Debate, Bar Ilan University
Debate, Bar Ilan UniversityIsrael news photo: Yoni Kempinski

Jews and Arabs held a panel discussion on Sunday on the issue of the future demographics of the Jewish State. The event was held in Bar Ilan University and was sponsored by the Student Union and the nationalist “Im Tirtzu” (If You Will It) organization – though the Im Tirtzu banner was removed when Tamar Gozansky, a former MK of the Arab-Jewish Communist “Hadash” party, refused to ascend the podium until it was taken down.   

A chapter from the Channel Ten film series “The Scenario” was screened, depicting an imaginary situation in the year 2018 in which the Arab parties unite and become Israel’s second-largest party – a sample manifestation of the Arab threat to take over Israel demographically or otherwise.



MK Aryeh Eldad (National Union), Prof. Arnon Sofer of Haifa University, and Arab MK Afu Agbariyeh took part in the panel discussion.

Prof. Sofer told INN’s Yoni Kempinski (see video below) that even if the Arab parties ever unite, which he does not believe will happen, “we will find ways of neutralizing this threat. In the movie we just saw, it was implied that such a union would be backed by Iran or Hamas, such that there are ways of controlling it…”

 

Sofer is in favor of both uprooting most Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, giving most of the area to the Palestinian Authority, and strengthening Jerusalem by populating it with Jews. He said he believes that the two-state solution is the best one, “but I don’t believe it is realistic: the issues of Jerusalem, the right of return and the demilitarization of the PA entity cannot be resolved, and therefore we will not be able to reach a solution. The Arabs are therefore hoping to take us over demographically.”

He noted demographic predictions that foresee sharp religious-Jewish growth in Israel beginning in 2025.

Eldad told Kempinsky that if the two-state solution is implemented in Judea and Samaria, “it whets the Arab appetite for another two-state solution in the Negev, and in the Galilee, and in Jerusalem, etc… This is the ‘stage by stage’ program foreseen by Arafat. The Jews must stop  burying their heads in the sand and recognize that the Arabs in Israel are our enemy, and wish the Jewish state of Israel to disappear.”