The Jewish population of Israel has fallen to its lowest levels since the country was founded more than 70 years ago, according to the latest data from the nation’s Central Bureau of Statistics released on Monday, The Jerusalem Post reports.
In 1948, the year of Israel’s founding, the population was 82.1% Jewish. Today, Israel’s population is 73.9% Jewish, a drop of more than 0.5% in the last three years, when the population was 74.5% Jewish.
Israel’s population stands at about 9.33 million, with about 6.98 million Jews and about 1.97 million Arabs, or 21.1% of the population, which includes Muslims and Arab Christians. Around 467,000 are listed as others, which includes non-Arab Christians and members of other religions or who have no religious classification.
The Jerusalem Post notes that about 3.3 million people have immigrated to the country since its founding, and that about 1.5 million of those immigrants arrived after 1990 following the collapse of the Soviet Union. At the end of 2019, about 46% of the global Jewish population lived in Israel, and about 78% of Israeli Jews are native-born.
The Census Bureau estimates that the country’s population will increase to about 11.1 million by 2030 and 13.2 million by 2040. Israel’s 100th anniversary of its independence could be celebrated by as many as 15.2 million citizens, according to the CBS forecast.
“This year, too, the proportion of the Jewish population in the State of Israel continued to decline rapidly, largely due to immigration, but most of the public is unaware of the tectonic demographic changes,” Yonatan Jakubowicz, executive director of the Israeli Immigration Policy Center, told the Post.
“The CBS data emphasize the strategic importance of a responsible immigration policy that will safeguard Israel’s interests as a Jewish and democratic state,” he added.
Source: Newmax
