Wombs in the service of the state

Israel has decided to tackle its "demographic problem" head-on. Last week, after a five-year hiatus, Shlomo Benizri, the minister of labor and social affairs, convened the Israel Council for Demography. There were two items on the agenda, reports said - the need to encourage families to have more children, and the problem of foreign workers in Israel.

On the face of it, this is just another committee. But the reconvening of this particular body, and the total indifference with which the event was greeted, is cause for serious concern. In the present public mood in which outbursts of racism are considered politically correct, Benizri's move - as a representative of the increasingly nationalist ultra-Orthodox Shas party - is no surprise. Nevertheless, one can only express astonishment at the people who have agreed to sit on a committee that evokes appalling historical connotations. (...)

The Arabs in Israel will be neither a "problem" nor a "demographic demon" if the attitude toward them is fair and egalitarian. This is a country in which the streets are plastered with posters calling for a population transfer and no one bothers to remove them or to indict those who put them up. (It is not difficult therefore to guess what would happen if posters were put up calling for the expulsion of the Jews). A commission on demography is just another bad omen. [read more]

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Ethnic Cleansing by Starvation

A US-financed assessment of the overall malnutrition level among Palestinian children, released this month by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), found that one in five Palestinian children under the age of five now suffers from chronic or acute malnutrition. This astonishing statistic is on par with impoverished nations such as Chad and Nigeria, and actually surpasses rates of child malnutrition in Somalia and Bangladesh. Such figures, the report noted, are "considered an emergency by most humanitarians and public health officials." The report points to Israeli- imposed closures and sieges of major civilian centers as the direct and primary cause. [read more]