In 2017, the “Walled-Off Hotel” opened in Bethlehem, just a few feet from the security fence that runs through the West Bank. Its owner, the anonymous British “street artist” known as Banksy, has decorated it with his own artwork, making the entire hotel an exercise in fake-war-crimes kitsch. David Collier reports on his visit to the hotel:

On the one side, [the hotel] can be viewed as an obscene gimmick. A privileged activist gaining publicity through a stunt that objectifies people immersed in a real-world tragedy. On the other are the Jews, who are thoroughly demonized by the false narrative presented inside. Jews become alien god-killers, too greedy and racist to open their arms to a peaceful downtrodden people. In the middle are the useful idiots: ignorant tourists who come to the hotel, see the exhibits, and then leave slightly more radicalized than they were before they came. . . .

Inside the [hotel’s] museum are several videos. The most important one [purports to] place the conflict into context. . . . It is difficult to overstate the historical distortion in the video. . . . It completely denies Jewish history in the land and presents Jews as alien invaders. . . .

Throughout the museum, there is use of Holocaust imagery, part of an ongoing strategy of equating the results of the 1947-48 conflict with the Holocaust. . . . [One piece] suggests Israelis kill for money, Arabs die just so Israelis can test weapons, and the conflict only [exists] so that Jewish business can thrive. . . . Everywhere you look is the image of a brutal Holocaust committed by money-grabbing Jews against a defenseless and helpless population. . . . [This is not to mention the] classic anti-Semitic imagery [of] Jews as god-killers, [found in] an image of a Christlike figure with a red-dot sight on his forehead. . . .

[T]he truth is that . . . far more hate went into building the exhibits within the hotel than went into building the defensive wall it was designed to protest. One was designed to save lives, the other only sets out to demonize a people.

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.