Demographic Demonology

A friend sent this around:

Anyone care to comment on the numbers they [Barak Ravid] are saying*, and the consequences if it's true?

I quickly responded:

sure. Yoram Ettinger has proven the PCBS lies.

He calls it demographobia. Check his other articles. And search my blog, looking for "demography", etc.

Another acquaintance wrote this:

Even according to the inflated PCBS numbers, as they appear in the piece, there are 4 million Arabs in the West Bank-Israel. The uninflated numbers are closer to 3.2 million (here; and here).

According to the ICBS numbers, there are 5.9 million Jews in that same area. This number is undisputed. Now, it makes no difference which numbers you choose, the inflated PCBS ones or the uninflated Israeli ones, the figures say the same thing: Jews constitute 60-65% of the population of Israel and the West Bank together, and even in the highly unlikely scenario that every single West Bank Arab becomes a citizen of Israel (presuming Israel were to allow such a thing) together with every single Arab resident of Jerusalem that has hitherto refrained from accepting Israeli citizenship, there is little chance there will be an Arab majority of Israeli citizens in the foreseeable future. Ravid’s attempt to pretend otherwise is based on including inflated Gaza numbers, and inflated Gaza population growth rates, neither of which are relevant.

*

What Ravid wrote:

Last week, the Palestinian Authority's Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) published its report summarizing 2011...The report revealed that the number of Palestinians in the territories stands at about 4.2 million people: 2.6 million in the West Bank and 1.6 million in the Gaza Strip. Added to them are about 1.4 million Palestinians who are Israeli citizens and about 5.6 million Palestinians that belong to the Arab countries and the rest of the world.

On the one hand, no Israelis are citizens of "Palestine", as yet, if at all.  Not fair.  On the other, why count abroad Arabs?  There are millions more Jews.  So?

In other words, Haaretz is again the Ha-Ha-Haaretz.

Boo!

^