Spanning a range of backgrounds and ethnicities, immigrants and their first-generation offspring comprise about 80 percent of the country's 4.6 million Jewish Israelis. Immigrants came to escape danger, to fulfill an idealistic or religious vision of living in what to the Jewish people is the promised land. Now, Jewish communities in metropolitan Detroit and elsewhere are questioning whether fund-raising efforts to facilitate more mass immigration are still relevant. The generation that saw the creation of Israel as a historic event is passing. The Zionist movement, one of the most successful nation-building projects in history, is peering into the future to find a new vision.
Diminished immigration poses social, legal and demographic dilemmas for Israel.
The proportion of Jews to non-Jews in Israel, excluding disputed territories, has fallen from 88.9 percent in 1960 to 80.5 percent at the end of 1996. The Jewish birthrate currently stands at about 18.2 births per thousand people, compared with a rate among Arab Muslims of 37.2 births per thousand. It's impossible to say for sure when the lines will cross. But in another fifty years the population could begin to approach an even split among Jews and non-Jews. In light of these trends, an attempted dismantling of the nation by Israeli Arab voters couldn't be ruled out.