The book of Exodus opens with a demographic boom among the Israelite population of Egypt in the decades following the death of Joseph; this population explosion, in fact, is what spurs Pharaoh to enslave the Israelites. Failing to stem the tide, Pharaoh then issues his genocidal decree to the midwives: drown all male Israelite children. The midwives’ refusal to comply is the first of many acts of heroism in this book, as Sarah Rindner writes:

[T]he fecundity and abundance of the beginning of Exodus is characterized in a way that [suggests it is] somewhat unseemly or even animalistic. Israelite fertility frightens and perhaps sickens the Egyptians. The Israelite population explosion seems somehow related to the Egyptian attempt to dehumanize the former through back-breaking labor. When the midwives Shifrah and Puah explain to Pharaoh why they are unable to clamp down on Israelite procreation, they say that Hebrew women’s reproductive powers are unstoppable; [the Hebrew phrase they employ is] usually translated as “because they [the Israelite women] are vigorous,” but [can be rendered more literally as] “because they are like animals.” . . .

Shifrah and Puah straddle the line between unbridled nature and conscious human choice and control. By profession, they are human intermediaries in the realm of teeming and unfettered nature. Pharaoh asks them to disrupt these natural processes by killing every boy that is born, but they resist by pointing to the uncontainable fecundity of the Hebrew women. In fact, their act of resistance is not a relinquishing of human responsibility in the face of nature run amok. Their standing up to Pharaoh represents precisely the opposite—it is a refusal to see human procreation in purely naturalistic, amoral terms. This is why the midwives are explicitly described as “fearing God.” For the midwives, awareness of God is a bulwark against undifferentiated masses and human anonymity.

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.