Earlier this month, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who had served as president of Argentina from 2007 to 2015, was sworn in as the country’s vice-president—an office that will likely protect her from prosecution for various charges of corruption. Some of these charges relate to her government’s attempts to help Iran avoid repercussions for its role in the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, in exchange for access to oil and economic support. Mark Dubowitz and Toby Dershowitz write:

On January 18, 2015, the day before the special prosecutor for the AMIA investigation, Alberto Nisman, was due to present his findings of Kirchner’s alleged cover-up to the Argentine congress, he was found brutally murdered in his apartment. . . . The charges against Kirchner for this episode included “treason against the homeland,” punishable by up to 25 years in prison. But there is now serious doubt that the case will go to trial.

When [the former president Mauricio] Macri originally took over from [Kirchner] at the end of 2015, he sought to improve . . . relations with the West by strengthening intelligence ties and voiding the memorandum of understanding [Kirchner had concluded] with Iran. It had called for a joint Iranian-Argentine investigation of the Jewish-center bombing—despite the fact that Nisman had provided evidence that it was Iran’s most senior officials who planned and ordered the attack.

Macri also went a step further by launching a proper investigation into Nisman’s death, one that determined the prosecutor was in fact assassinated for investigating the AMIA bombing (and didn’t commit suicide, as Kirchner’s government was initially quick to claim after his body was discovered). On July 18, 2019, the 25th anniversary of the AMIA bombing, Macri’s government formally declared Hizballah—which had executed the bombing as Iran’s proxy—a terrorist entity.

Despite reports that it was considering reversing this decision, the new government has decided not to. Still, note Dubowitz and Dershowitz, “the message has been sent that Hizballah can likely count on weak, if any, enforcement against its activities in the region.” But there is a sliver of good news: Buenos Aires is eager for American economic support, which gives Washington leverage that can be used to pry it away from Tehran.

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.