I
sraeli professor Alon Tal is very very concerned about a “looming crisis” threatening his country. “Given that Israel has the highest birthrate in the developed world” writes Tal on the New York Times opinion page “those who care about its future should realize that demographic growth is no longer a blessing but a threat to the quality of life in the Jewish state.”
For a quarter century Tal has “worked hard to protect Israel’s environment: organizing demonstrations writing legislation even suing polluters.” But “[e]ventually it dawned on me that… our efforts may be futile in the long run — because we’re addressing only symptoms not causes.” Those causes are the many little human beings that maddeningly keep being born in Eretz Yisrael. In 2005 Tal’s tireless work even earned him the Bronfman prize described as a “humanitarian award for young leaders ” a strange honor for someone who thinks we have more than enough humans already.
Or at least enough Jews. He writes that “the loss of six million Jews in the Holocaust made pro-natal policies axiomatic in the young state of Israel… [But this] reason is [not] valid today: The global total of Jews which had fallen to 11 million in 1945 has rebounded to pre–World War II levels.” So everything’s just fine now since we all know there aren’t any Nazi-like bad people around looking to exterminate us anymore.
Tal writes that in “a country that argues over everything else overpopulation it seems is one issue we never want to address.” But he wants to undermine that unfortunate national consensus in favor of human life and so he has written a book entitled The Land Is Full — Addressing Overpopulation in Israel. It has glowing approbations from the likes of government ministers Technion professors and Jerusalem Post columnists.
