Israel’s population now at 8 million
(JNS.org) Israel’s central bureau of statistics has released figures showing that the total population of the country has reached 7.98 million. Of those citizens, 75.4 percent are Jewish, 20 percent are Arab and four percent are defined as “other.”
According to Yedioth Ahronoth, the population of Israel increased by 145,000 people, or 1.8 percent, in 2012. About 170,000 babies were born in Israel in 2012, and 16,500 new immigrants came to Israel.
“Before the Holocaust there were around 18 million Jews in the world; after it, a bit more than 13 million. We are still at a bit more than 13 million. But now Israel’s Jewish population is close to half the Jewish nation worldwide,” said Dina Porat, chief historian of Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum, and the head of the Kantor Center for the study of contemporary European Jewry, according to the Guardian. “It puts Israel in a very central place. We are almost the only Jewish community that is growing,” she added.
In revolutionary ruling, rabbis allow gender selection
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) After years in which rabbis forbade any sort of gender selection at conception, a recent revolutionary Halachic (Jewish legal) ruling has now deemed it permissible to intervene and select the gender of a fetus in certain situations. The ruling was to be officially issued at a conference last week organized by the Puah Institute, which offers fertility treatments in line with Jewish law.
“There are three ways to select the gender of a fetus,” Institute founder Rabbi Menachem Burstein said. “The first way is the most natural, and depends on the man and the exact time the woman ovulates. Another method involves putting the sperm in a special apparatus to separate the male [Y chromosome] sperm from the female [X chromosome] sperm. The third method involves in vitro fertilization.”
According to Burstein, rabbis have forbidden any kind of intervention until now. “It is considered to be the spilling of seed, and a gross intervention, which is generally unacceptable. But since the number of requests has been growing, and since sometimes the requests stem from a deep psychological need, it is possible to permit the second and third methods,” he said.
“We have come across cases of people who felt it was important to have sons to carry on the family line because of the Holocaust, or families with six or seven daughters in which the father wants a son so much that it threatens the marriage. In cases like this, the matter will be examined by the appropriate rabbis, psychologists and medical committees, and clearly a Halachic compromise can be reached. Jewish law is making incredible strides as medicine advances. It is easiest always to say no, but sometimes, if the rules can be eased or and if solutions can be found then we should strive for that,” he said.
Adviser to Egyptian president: ‘Israel will be destroyed within a decade’
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) Dr. Essam el-Erian, a senior Muslim Brotherhood official and adviser to Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, has called on Jews who left Egypt to return, as “Israel will be destroyed within a decade.”
Speaking to the pan-Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat from Cairo, El-Erian called on Egypt’s Jews “to leave historic Palestine and return to the country from which they came,” and predicted “the demise of the State of Israel within 10 years,” the paper reported.
“The Jews are occupying the historic Land of Palestine and are an obstacle to the right of return of the Palestinians,” El-Erian said.
“I have said that for the Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland, the occupiers of the land … these occupiers have previous homelands, and I pray for the return of the Palestinians and for those who occupied their land to be deported,” El-Erian said.
El-Erian’s comments come hot on the heels of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s 2012 Top Ten Anti-Semitic/Anti-Israel Slurs report, in which the Muslim Brotherhood’s spiritual guide, Mohammed Badie, came in first with the following statement: “The Jews have dominated the land, spread corruption on earth, spilled the blood of believers and in their actions profaned holy places. Zionists only understand the language of force and will not relent without duress. This will happen only through holy jihad.”
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Preceding provided by JNS.org