Prof. Manuel Trachtenberg, head of the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, is concerned about the density of the population in Israel – and strongly supports the policy of reducing the birth rate.
In the “7 Days” supplement of “Yediot Ahronoth” an article was published on Friday about the increasing density in Israel.
According to the data of the Central Bureau of Statistics, at the end of 2020 almost 9.3 million people lived in Israel, and this number grew at a rate of almost two percent per year. We live in the third most densely populated country among the OECD countries, after the Netherlands and South Korea, and in 2050 about 18 million people will live in tiny Israel. According to the UN’s predictions, Israel will then be a more densely populated country than countries like Haiti, Rwanda and Malawi.
In a conversation as part of the article, Prof. Trachtenberg admitted: “When I look ahead, I see a blacker than blacker future.”
According to Trachtenberg, the Israeli tradition that sees children as a blessing must change. “The phenomenon of the large number of children is a result of the Holocaust, of the existential anxiety of the early days of the state, the few against the many, etc. But the concept that if you have a lot of children you contribute to the Zionist enterprise – which was true 60 years ago – is absolutely not true today. And not only is this not true, but the same concept of having many children actually threatens Israeli society.”
Already in 2018, Trachtenberg called for having fewer children. “It’s really something that’s hard to say in a phrase. You are actually going against the deep existential anxieties that accompanied us Israelis throughout the 20th century. Perceptually, we are still under the long shadow of the days of the establishment of the state and we have not managed to free ourselves from it. But I also say this to my girls, even though it is very unpopular: the patriotic act these days is to have two children and no more.”
Trachtenberg is having difficulty convincing the state institutions to stop the child allowances, property tax discounts for families with many children and a host of other benefits that, in his opinion, increase the incentive for Israeli citizens to have children.
“The fact that the State of Israel continues to provide financial support that is a function of the number of children in the family is folly. It’s as if buying private cars would be subsidized, even though there are traffic jams.”
According to him, “The main political issue in this aspect is the ultra-Orthodox. Because many of the ultra-Orthodox men study Torah and therefore do not work, the financial support for a child is very significant for their family budget. This goes beyond the ideological matter of the mitzvah pro varbu, it is a practical matter, a way to generate income for the family.”