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Alon Tal Overpop
The crowd cheers during a concert at Hebrew University’s Givat Ram campus in Jerusalem, October 25, 2017. Hadas Parush/Flash90.
Response to May's Essay

May 7, 2018

Life in Israel Has Become Very, Very Crowded

By Alon Tal

The “Start-Up Nation” has become the Western world’s most “Jam-Packed Nation.” It needs to set a goal of zero population growth, and pursue it single-mindedly.

Israelis are starting to notice that something in the country has changed—and not for the better. It’s happened gradually, but signs are everywhere: life has become very, very crowded.

This changing circumstance and its consequences are not recognized by Ofir Haivry in his Mosaic essay, “Israel’s Demographic Miracle.” To the contrary, Haivry hails Israel’s success in achieving and maintaining a high Jewish fertility rate as a “striking if still largely unrecognized victory for Zionism’s 120-year-old goal of making the land of Israel once again the center of the Jewish nation.”

It is indeed an extraordinary historical achievement. But the question now becomes: what’s next? The forecast is sobering, and can no longer be avoided.

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Responses to May 's Essay