In December 2012, the African National Congress (ANC)—which has been South Africa’s governing party since the fall of apartheid in 1994—officially endorsed the movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction (BDS) Israel. The party’s deputy secretary-general (among many others) has made clear that the ANC is opposed to Israel’s existence, rather than to its rule over any particular territory. Another operative praised Hitler on social media. The South African BDS movement has been particularly brutal in its tactics, and willing to engage in blatant anti-Semitism. Annika Hernroth-Rothstein explains:

The precipitous growth of the BDS movement in South Africa began with Thabo Mbeki’s presidency from 1999 to 2008, and stemmed from his unusual fascination with the Arab-Israeli conflict. . . . Mbeki’s belief was that now that South Africa had been liberated from apartheid, the natural next step was to free the Palestinians from Zionism—caricatured as a colonial movement dispossessing and expropriating the native population. . . .

[I]n the 21 years that elapsed since the death of apartheid, the government of South Africa has proved to be corrupt and weakened, deprived of an obvious enemy and an inspiring political fight. Israel has provided both those things.

One might say that the ANC and BDS South Africa are in business together, and it is a business, since both need to highlight “apartheid” in order to justify their existence and their actions to the outside world. . . . If the Arab-Israeli conflict ends, activists will not get paid or gain attention; by pursuing a line of “no compromise,” the BDS movement ensures that this will never happen. Young black South Africans, those who should be the future of the country, are being used to preserve the status quo rather than build a better future, once again paying the price for a dishonest system.

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.