Though not a prevalent catchphrase in the student demonstrations, the slogan “Jews/Israelis go back to Europe” has garnered national, and even international, attention. This phrase, like the much more popular phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” is troubling because it attempts to negate the existence of the Jewish state of Israel. The “Go back to Europe” chant also ignores the fact that the majority of Israelis today don’t come from European backgrounds.
Another slogan heard at rallies calls for ending the “75-year occupation”, pointing not to the occupation of the West Bank or Gaza, which dates back to 1967, but rather to the date when Israel was founded as a modern nation.
Rightly so, the protesters have dived into learning about the Palestinian cause and struggle, but from an extremely selective vantage point. At the same time, too many willingly refuse to know any facts about either Israel’s past or present.
This week, Israel actually marks its 76th Independence Day. The holiday this year is filled with anger and grief inside Israel, as could be imagined. The nation is intensely divided. The hatred toward the government is fierce and overwhelming. But one thing is irrevocably true: the country of Israel exists. It is not disappearing.
History can be interpretative, but facts can’t. Here are some facts.
Today, 45% of the world’s Jewish people live in Israel, with a similar amount in the United States, and smatterings across other countries in Europe (including the former Soviet Union), Canada, Latin America, Australia and South Africa.
Of Israeli Jews alive today, 80% were born in Israel. A majority of Israel’s Jews are not descended from Europe but rather from Arab nations, including from the parcel of land known today as modern Israel. Known as Mizrachim in Hebrew, they hail from Iraq, Iran, Morocco, Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and Algeria, as well as from the Asian ccaucasus region of the former Soviet Union. Those Israelis who are Ashkenazi, the Israeli term for Jews of European descent, are increasingly the minority inside Israel. There are, additionally, a small percentage of Jewish people from Ethiopia, and even a nominal number from India. And, while small in number, there are Jews in Israel who are descended from families that lived in the region under Ottoman rule, and centuries before that.
As happens each year to coincide with Israel’s celebration of Independence Day, the annual national population survey was just published. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports: “There are 7.247 million Jews (73.2% of the population), 2.089 million Arab Israelis (21.1%), and 564,000 people (5.7%) defined as ‘other – including non-Arab Christians, members of other religions, and people with no religious affiliation.”
Additionally: “Israel’s population is also young. About 28% are children aged 14 and younger, and about 12% are aged 65 and older.”
Increasingly, intermarriage blurs the distinctions among Jewish Israelis. In my Israeli family members alone, due to marriage, these countries are represented: United States, Czech Republic, Morocco, Italy, Iran and more – including Poland and Ukraine, if we venture back three generations.
Ironically, the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace, probably the Jewish group most engaged in the protests and anti-Israel rallies, has a fact sheet on its website explaining – correctly – that today, Mizrachi Jews represent over a majority of all Israeli Jews. The facts don’t seem to stand in their way, however, from joining in with a chorus to cancel Israel. That’s because the reality is that the argument emanating from the campus protests isn’t about facts; it’s about ideology.
A week ago marked another holiday: Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. This is a reminder about why the numbers once swelled from Europe to Israel. As Harold Meyerson wrote recently in the American Prospect: “The 3% of Jewish emigrants from Europe who were going to Palestine before the US closed off its border soared to 46% from 1932 to 1939, as the Nazis took over Germany and loomed as a threat over the rest of Europe.” There is nowhere for Israeli Jews to return, just as there was nowhere – but Israel – for them to go to after Hitler rose to power.
Demands that all of Israel’s Jewish population simply up and move is unprecedented, not to mention unrealistic. A conflict between two peoples can’t be resolved by eradicating one people. And it can’t be resolved by a willing lack of knowledge about one side.
Israel is not disappearing. Seven million-plus Jews are not leaving the plot of earth that must be shared between Jews and Palestinians. A politics of denial and erasure is not only myopic, but also self-defeating. It is more urgent than ever to promote a politics of reality that acknowledges facts – and humanity – on both sides.
Jo-Ann Mort is co-author of Our Hearts Invented a Place: Can Kibbutzim Survive in Today’s Israel? She writes frequently about Israel for US, UK and Israeli publications.
