After Douglas al-Bazi, an Iraqi Catholic priest, brought hundreds of refugees from Islamic State into his church in the city of Erbil, he reached out to contacts in the U.S. for help. Soon he was working with two CIA veterans, who in turn enlisted the assistance of Aron Shaviv, an Israeli political consultant. Shaviv convinced the Slovak government—which has vigorously protested EU pressure to accept refugees—to settle Bazi and over 100 members of his Aramaic-speaking flock within its borders. Amanda Borschel-Dan writes:

[Shaviv’s] team tried at least a dozen countries before getting a hearing in Slovakia. “My policy was the path of least resistance—the first country that showed any kind of positive leanings was Slovakia,” said Shaviv.

[He] explained that it was important in Slovakia, still a very traditional Catholic country, to get both the Vatican and its local religious authorities involved. “We thought that the right approach was to get the Slovak church to take ownership and say ‘these are our people,’” said Shaviv.

And after many trips to the Vatican, [the church] came on board in saving Iraqi Catholics. “The . . . messaging that got them to really identify and take ownership was that this is the last Christian community on earth that speaks the language of Jesus,” Shaviv commented.

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.