive, and First Amendment law has always recognized the practical importance of procedure.) But it’s the only approach that has any hope of really reducing the accessibility of porn to American consumers.
(3) Finally, the government can go after the users: Set up “honeypot” sites (seriously, that would be the technically correct name for them) that would look like normal offshore pornography sites. Draw people in to buy the stuff. Figure out who the buyers are. To do that, you’d also have to ban any anonymizer Web sites that might be used to hide such transactions, by setting up some sort of mandatory filtering such as what I described in option (2).
Then arrest the pornography downloaders and prosecute them for receiving obscene material over the Internet, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1462; see, e.g., United States v. Whorley (4th Cir. 2008) (holding that such enforcement is constitutional, and quite plausibly so holding, given the United States v. Orito Supreme Court case). As best I can tell, this statute has recently been used only as an adjunct in child pornography prosecutions, where the prosecutors think the person is trying to get child pornography but add a receipt of obscenity charge just in case they can’t prove the child pornography charge. But it is a “current law[] on ... obscenity,” out there to be used.
Heck, lock each pornography viewer up for several years like you would a child porn buyer. Make him register as a sex offender. Seize his house on the theory that it’s a forfeitable asset, since it was used to facilitate an illegal transaction. All because he, or he and his wife, like to get turned on by watching pictures of people having sex (or perhaps just pictures of people having sufficiently kinky sex, or pretending to have sufficiently kinky sex). Then repeat for however many people it takes to get everyone scared of the Smut Police.
So we really have three possible outcomes:

1. The crackdown on porn is doomed to be utterly ineffective at preventing the supposedly harmful effects of porn on its viewers, and on the viewers’ neighbors.
2. The crackdown on porn will be made effective — by implementing a comprehensive government-mandated filtering system run by some administrative agency that constantly monitors the Net and requires private service providers to block any sites that the agency says are obscene.
3. The crackdown on porn will turn into a full-fledged War on Smut that will be made effective by prosecuting, imprisoning, and seizing the assets of porn buyers.

Seriously, I don’t see many other alternatives. The government could try to put pressure on financial intermediaries, for instance requiring Visa and MasterCard to refuse transactions with certain locations; but unless that’s made just as intrusive as option #2 above, it will be hopelessly ineffective, since sites can easily just periodically change their payee names, or use various offshore intermediaries.
The government might also try to persuade foreign countries to join its campaign, but I’m pretty sure that won’t work, either. First, the Europeans are apparently fairly tolerant of much porn. Second, I highly doubt that we can persuade every poor third-world country, some of which have thriving trades in real flesh, to spend its resources creating and actually enforcing anti-porn laws, in the face of whatever payoffs the porn industry is willing to provide.
So, supporters of that plank of the platform, which do you prefer — #1, #2, or #3? Note that I’m not asking whether porn is bad, or whether porn should be constitutionally protected. I’m certainly not asking whether we’d be better off in some hypothetical porn-free world (just like no sensible debate about alcohol, drug, or gun policy should ask whether we’d be better off in some hypothetical alcohol-, drug-, or gun-free world).
I’m asking: How can the government’s policy possibly achieve its stated goals, without creating an unprecedentedly intrusive censorship machinery, one that’s far, far beyond what any mainstream political figures are talking about right now?

my primary concern is protecting the young from compromising their dignity. It might be worth passing a law if we were to go after porn producers to demand that people who would leave the country to perform pornographic acts for pay would not be invited back in the country. Obviously self benefit is being plaid here and maybe we should take the incentives of foreign porn out. It'd be nice to know that less sluts were living in my neighborhood. I'm sure the sluts will get along swimmingly in countries that don't share our moral sense aka the boundary between us an the apes. Maybe the moral-less would like to live with the apes. you can't kill the demand for sex, but you can kill the incentive to meet the demand. non paid sex I have no problem with. This is all moot if we don't prosecute present porn laws.

Let's just say there is enough reasons to get Obama out and ignore something stupid the GOP is saying. But the holes in the problem are now documented. Obviously going after the supply is hard if people can always come back into the country.