On Monday, a German organization that monitors anti-Semitism reported that, in the first half of 2022, there were 450 anti-Semitic incidents in Berlin, including 97 physical and verbal attacks on individual Jews. Ben Cohen observes:

While many of the incidents were triggered by the Israel-Palestinian conflict, several more involved Holocaust denial—a crime in Germany—and the abuse of the Holocaust by activists protesting the public-health measures introduced by the government to counter the COVID-19 pandemic.

The increasing willingness of offenders to make their anti-Semitic convictions public reflects the further erosion of Germany’s postwar taboo against anti-Semitism, which crystallized in the wake of the Holocaust. According to data released by the Federal Criminal Police Office in October, more than 1,500 anti-Semitic attacks had already been recorded around the country during 2022—an average of five per day.

At the same time, the German media have been awash with headlines about anti-Semitism throughout the year. . . . Anti-Semitic rhetoric has even been aired in the presence of the country’s leader, Olaf Scholz. In June, a smarting yet silent Scholz stood alongside the Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas at a press conference in Munich where the latter accused Israel of having perpetrated “50 Holocausts” against the Palestinians.

Germany enters 2023 with the very real prospect that, when it comes to anti-Semitism, next year could well be worse than this one.

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.