Some Stunning Stats About Jews

From the Watcher's Council's winning non-Council post for this week, "Israel Has No Right to Exist" from One Cosmos:

One wonders if the average anti-Semite even knows that there are fewer than 15 million Jews in the entire world, which represents just .227% of the population. [ ... ]

In a column a few months back, Dennis Prager cited perhaps the most tragic statistic that haunts the human race. Throughout history, so many Jews have been murdered for being Jews, that “While the world's population is about 30 times larger than 2,000 years ago, the Jewish population has barely doubled. Had Jews been left alone to procreate at the same rate as others, there would be about 180 million Jews in the world today.” [ ... ] [Yes, Prager allows, some of the loss is due to assimilation -- but much of the assimilation is due to persecution.]

[I]n a recent post, I cited the evidence of Charles Murray, whose book Human Accomplishment demonstrates how, in nearly every important human endeavor--biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, medicine, visual arts, literature, music and philosophy--Jews are staggeringly over-represented given their small numbers. In mathematics the actual-to-expected ratio is 12:1. In philosophy it is 14:1. In physics 9:1. In medicine and biology, 8:1. [Pssst -- how about in blogging??] Remember, these ratios are not just measuring the raw numbers of doctors, scientists and artists, but the number of truly great and significant ones.

"Gagdad Bob's" conclusion: "Israel doesn't have the right to exist. Rather, it has the obligation to exist."

(To those who would say Jews could exist just fine without Israel: first of all, the statistical evidence shows that they have not existed just fine without it, not at all. Second, Prager's column points out that most Jews view the existence of Israel -- an Israel fiercely determined to exist -- as a kind of guarantee of the existence of Jews, both as symbol and as actual refuge. So if the community of nations cannot accept the existence of Israel among them, it means that no Jew will be safe anywhere, ever, except on temporary sufferance of some magnanimous enclave.

I should also point out that Gagdad Bob can't treasure Jews in general without despising Muslims in general, and can't decry Mel Gibson's “F*****g Jews... The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world" without going on to say that "Islam is quite literally responsible for almost all of the wars in the world." "Quite literally responsible for almost all" being a metastasis of Samuel Huntington's claim that "Muslims were participants in twenty-six of fifty ethnopolitical conflicts, and two-thirds to three-quarters of intercivilizational wars.")

Comments

[AmbivaBro]

A friend of mine, Jewish, made two startling declarations to me last night: he doesn't believe Israel exist 50 years from now, but he'd move there in a heartbeat if he could convince his wife to go.

To this friend, even a home with no future is better than the "magnanimous enclave" we live in today.

[Melinda]

I would love to see a post-Zionist world--a world in which there is no need for an Israel. As in Lennon's "Imagine no religions" crap, etc.

Unfortunately, the way things still are today, having there be no Israel would turn us back into a pre-Zionist world.

And I say that as somebody who's never been to Israel, or my husband either, because regardless of whose "fault" anything is, we'd still be blown into the same itty bitty pieces all over a pizzeria. So maybe it's the idea of Israel that counts. Especially Israel having The Bomb. Which I hope to God they never use.

[amba]

There are times when I think the Abrahamic religions have been more of a curse to the world than a blessing. What's the point of teaching people to live more decently and morally on earth if you're then going to blow the place up . . .

[Danny Miller]

Of all the info here, I am most shocked by David's friend who doesn't believe Israel will exist 50 years from now.

I would hate to think of any world where Israel doesn't exist, and not just because we "need" it.

[amba]

Danny, I fear that it may be a lot sooner than 50 years. And if this country is as committed to Israel as it says it is, that then starts WWIII. (Or IV, if this is III we're in now.)

Of the 3 Abrahamic religions, the Jews are the only ones who don't have an "end times" scenario (or they do, but it's a tiny minority phenomenon). Yet their very presence seems to excite or enrage the others. "Twenty centuries of stony sleep/ vexed to nightmare . . . " Even "Gagdad Bob's" post doesn't explain to me why the Jews, this tiny handful of people, send others into such paroxysms of hatred. I can only think of two explanations.

The rational explanation is that people just love to have a scapegoat, someone to hate, and the Jews have become that over time, traditionally. People hate Jews simply because people have always hated Jews. Remember that kids' book "A Hole is to Dig?" An umbrella is to forget? Jews are to hate.

The metaphysical explanation is that the Jews brought a higher moral and spiritual standard, an evolutionary imperative, into the world and it is this that people, or the evil force behind them, resents. As if destroying the Jews would be a kind of lobotomy that destroyed the conscience of the world, the silent reproachful watcher, and would allow evil to have its way. But that doesn't make sense because Christianity and Islam developed from Judaism.

I guess there's a third explanation, that Jews have selected themselves for brains (mainly for purposes of Talmudic disputation, which had all the prestige in Jewish communities) and that people don't trust anyone who's very smart. Such ones must naturally be scheming for world domination, what else are brains for? Add that to money, the fact that Jews were allowed to make interest when Christians were not -- enabling the Renaissance and the exploration of the New World -- and you have all the ingredients of a nefarious conspiracy . . .

Any other theories?

[AmbivaBro]

I vote for your "metaphysical" explanation.

[reader_iam]

Amba: I don't have time to excerpt it here--and actually, now that I think about it I might have to violate fair-use to give the argument justice--but Thomas Sowell happens to address the issue of anti-semitism and its persistent pervasiveness in one of his essays in "Black Rednecks and White Liberals." The essay is titled "Are Jews Generic," and it is very much on point--whether you'd agree with his analysis or nor in all respects--regarding the question you ask here in comments. In his essay, explores the phenomenon of middleman minorities--of which Jews are the stellar example but not the only one--their characteristics, and what the larger societal reactions have been to them throughout history. Fascinating premise.

I realize that many people find Sowell controversial (which, if they read his columns, of which I'm not a fan, as opposed to his books, I can understand). But please don't be put off by that, the title of the book, or the title of the essay. If you're able to get your hands on a copy of the book, I strongly recommend your reading that essay and seeing if it resonates, in whole or in part.

[amba]

"Middleman minorities," hmmmm . . . why do I have a hunch Armenians also qualify?

[reader_iam]

Yep. The Lebanese, too, in some instances and places and times. The Ibo. The Chinese in some circumstances. Some Indian subpopulations. Etc.

Lord, you're sharp.

But the Jews pretty much are the best and most enduring example, throughout history and around the world, of the phenomenon.