Israel's Very First Demographic Time-Bomb

Come fellow Zionists, stand for a moment in Pharoah's bejeweled sandals: A sizable segment of your country's citizenry is ethnically distinct from the majority and widely viewed as disloyal. Were an enemy nation to attack, this community would not rise to defend your country, but would actually aid the attackers and seek to gain ascendance over the land. Their numbers are quickly growing. What are you to do?

We know what the Biblical Pharoah did - enslave the Hebrews - and we know that the Torah and its readers view this decision as superlatively villainous. The Jewish God expects – no, demands – better from temporal rulers.

But what was Pharoah supposed to do? Sure, he could have just let the Hebrew population explode, and for Egypt to eventually become a Jewish state. Or he could have pretended (despite all clues to the contrary) that the Hebrews were indeed loyal citizens, fully interested in partnering with the dominant Egyptian regime.

Modern Jewish readers should be familiar with these options, as they are the ones we have so loudly criticized when contemplating Israel's relation to its quickly growing Palestinian population. Allowing a non-Jewish state to simply replace Israel is anathema; pretending that Palestinians will happily cooperate as citizens in our Jewish country is naïve.

We have chosen instead a somewhat Pharoanic path. Not actual enslavement, and obviously no systematic murder of male babies, but we consciously subject Them to a life We would never bear, on the grounds that their ethnically-based political disloyalty may prove the ruin of our national dream.

It is one of the fundamentals of Fundamentalism to quickly conclude that a Biblical message maps perfectly onto contemporary political questions. I concede t numerous differences between Israel's original demographic time bomb (in which Israel herself was ticking) and the one she faces now. Primary among them is that Zionists (like me) have some fairly convincing evidence that Palestinians will not peacefully coexist within or beside a Jewish state, while the Bible fails to confirm Pharoah's own xenophobic presumptions. 

But the Bible does confirm one thing: That oppressing a minority out of fear of their disloyalty is downright Egyptian.