Oregon & Its Counties (above)

Population in Israel

Compared to Oregon, USA
Nadene Goldfoot

I live in Oregon. It's hard for most of my neighbors to picture how small Israel is. For instance, Oregon has 3,825, 657 people, or about 3.8 million. Israel has 7, 695,000. Out of this 7.5 million, 5,802,000 or 75.4% are Jewish; 1,573,000 or 20.4% are Arabs and 320,000 or 4.2% are probably Christians and others.

In size, Oregon is 97,073 square miles with land making 96,184 square miles. It's 395 mile from east to west and 295 miles from north to south.

Israel, by contrast, is made of 10,762 square miles including Judea and Samaria, so Oregon is about anywhere from 10 to 12 times bigger, which also depends on what you are including as making up Israel. Including just the Golan, it is 8,019 square miles. Israel is 290 miles long and including Judea and Samaria, administered areas, is anywhere from 71 to 84 miles wide, or in one place could be as little as 6 miles, depending on what you're counting. It used to be the joke that one didn't put their arm out of the window of the train or it would be in Jordan. The state of Virginia is close to Israel in population with 7,882,590.

There are 192,800 Jews living in East Jerusalem, and this is because Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. In all of Jerusalem there are 795,291 as of January 1, 2010. About 464,527 are Jews with 228,690 being Arabs.

Tel Aviv, the 2nd largest city has 404,400 population. There were around 16,000 in Safed, where I lived from 1981-1985. By 2008 the population had grown to 32,000.

67.1% of the Jews in Israel were born in Israel, so they are called Sabras. 22.6% are immigrants from Europe and the USA, of which I had been one. 5.9% were born in Africa and 4.2% were born in Asia.

There are 194 countries in the world and Israel is one of the smallest, but there are only 192 countries that are members of the U.N. The Vatican City and Kosovo are not members. Many think Taiwan should be included, and if they are counted, would make 195 countries.

So though Israel has almost twice as many people as Oregon has, it is about 1/12th in size. That's probably why most Israelis are living in high-rise apartment buildings. Very few actually get to live in a home. A few homes that I saw in Safed had been dug out of an earthquake that happened over 100 years ago. They were able to renovate the structure into a lovely home, though. I remember a wonderful use of potted plants inside the living room which made it look lovely. Doug Silverstein, author and retired principal also lived in a house. I loved to visit him, being I had never lived in an apartment building before and fought the elevator in my first experience in Safed.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/is.html

http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/Asia-and-Oceania/Israel-LOCATION-SIZE-AND-EXTENT.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safed

Axelrod and Emanuel, Read These Facts About Israel! or How Would You Divide New Jersey? Israel is Smaller!

by Nadene Goldfoot

How many politicians know that Israel is slightly smaller than New Jersey. even with the 1967 gain after a war precipitated by an attack of all Arab countries against it. The population is about 7,026,000 as of a 2006 census. According to the CIA, the population was 6,353,117 including 187,000 Israelis living in the West Bank and 20,000 living in the Golan Heights and 177,000 living in East Jerusalem which would be our Arab citizens.

76.4% are Sabras, or Israeli-born Jews.

22.6% are European/American Jews.

5.9% are African born, probably those from Ethiopia

4.7% are Asian born (Israel took in boat people who had no place to go)

23.6% are non Jewish which would be mostly Arabs, and Christians.

How big an area are the Muslims occupying?

There are 44 Moslem states with 1 billion people in an area 672 times the size of Israel.

Yet Obama and our government are pressing to divide and give part of tiny Israel to an Arab population that has been warring against it since 1948 .

22 of these Moslem states are in the Middle East including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. They refuse to absorb the "Palestinian refugees". They have been keeping them on refugee status as political pawns to put blame on Israel for their situation.

21 Arab states have an area greater than the USA. None are democracies. Only Israel, the only Jewish state in the world, is a democracy in the Middle East.

They are taught by their Koran that they are destined to lead the world and see Israel as mocking their insufficiency of their inability to carry out their heaven-ordained mission. Obama thinks he can sway them to stop attacking Israel and settle down, but he's fighting something much larger than he is. I read where he's even planning on going on Israeli television to tell Israelis why he wants communities to not add on any more buildings; "settlements" are what he calls them.

Yasser Arafat had said,, "We don't want peace, we want victory. Peace for us means Israel's destruction and nothing else. What you call peace is peace for Israel and for the imperialistic America. For us it is shame and injustice. We shall fight onto victory, even for decades, for generations if necessary. " Fatah, the group now living in Judea and and Samaria that many call West Bank, is Yasser Arafat's movement. They haven't changed their outlook, just their tactics which sometimes bubble over the pot.

Many Americans are surprised to learn that Arabs live in Israel and are citizens. They have their political groups and a few have made it into the Knesset. Yet Jews are not allowed in Arab countries today, and the planned "Palestine" is to be free of Jews though it would be sitting right next door to Israel! An exception is Egypt who has signed a peace treaty with Israel.

Israel has absorbed millions of Jewish refugees from the Holocaust, the former Soviet Union and the Ethiopian black Jewish community. Most of the more than 850,000 Sephardic Jews were expelled from their homes in Arab lands where they had lived for generations. They left without any compensation for their property. In fact, it was confiscated.

It all looks pretty dismal to the younger American generation. They seem to lack the fortitude to see the way for Israel to live in peace and some may even contemplate giving up the fight. I see Netanyahu as revitalizing Israelis as he thinks out of the box and is finding ways of getting Arabs to come to terms with an Israel in their midst. What America should do is not meddle but back Israel in its good endeavors for peaceful coexistence. What's right is right and what's wrong is wrong. Who is ever going to see the difference?

Reference: My notes from my speech about Israel.