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Israel will be home to close to 12 million Jews by the country’s 100th birthday, demographers estimate.

By David Rosenberg, World Israel News

Israel’s Jewish population will number close to 12 million by the country’s 100th birthday, according to a projection released by the Central Bureau of Statistics on Monday.

The Jewish state’s total population numbered approximately 9,453,000 at the end of 2021 – the last year for which the report had complete data – including 7,456,000 people in the “Jews and others” category (representing 79% of the population) and approximately one million Arab Israelis (21%).

Of the nearly 7.5 million people included in the “Jews and others” category,” 93.7% were Jewish, or just under 7 million people. The remaining nearly half a million people in the “Jews and others” category were mostly non-Jewish immigrants who moved to Israel from Eastern Europe under the Law of Return after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Israel’s Jewish and Arab populations are both projected to continue to enjoy robust growth rates through 2065, though the Arab sector’s total fertility rate – the average number of children a woman will have in her life time – has declined in recent years to below that of the Jewish rate, which is estimated at around 3.0 children per woman.

Thus the natural growth rate of the Arab population is expected to fall slightly below that of the “Jews and others” group, with the Arab sector projected to grow by 57.7% by the year 2048 compared to 61.1% growth in the “Jews and others” category.

By 2048, the CBS report predicts, Israel’s population will have grown to 15.6 million, including more than 12 million people in the “Jews and others” category, with a disproportionate amount of the growth coming from the Jewish segment of the category.

Israel’s Arab population will decline slightly as a proportion of the total population in 2048, falling from 21.0% in 2021 to 20.8%.

As a result of declining birthrates, the Arab-Israeli population’s age structure will undergo a significant change, with far more middle-aged and elderly members and a proportionately smaller number of children and young adults.

While 31% of Arab Israelis in 2021 were in the 0-14 age cohort, by 2065, that age cohort will make up just 22% of the Arab-Israeli sector’s population. The Arab-Israelis over 65, however, will go from 5% in 2021 to 17% by 2065.

The Jewish age structure will remain far more stable, with the percentage of elderly Jews rising from 14% to 15% by 2065, and the percentage under the age of 15 rising from 27% to 29%.

Arab Israelis will make up just 19.3% of Israel’s population by 2065, compared to 80.7% for the “Jews and others” category.

Israel’s Arab population in 2021 included Druze, who made up 7.4% of the Arab population, Christians (6.9%) and Muslims (85.5%).

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The promises of environmental stewardship from Canada’s political establishment clash with its support for fossil fuel interests. With each mile of country that burns in wildfire, this unwavering support for the oil industry is looking more and more deranged.

A waterbomber drops water onto the Cameron Bluffs wildfire near Port Alberni, British Columbia, Canada, on June 6, 2023. (James MacDonald / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

As wildfires spread across Canada, Justin Trudeau sought to showcase his commitment to responsible environmental stewardship. He told reporters that

there are some politicians that still think you can have a plan for great jobs and growing the economy without having a plan to fight climate change. . . . But Canadians know that fighting climate change is necessary both to create those great jobs and opportunities but also to prevent the catastrophic and expensive losses that Canadians are facing increasingly over the years.

It is only to be expected that Trudeau would want to distance himself from his conservative rivals at both the federal and provincial level. Their crude efforts to downplay the significance of the wildfires, often bordering on outright climate denial, are not for him. He is careful to say all the right things about environmental issues, even as he serves the interests of fossil fuel companies. And he is not alone — parties from across the political spectrum greenwash their public statements while courting Big Oil.

Worsening Wildfire Seasons

In 2019, Mike Flannigan at the University of Alberta noted the huge long-term increase in the destructive impacts of wildfires in Canada. “We burn about 2.5 million hectares a year on average — that’s using about a 10-year average,” he said. “It’s more than doubled since the late ’60s and early ’70s.”

Yet, this year, things are much worse, and the scale of the devastation has intensified dramatically, with four million hectares going up in flames by the first week of June. Following an exceptionally warm and dry spring, “[f]ires across Canada have already burned an area that’s 12 times the 10-year average for this time of year.”

The spread of the fires has forced evacuations in various parts of the country, with particularly serious developments for Quebec. On June 4, there were “136 active fires in the province, including about 20 that are priorities because they threaten residences or infrastructure.” Thousands of people were subject to mandatory evacuation notices, and Quebec premier François Legault announced that “authorities had no choice but to leave the hamlet of Clova to burn, drawing the ire of local residents.”

As the fires intensified, the massive plumes of smoke were carried to major urban centers throughout the eastern portion of North America, bringing home the realities of climate change to millions of people in the most direct fashion. According to the CBC, the air quality in Ottawa in early June “was so bad that it cracked through the top of a risk scale.”

As the smoke spread south of the border, the impact on cities in the eastern United States was dire. On June 7, NBC estimated that, “About 128 million people were under air quality alerts because of wildfire smoke and ozone in the U.S. . . . For smoke alone, around 100 million were under alerts across 16 states.” At one point New York City topped the list of the world’s worst air pollution.

Though the weather conditions that saw cities blanketed in smoke have eased, the wildfire season is far from played out. “Ten new wildfires were reported in Canada,” teleSUR reported on June 9, “bringing the total number of wildfires in the country so far this year to 2,405, the Canadian Interagency Wildfire Center reported.” On that day, 422 fires were active, and 219 were acknowledged to be burning out of control. The prospects for July, August, and into the autumn are alarming in the extreme.

Cutting Public Budgets and Building Pipelines

Canada’s approach to development, deeply rooted in the logic of a petrostate, has significantly contributed to the escalation of climate change impacts. As Todd Gordon and Geoffrey McCormack put it in Briarpatch, a

key pillar of the state and capitalists’ response to Canadian capitalism’s crisis is to realize profits abroad through the expansion of oil and gas exports. Canada has one of the largest oil and gas reserves in the world, and the investments already sunk into the sector are greater than those of any other in the Canadian economy.”

This drive to expand oil and gas production is deeply rooted and long-standing. In 2008, activity in the oil sands of northern Alberta was described as “the world’s greatest modern oil rush,” and the frenzied drive to extract “dirty oil” evoked images of a “new Kuwait.” At that time, it was suggested in the Guardian that by “2050 Canada could be the second largest oil producer in the world, shifting the global energy security equation but exacerbating global climate change in a way that has scarcely been considered.”

The idea that Canada could be a top-tier global energy producer has become accepted across the mainstream political spectrum. Alongside that acceptance, concerns for ecological consequences have been largely disregarded, often limited to mere lip service. On the Right, federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, as he campaigned for the leadership of his party, declared, “We’re going to clear the way for pipelines. I am going to support pipelines south, north, east, west. We will build Canadian pipelines.”

The Conservative government in Ontario has played a particularly dreadful role in rolling back preparedness for climate change–related disasters. As one commentator notes, in light of the devastating wildfires in Ontario, “it becomes apparent that the Doug Ford government’s decision to slash the forest firefighting budget by a staggering 67 per cent ($142.2 million according to 2019 Ontario Budget) was a reckless and short-sighted move.”

In a recent session of Ontario’s legislature, Ford refused to accept that the present fires are linked to climate change. He accused the leader of the Opposition of “politicizing wildfires” when she made this suggestion. The United Conservative Party (UCP) government in Alberta is similarly responsible for cuts to wildfire-management services, and it also takes a dismissive attitude toward climate change. Premier Danielle Smith is theatrically bringing in arson investigators to divert attention from the unavoidable reality of what is driving the intensification of the threat of wildfires in Canada.

The predictable antics of right-wing politicians, as reprehensible as they are, shouldn’t divert our attention from the fact that faulty climate stewardship isn’t confined to conservatives. Canada’s purported social democrats, the New Democratic Party (NDP), hold power in British Columbia and formed the government in Alberta up until 2019 — two provinces in which the government has very cozy relationships with extractive indsutries.

NDP governments in British Columbia have backed destructive pipelines and handed lavish subsidies to fossil fuel companies. As party-watchers put it, “Without a major shakeup, the NDP is on track to blow B.C.’s [British Columbia’s] weak climate targets — and condemn people here and around the world to deep suffering.” Alberta’s former NDP premier and present Opposition leader, Rachel Notley, opposes the Trudeau Liberals on their weak plans to cut carbon emissions and insists that any such measures must involve consultation with oil and gas companies. Notley maintains that Alberta must be “realistic” and that it will make sure that the oil industry “is able to continue to flourish.”

Liberal Enablers

Trudeau challenges his conservative opponents’ readiness to play to the climate denial gallery, but his own government can’t be allowed to escape its massive share of the blame. As the Sierra Club put it, “Trudeau still has not been able to reconcile his promises to cut emissions with his support for the continued growth of Canada’s oil and gas industry.”

The Sierra Club authors also note that

Canada’s ownership and support of the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion is one of the clearest examples of this contradiction—but it’s not the only one. Trudeau has also given unflinching support to other major fossil fuel projects. . . . In British Columbia, Trudeau also backs LNG Canada, a massive gas pipeline and liquified natural gas (LNG) export project.

When opposition to the expansion of oil and gas operations has taken the form of protests, Canada’s federal police force, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), has cleared the way for the fossil fuel interests, and this has often involved the violation of indigenous sovereignty. In 2019, before the RCMP carried out “a militarized raid on ancestral lands of the Wet’suwet’en nation” to ensure pipeline construction, notes drawn up by RCMP commanders stated that arrests would be needed for “sterilizing [the] site.” Snipers were also put in position because the RCMP determined that “lethal overwatch is req’d.”

The single-mindedness with which the Trudeau Liberals have supported fossil fuel expansion is simply at odds with their empty promises around addressing the climate crisis. In 2017, Trudeau addressed an energy industry conference in Houston, Texas and told the appreciative crowd that “no country would find 173 billion barrels of oil in the ground and just leave them there.” He added, “nothing is more essential to the US economy than access to a secure, reliable source of energy. Canada is that source.”

Despite slight differences in approach and partisan disputes, Trudeau’s address in Houston reflected the collective stance of the entire Canadian political establishment. Without a massive and powerful movement for climate justice, we may expect those in power to disregard even so dire a warning as this year’s appalling wildfires. As far as Canada’s political establishment is concerned, the forests may be burning and the cities choking, but fossil fuel profits still come first.

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It is evident that the Saudis feel so offended by Biden that they are willing to move closer to Iran and Russia if that enables them to steer clear of the American president.

By Khaled Abu Toameh, The Gatestone Institute

Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states apparently still do not trust the Biden Administration, largely because of its perceived abandonment of its traditional Arab allies in the Middle East and President Joe Biden’s hostility to Saudi Arabia. This view began with then-presidential candidate Biden declaring the kingdom a “pariah” state — and is continuing with US attempts, still ongoing, to revive a “nuclear deal” that will enable an expansionist Iran to have nuclear weapons potentially to topple other countries in the region.

Saudi Arabia is not likely to improve its relationship with the Biden Administration in the aftermath of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to the Kingdom in early June, according to Arab political analysts and columnists.

“The Biden administration has misjudged its approach to the Middle East,” noted Jason Greenblatt, former Representative for International Negotiations for the Trump administration. “It alienated the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, and wasn’t particularly great with the United Arab Emirates.”

Meanwhile, the same Biden Administration has continued to cozy up to the Iranian regime, which the US’s own Department of State has called the “top state sponsor of terrorism” and which has, until recently, has not only been attacking both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates through Iran’s proxy militia, the Houthis in Yemen, but has also been supplying troops and weapons to Russia for attacking Ukraine.

The message being sent is that being America’s enemy pays handsomely, but, as with Afghanistan, being its friend can be fatal.

“US President Joe Biden visited Jeddah last summer and met King Salman bin Abdulaziz and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman,” noted Syrian author and political analyst Fatmeh Yasmin.

“That visit was a turning point in the history of the long relationship between the two countries, because it came from a president who had announced strict positions against Saudi Arabia during his election campaign. After he entered the White House, Biden quickly implemented what he pledged against the Kingdom: stopping the export of offensive weapons to it, punishing some Saudi security officials, and preventing many Saudi personalities from entering the US by not granting them visas.”

Referring to Blinken’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia, Yasmin said that the Biden administration is pretending that the old alliance between the Saudis and Americans has not changed.

“But Saudi Arabia, during the year separating the visit of Biden and Blinken, turned towards the Far East, unleashed unbridled relations with China, and allowed the Chinese to launch a Saudi-Iranian dialogue that led to the opening of the Iranian embassy in Riyadh after a seven-year diplomatic break… Ironically, the opening day of the restoration of the Iranian embassy in Riyadh was the day the US Secretary of State arrived in Jeddah.

“His visit also coincided with the visit of Venezuelan President [Nicolás] Maduro, whom the US places on the list of its enemies. Blinken, however, swallowed all that, and talked about good relations [with Saudi Arabia].”

Yasmin added that Saudi Arabia is not expected to make a full turn once again towards the US administration, as Biden’s last year in office is approaching and he will devote his time to his critical reelection campaign.

Yasmin pointed out that Saudi Arabia’s current policy was based on strengthening its relations with China and achieving reconciliation with Iran, Turkey and even Syria. “The current Saudi effort is completely devoted to building a Middle East in which the Kingdom would play a major role and strengthen its own economy and that of its neighbors,” she said.

The London-based Rai Al-Youm online newspaper said that Blinken’s visit to Saudi Arabia failed to achieve most of its goals, including promoting normalization between the Kingdom and Israel. According to Rai Al-Youm, the Saudi media ignored Blinken’s visit, while playing up the arrival of former Real Madrid soccer player Karim Benzema in the Kingdom after he joined the Saudi club Al-Ittihad.

“It was remarkable that the official Saudi media ignored, and certainly deliberately, the two-day visit of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to the Kingdom,” the newspaper said.

“He was the second US official to visit Saudi Arabia in the past month after US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, who was met with extreme coldness by Saudi officials and reportedly waited for three days before he had a meeting with the Saudi Crown Prince.”

Rai Al-Youm noted that Saudi newspapers published news about Blinken’s meetings with the Saudi Crown Prince and the foreign ministers of the Gulf states on the inside pages and in small print.

“Whoever wanted to read the news needed a magnifying glass,” the newspaper said.

“This [Saudi attitude] reflects the official view of the kingdom’s senior leadership. By contrast, the news and pictures of the French football player’s arrival in the Kingdom appeared on the front pages.”

‘Blinken’s failed visit’

The newspaper said that Blinken failed to convince the Saudis to normalize their relations with Israel. “The Saudi leadership had decided on its options and has redrawn the map of its international strategic alliances,” it argued.

“Blinken’s failed visit was an explicit reflection of these changes, and that is why we were not surprised to see the Kingdom received Blinken by reducing oil production in coordination with Russia and in an explicit defiance of the American demands to raise the production.

“Today, Saudi Arabia stands in the trench of the China-Russia alliance and supports a multipolar world while leaving the door partly open with the US and the West, perhaps in preparation for its semi-final closure. What is certain is that Blinken will return to Washington depressed after his visit failed to achieve most of its objectives.”

Aziz Alghashian, a Saudi analyst specializing in Gulf-Israel ties, said that Saudi Arabia does not want to present a gift to the Biden Administration by normalizing the Kingdom’s relations with Israel:

“This is not the American administration that Saudis want to gift a Saudi-Israeli normalization to… It’s going to be a massive achievement, it’s going to be under an American umbrella, and they don’t want the Biden administration to take any credit for that.”

In what appears as another sign of disrespect towards the Biden Administration, the Saudi Crown Prince was talking on the phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin while Blinken was meeting with Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan. According to some reports, Putin and the Saudi Crown Prince praised cooperation between their countries within the framework of OPEC+.

Despite the continued lack of clarity in Washington’s policy, wrote Lebanese columnist Sam Mansi, the visits to Saudi Arabia by Blinken and Sullivan aimed to allow the US to play three roles: reproduce the Chinese-brokered normalization between Saudi Arabia and Iran so it could be used for other purposes; stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons by returning to the negotiations with Tehran, and confront Iran’s activities in Gulf waters while activating the American role in protecting the security of the region in general.

“These three roles are considered reactions to the course of changes in the region that were anchored by the recent agreement between Riyadh and Tehran,” Mansi remarked.

“There are many obstacles to America’s success in playing these roles, including what is related to the nuclear file, as a nuclear Iran remains a concern for the Gulf and for other countries in the region. The [Saudi] agreement with Iran may alleviate this concern, but it will not dispel it. Washington’s success in settling this file in a way that does not threaten the security and stability of the Gulf states is the bottom line and it is what will determine the future of Washington’s relations with the countries of the region.”

Mansi added that the Biden administration has not yet understood that Saudi Arabia, like the Gulf countries in general, gives priority today to its national interests and the aspirations of its people, and is trying to balance its relations between East and West, in addition to pursuing a policy of “zero problems” with everyone, and accordingly it is worth reading the Saudi-Iranian reconciliation from this lens.

Do the three roles constitute an American strategy towards the region? The answer is no. Everything that the US administration is doing to restore its involvement in the region remains weak in the face of the Chinese openness.

Mansi continued:

“Whatever Blinken achieved during his visit to Saudi Arabia will remain weak and incomplete in the face of the dangers of ongoing tensions in Yemen, Syria, Iraq and other conflict areas, most notably the civil war that broke out recently in Sudan, in addition to the comprehensive challenges posed by the fraught relations between Iran and Israel, which may explode if there is no progress in the nuclear talks, and if more daring steps are not taken to limit Iran’s continuation of uranium enrichment, and Iran’s public support for Russia and its cooperation with it in the context of the war against Ukraine.”

Judging from the reactions of these Arabs to Blinken’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia, it is clear that the Saudis and other Arabs have lost confidence in the Biden administration and are not pinning any hopes on it to bring security and stability to the Middle East.

Moreover, it is evident that the Saudis feel so offended by Biden that they are willing to move closer to Iran and Russia if that enables them to steer clear of the American president. It will take more than a visit by Biden or Blinken or Sullivan to repair the damage that has been done to America’s relations with Arab countries that used to respect the US. In fact, it is safe to assume that the Arabs’ attitudes toward the Biden administration will remain steady regardless of any effort that this administration might choose to make.

Khaled Abu Toameh is an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem.

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