When the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, visited Rome earlier this week, ancient nude statues in the Capitoline Museum—where he and the Italian prime minister held a press conference—were concealed behind large partitions out of deference to Rouhani’s sensibilities. Franck Salameh comments:

The symbolism of [Rouhani’s] January 26 meeting with Pope Francis in Vatican City, both lurid and grandiose in its optics, must have sent chills down the spines of disappearing Near Eastern Christians; dwindling, bruised, besieged “first nations” who owe in no small part much of their decline to Iran’s decades-long aggressive illiberal practices throughout the region.

Yet in an abject gesture of cultural genuflection—or abdication, or diplomatic etiquette, depending on the universe one wishes to live in—Italian officials opted to reward Rouhani for the harm that his government continues to breed around the world, [even going so far as] removing alcohol from the menu of the state dinner given in his honor. . . .

Ought Hassan Rouhani’s “religious special needs,” in the capital city of Christendom no less, be seen as the innocent sensitivities of an innocent Muslim cleric, or might there be something more nefarious afoot? Is Rome’s yielding to Rouhani’s antics in line with common diplomatic courtesies, or is this a form of submission, . . . a Muslim cleric’s thumbing his nose at practitioners of a creed he considers inherently inferior? This all may very well be a tempest in a teapot, but the optics are supremely emblematic, especially to those “once bitten twice shy.”

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.