MidnightCall Magazine
In this issue:
- Before the Last Flood — By Norbert Lieth
- Gaza Flotilla: Aggression or Self-Defense? — By Arno Froese
- Far East AsiaTrendsToday – Part III:Geo-prophecy or Geopolitics? — By Wilfred Hahn
News From Israel MagazineIn this issue:
- The Myth of the Al-Aqsa Mosque: Part 1 — By Herbert Novitsky
- ON THE HORIZON:
- Obama Honors Jewish Heritage Month
- Building an Electronic Human Brain
- ‘Iran Critics Must Get Rid of Nukes,’ Says Turkish PM
- Israel Joins Prestigious OECD Club
- Israel Accepted after Unanimous Vote
- Spy Satellite Successfully Launched
How Many Jews Would There Be If Not for the Holocaust?
If not for the Holocaust, there would be as many as 32 million Jews worldwide, instead of the current 13 million, demographer Professor Sergio Della Pergola has written.
In the article, to be published in “Beshvil Hazikaron,” the periodical of the Yad Vashem Holocaust commemoration authority’s school of Holocaust studies, he writes: This was the destruction of a generation, and what we are lacking now is not only that generation, it is their children and their children.
According to Della Pergola, while the birth rate of the Jewish population outside Israel is relatively low, the young Jewish population of Eastern Europe has great potential for growth. “What would happen if there were another 10 million Jews in Eastern Europe? It raises questions that are like science fiction – for example, would the State of Israel have come into being?”
Della Pergola says another demographic outcome of the Holocaust is the lower relative number of Jews in the world. “At present, the percentage of Jews in the world is constantly in decline. Before the Holocaust, the rate was eight Jews per thousand people in the world; today it is two per thousand.”
www.haaretz.com, 19 April 2009