The Israeli Immigration Policy Center has warned that without a major change, Israel's Jewish population will drop to less than 70% of its total population within less than a decade.
The warning follows Independence Day statistics published by Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), showing a drop of 0.3% over the past year. Currently, Jewish Israelis represent just 73.2 percent of the country's total population.
The CBS data published for Israel’s 76th Independence Day showed that the Jewish majority continues shrinking, hitting a new all-time low, at only 73.2%. Last year, Jewish Israelis represented 73.5% of the country's population.
Meanwhile, the Arab population continues growing, with an annual increase of 0.1%, while the percentage of “others,” which include non-Arab Christians, members of other religions or no religious classification, increased by 0.2%.
Yonatan Jakubowitz, founder and director of activities at the Israeli Immigration Policy Center, who analyzed the annual report said: "The CBS data shows us that the proportion of Jews in Israel's population continues to decrease at an alarming rate of almost a full percentage every three years - a decline in demographic terms."
"At this rate, the proportion of Jews in the population will drop below seventy percent in less than a decade.
"Research carried out by the Center explains the current trend: vast majority of the new olim (immigrants), who are eligible for the Law of Return, arrive legally but have a major impact in large numbers. More and more foreigners who are not eligible for the Law of Return arrive as part of family reunification and abuse of the procedures of the Ministry of the Interior."
He explained, "These days, when we see the growing anti-Semitism in the Western world, a large part of it comes from immigrants who arrived because of the failed immigration policies of those countries. They are now making the lives of the Jews their hell, we must maintain a responsible immigration policy that will ensure the future of the State of Israel also as a refuge for the people the Jewish people."