The Jewish population of the State of Israel has passed the six million mark for the first time. Figures released by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics show the total population of Israel at 7.98 million, 75.4 percent of whom are Jewish. Just over a fifth are Arab and 4 percent are defined as "other".
"It's a great joy to know there are more than 6 million Jews in Israel," Dina Porat, chief historian of Yad Vashem and head of the Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry, told the British newspaper ‘The Guardian’. Porat added: "But worldwide we are still in the same place. 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. It puts Israel in a very central place. We are almost the only Jewish community that is growing."
Six million was a "significant number", Anita Shapira, professor of Jewish history at Tel Aviv University, told the newspaper. However, she said that "living Jews do not compensate for dead Jews. The number [6 million] symbolizes a catastrophe, not a recuperation. We are still paying for the Holocaust."
Meanwhile, separate figures released by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics say that the number of Arabs in Israel and the Palestinian Territories will equal the number of Jews by 2016, and exceed it by 2020. The Palestinian birth rate was 4.4 in 2009, down from 6.0 in 1997, but higher than the Israeli Jewish birth rate of about 3.0.
