Every Ramadan (this year, April 23–May 23), TV networks throughout the Arab world air special miniseries for the holy month. While Egyptian television currently features a sci-fi drama imagining a future where Israel has been destroyed, a Saudi Arabian channel is broadcasting something very different. Hussein Ibish, noting that Ramadan programs “present one of the most interesting bellwethers of popular culture in the Middle East,” explains:

The dramatic series Um Haroun constitutes a significant breakthrough in Arab popular-culture representations of Jewish-Arab relations. . . . Set in an unnamed Gulf country that most closely resembles Kuwait, it tells the story of how ties between Jewish and Arab communities were snapped by the creation of Israel in 1948.

Rather than casting Israel and Jews as malign elements that ought to be extirpated from the Middle East, as [Arab] TV shows sometimes do, it takes a more nuanced reading of region’s recent history and current realities. It is a humanizing and sympathetic portrait of the Jews of the Arab world, a wistful account of what was lost on all sides when these communities left for Israel.

The showrunners had to navigate past censorship (and cultures of self-censorship) in multiple jurisdictions, meaning a lot of authorities signed off on [it]. But the show shouldn’t be dismissed as an officially approved effort to shift public opinion for purposes of geopolitical expediency. It is a genuine reflection of a generational shift in attitudes: many young Arabs already sense that Israel and Jewish nationalism are a natural and non-pathological part of a regional environment that contains significant and legitimate non-Arab power centers.

Yasir Arafat was often quoted as saying that his “strongest weapon is the womb of an Arab woman.” That is, he believed the high birthrates of both Palestinians and Arab Israelis ensured that Jews would eventually be a minority in the Land of Israel, at which point Arabs could call for a binational state and get an Arab one. Using similar logic, both Israelis and their self-styled sympathizers have made the case for territorial concessions to prevent such an eventuality. Yet, Yoram Ettinger argues, the statistics have year after year told a different story:

Contrary to the projections of the demographic establishment at the end of the 19th century and during the 1940s, Israel’s Jewish fertility rate is higher than those of all Muslim countries other than Iraq and the sub-Saharan Muslim countries. Based on the latest data, the Jewish fertility rate of 3.13 births per woman is higher than the 2.85 Arab rate (since 2016) and the 3.01 Arab-Muslim fertility rate (since 2020).

The Westernization of Arab demography is a product of ongoing urbanization and modernization, with an increase in the number of women enrolling in higher education and increased use of contraceptives. Far from facing a “demographic time bomb” in Judea and Samaria, the Jewish state enjoys a robust demographic tailwind, aided by immigration.

However, the demographic and policy-making establishment persists in echoing official Palestinian figures without auditing them, ignoring a 100-percent artificial inflation of those population numbers. This inflation is accomplished via the inclusion of overseas residents, double-counting Jerusalem Arabs and Israeli Arabs married to Arabs living in Judea and Samaria, an inflated birth rate, and deflated death rate.

The U.S. should derive much satisfaction from Israel’s demographic viability and therefore, Israel’s enhanced posture of deterrence, which is America’s top force- and dollar-multiplier in the Middle East and beyond.