Who Wants to be an Israeli?

Around Yom Ha-Atzmaut, the Israeli papers print their lists of statistics. And it great to see that Israel's population grew by 1.8 percent, reaching 7,150,000. The increase came from births (148,000) and an increase in immigration (yahoo): "18,400 new immigrants."

Also food for thought (fear) is the ratio of Non-Arab/Arab = 80/20.

And grist for a trivia question: Which are the five largest cities in Israel:

The country's five largest cities, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Rishon Lezion and Ashdod, account for a quarter of the population, or 1,810,300 people. Another 462,200, or 6%, live in small towns, while just 119,700 - less than 2% - live on kibbutzim.

Would not have guessed Rishon L'Tzion. Then again, in the past few trips to Israel I hardly stepped foot outside J'slem.

But the best part of the article was the survey of who would have preferred to have been born in Israel:

Approximately 47% of the population would, if born again, prefer for that to happen somewhere other than Israel, according to an "alternative survey" conducted by the Geocartographic Institute's iGeo subsidiary.

The survey, conducted in early April among 500 Israeli Jews, found that 70% of Israelis from the FSU would prefer to be reborn outside Israel, 19% of them specifying Russia as their country of choice and 15% the US.

Among wealthy local-born Israelis, 62% said they would like to be reborn abroad, 18% in the US or Canada, 8% in Switzerland and 6% in Sweden.

A few thoughts:

1. 70% of Russian olim seem to hate living in Israel. Ingrates. Yet only half of those ingrates prefer Russia and the US. Suggesting that 36% either just hate Israel so much they can't think straight or would prefer to have been born in some undefined fanatasyland.
   
2. The two subgroups quoted have either 70% or 62% preferring to have been born outside of Israel, yet the total number surveyed was 47%. What's bringing the number down?

This:

In contrast, 83% of the modern Orthodox sector, 80% of those living in rural towns and kibbutzim, and 65% of Israel's well off pensioners said they would choose to be reborn in Israel.

83% of Modern Orthodox!

We're the backbone of Zionism, baby, and don't you forget it. When I read this statistics off in shul I quipped that the other 17% wanted to be born outside of Israel just so they could get the mitzvah of voluntary aliyah. Kol ha-kavod to the home team, eh.

Backpost finished 8/9/07. All I had was the link