Comments to: Israel’s Slow Death by Billy Jones

Your story is based on taking a number excerpts of various media stories about Israel to concoct a picture of imminent destruction and demise of the country. Many of your conclusions are, however, wrong in its assumptions or in your interpretation. Here a few examples:

1. US AID: Israel was in 2023 one of the leading OECD economies. It’s per capita GDP exceeds that of Germany. The US Aid, which you state is $3.5 billion per annum, is about 0.6% of Israel’s GDP. Whilst it probably helps, it is not significant in size, however it is important in terms of technology.
2. Israel’s Defence Industry: you conclude that the leading Israeli companies producing weapons and other military equipment are successful because of US aid money being used to buy goods from them. This is wrong. These companies are today amongst the leading defence companies in the world providing cutting edge technology to a great number of countries around the world. Whilst Israel’s defence budget is significant and the largest within the Israeli governments total budget, the companies you mentioned rank amongst the greatest exporters in the world in their field.
3. Water: Israel started developing desalination plants decades ago. Water was always scare and dependency on the water in the Jordan River was comsidered to be potentially strategically threatened. Contrary to your prognosis of a crisis in the supply of water, there is an unlimited supply of seawater and the only limit would be the availability of capital to build additional plants. There is no shortage of such capital.
4. Population growth: the most recent trends are that Israel’s Jewish non orthodox population has birthrates similar to the orthodox. The Muslim population growth in Israel, as well as in the occupied territories, are higher than that of Jewish Israelis as more children are being produced, in many cases from families where husbands have more than one wife. However, there are no restriction when it comes to the rights of Israeli Arabs to vote. Currently around 15% of the seats in the Israeli parliament are held by Arab parties; a higher representation in Israel’s parliament is possible if the participation of Arabs at the time of elections are greater than it was. But this would also assume that all Israeli Arabs would be voting exclusively for Arab parties which is not the case.

There are many other errors in your conclusions but the above should suffice to question your opinion piece.

Dr Peter Neustadt

16.2.2023