Israel should work to lower the birth rate in the country, millionaire Benny Landa, founder of Indigo, a market leader in digital color printing systems, said Tuesday. Landa was speaking at the Herzliya Conference held by the Institute for Policy and Strategy at Interdisciplinary Center. Landa advocated lowering the Israeli birthrate to salvage the economy.
“We are quickly marching towards becoming a third world country. Children under the age of 14 in Israel constitute 28 percent of the population, twice the average in the western world, and that puts an enormous burden on employment and the economy,” Landa said. Landa also said that although he knew he might be called anti-Jewish and a racist, he urged leaders "to assume their leadership and take unpopular steps" to reduce the birthrate in Israel. Landa explained that although Israel’s population was larger than that of Ireland, Denmark, and Sweden, Israel was by far the poorest of the four countries.
Among Landa's audience were numerous representatives from the Jewish Agency, devoted to bringing in immigrants from all over the world to Israel, but Landa's comments provoked no outrage in the lecture hall. Over the past few years many European countries have shown a great interest in increasing childbirth rates and now offer incentives like government stipends for families, much like the Israeli model.
The Israelis have the highest birth rates in the western world and that’s even after Israeli-Arab women are factored out of the equation. How ironic to note while most of us in the West are trying to seek ways to get out of the dead zone of population growth the Israelis are no where even near it.
It could be plausible to assume Landa just doesn’t like children, which is just one of my pet theories of why Canadian couples more or less choose to remain almost childless but he does have a valid point; if at some unknown date in the future Israel is to re-treat to behind the 1949 Armistice lines.
Re-alignment or convergence means an influx, and in the worst case scenario, upwards to almost a half a million Jews could flood into Israel proper. Very few states could absorb such an influx of citizens overnight into their infrastructure. Certainly, Israel has been unable to muster the political and financial will to settle the nearly 9,000 Jews from the Gaza Disengagement from approximately 2 years ago. It could ended up looking like Biafra famine.
However, any convergence or re-alignment plan cannot be seriously considered without a steep decline or an immediate scaling back of the high Israeli birthrate. Frankly, I pity the Israeli politician who would dare to suggest that Israelis scale back the size of their families while electioneering in the public forum.
1 comment:
Landa is an idiot.
Israel, and Israelis, love life, which of course results in lots of kids...
It's part of what makes this country great.
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