Ok, got some better numbers from "The Jewish Post" (
http://www.jewishpost.com/jp0807/jpn0807q.htm)
quote:
"Israel's total population in 2002 is 6.5 million people. But only 37% of the total world Jewish population live in Israel. Since 1948, 2.902 million olim immigrated to Israel. The sub-division is 81% Jews, 19% Arabs or Muslims (they tend to define themselves as Palestinians with Israeli identity cards). "
Ok, from this we can extrapolate:
6.5 million is 37% of the total jewish population............
Therefore the total Jewish population of the world is approx 17.5 million
of these approx 5 million (your number) are American
therefore approx 28% of the total Jewish population is American
I consider 28% a fairly large percentage... (not a majority for sure)
I believe that in actuality, currently, there are more Jews in America than anywhere else except Israel. And Jews vote.... In certain areas the Jewish voting bloc is given lotsa lotsa attention by the politicians... because the Jewish voting bloc can make or break them.
I am not saying anywhere in here that the Jewish people of the world are not a minority. They are a minority.
In the US they happen to be a very vocal minority (nothing wrong with that) and I am simply maintaining that their "Voice" is what keeps the American Government's policy focused on support of Israel. This is not a bad thing as far as I am concerned. In my opinion, we should have been "actively" supporting Israel from the gitgo... We should have been in ther in '67, we should have been in ther in '73.
Support of a democracy in the middle of a whole bunch of various forms of Autocracy is what we should be doing. I am glad we support Israel.
But the question asked was "why do we", and history shows that prior to the seventies (imho) we did not do much except voice our support for Israel, we did not take action. Since then we have taken some action, we have participated in mutual defense arrangements, we have helped build various infrastructure... Most of this, in my extremely humble opinion
was because of pressure by the more vocal organizations to quit giving mouth service and take some action.
Needless to say, at the same time we were doing some of the same stuff for various of Israel's neighbors... In my opinion, that was because of oil.
Last edited by sarettah at Nov 22 2002, 04:54 PM