The birth-rate threat

Israeli professor Ilan Pappe has a terribly disturbing essay in the London Review of Books about Israel's "demographic problem." Here's an excerpt, describing Israeli enforcement of a law that bans Israelis from passing on citizenship to Palestinians they marry (a law so blatantly racist it's unbelievable).

In the dead of night on 24 January this year, an elite unit of the border police seized the Israeli Palestinian village of Jaljulya. The troops burst into houses, dragging out 36 women and eventually deporting eight of them. The women were ordered to go to their old homes in the West Bank. Some had been married for years to Palestinians in Jaljulya, some were pregnant, many had children, but the soldiers were demonstrating to the Israeli public that when a demographic problem becomes a danger, the state will act swiftly and without hesitation. One Palestinian member of the Knesset protested, but the action was backed by the government, the courts and the media.

The rest of the essay has interesting, depressing points about just how democratic Israel is, and how the Arab-Israeli birth rate may eventually become a "danger" so imminent it will justify all actions.