On average, the Israeli fertility rate is significantly higher than that of any developed country. In fact, while other countries have seen a decline in births, Israel has seen an increase since the beginning of the century. This anomaly cannot be explained by the high birthrates of ḥaredi women (whose fertility rates have remained steady) or of Arab women (whose rates have declined). Shannon Roberts writes:

[T]he rise in Israel’s fertility over the last two decades has actually been largely driven by non-Orthodox Jewish women, whose average fertility rate is 2.2 children per family.  This is [by itself] higher than any other country in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Perhaps strangely, it has been increasing despite women having children later in life and working more. In fact, non-Orthodox Jewish women have higher employment rates than women in any other OECD country, except for Iceland.

Also unlike other Western countries, highly educated Israeli women have just as many children as their less educated counterparts. . . .

Some factors affecting fertility are the cultural and religious nature of life in Israel, and that women are able to balance work life with family life relatively easily, but this does not fully explain why Israel is so different from other OECD countries. Israel is doing well economically from a macro perspective, with GDP growth high (but not per capita), the standard of living increasing, and poverty levels falling slightly, [but this fact is likewise insufficient to explain the fertility rate].

[C]an the many countries grappling with how to increase their own fertility learn something of Israel’s secret?

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.