What does Hillary Clinton have against Jewish babies?
An editorial in the Washington Times rips Hillary Clinton for trying to order Israeli women who live over the 1949 armistice line to stop having babies. What does Hillary Rodham Clinton have against Jewish babies? Last week, the secretary of state issued a demarche to Tel Aviv stating that Washington "wants to see a stop to [West Bank] settlements - not some settlements, not outposts, not natural-growth exceptions." The euphemism "natural growth" refers to children. About 9,600 babies were born in West Bank settlements in 2007, and the State Department views these bundles of joy as a threat to its precious peace process.Read the whole thing.
The demographic issue is central to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Some Israelis fear that they will be overwhelmed by a rapidly growing Palestinian population, so to the settler population, having children is a patriotic act. The new arrivals require larger houses, schools, playgrounds and other facilities, hence the need for the settlement growth that is upsetting Foggy Bottom.
The no-baby declaration came as welcome news to Palestinians, who are rapidly losing their advantage in the breeding battle. Aggressive international family-planning programs contributed to Palestinian fertility rates dropping almost 30 percent between 2003 and 2008, to 3.31 children born per woman. This compares to 2.77 births in Israel, which experienced a 10 percent increase over the same five-year time period. If these trends continue, Israelis will be outpacing Palestinians in a few years.
For this and religious reasons, abortion is a crime in the Palestinian Authority unless the physical health of the mother is endangered. Palestinians generally are what in American parlance would be called "pro-life." A 2008 study by WorldPublicOpinion.org showed that just 38 percent of Palestinians say abortion should be an individual decision, compared to a global average of 52 percent. Most support some form of government restrictions.
Hillary Clinton would not be happy with my neighborhood in Jerusalem. We are over the 1949 armistice line, and we average more than eight children per family (yes, we are an average to slightly below average sized family in this neighborhood). On Friday night, I went to one of three celebrations of the birth of a baby boy in the neighborhood that I knew about (there may have been more) and one can assume that at least as many girls were also born last week to the 2000+ families in this neighborhood. On Friday evening, my sons reported seeing an ambulance taking another woman to the hospital to give birth while we were in synagogue.
We celebrate our children, whose rearing is one of our most important goals in life (along with studying Torah and fearing God). Mrs. Clinton's words fall on deaf ears here, as they do in just about every other corner of this country.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:39 PM
6 Comments:
Agreed. Israeli Jews are not going to stop having children to bolster the Palestinians' demographic advantage. If Hillary Clinton thinks Israel is going to agree to a ZPG freeze, she will be waiting for that to happen until hell freezes over first!
וַיְצַו פַּרְעֹה לְכָל-עַמּוֹ לֵאמֹר כָּל-הַבֵּן הַיִּלּוֹד הַיְאֹרָה תַּשְׁלִיכֻהוּ
"Palestinians generally are what in American parlance would be called "pro-life."
I'm shocked that you let that go without a comment. Pro-life??
Gershon,
They are pro-creation of 'Palestinian' life and its sustenance for long enough to become cannon fodder.
But they are definitely 'pro-life' in the sense that they do not abort babies (which is the sense in which the Times was using it and which is why I let it pass). Arafat famously referred to the 'Palestinian' woman's womb as 'our greatest weapon.'
I would reply to Carl and to Gershon that the Palestinians do abort themselves quite effectively by immersing their children in a culture of death. A society obsessed with death such as the Palestinians are, will not be for long in this world, which nullifies the Palestinians' birth rate advantage over the Jews. Mere superiority of numbers as the Jews well know, is not really the crucial determinant in long term historical survival. Those betting on the Jews to vanish have always been off the mark and will be again in the future.
As always, it is not fair to blame Hillary personally for merely parroting Obama's policy.
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