http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jew#cite_note-79 ''War and persecution'' if other factors had not intervened, there would be 200 million Jews in the world today, instead of something like 13 million."[80] Of course, there are many other complex demographic factors involved; the rate of population growth, epidemics, migration, assimilation, and conversion could all have played major roles in the current size of the global Jewish population.

Religious populations grow in 2 ways: conversion and "natural growth" (births minus deaths). Christianity and Islam try to convert people. Many Christian and Muslim rulers have even forcibly converted whole countries. Judaism does not seek converts; converting to Judaism is difficult. Historically, Jews living in many Christian and Muslim areas have been regularly massacred, required to live in crowded ghettos built in flood zones, forcibly converted to Christianity or Islam on pain of death or expulsion, attacked, forced to pay crushing taxes, etc. Christian and Muslim tyrants, of course, were not alone in such treatment; earlier pagan despots did some of these things. And in both Christian and Muslim lands, there were also decent rulers, under whom Jews experienced somewhat less abuse. All of these forms of repression regularly impoverish and kill large numbers of Jews. The Holocaust - in which the Nazis murdered 90% of all Polish, German, Bohemian, and Baltic Jews; 80% of Slovakian and Greek Jews; etc. - was merely the most comprehensive slaughter. Historically, during times of severe repression, Jewish populations dropped. During safer times, they recovered. The process continues today. The last remaining Jews in Yemen are threatened with annihilation by Islamist extremists. The rest have fled the country - just the latest round of refugees in a long history of repression. So maybe it should not be surprising that although the Jewish communities of Egypt and Iraq dated from pre-Roman times, there were only 80,000 Jews in Egypt, and 200,000 Jews in Baghdad, Iraq during the 1920s. More recently, many Muslim countries have experienced massive population explosions that are placing increasing painful stresses in their resources and culture. Jewish populations around the world have not grown nearly as quickly.

Jewish women in Israel have only 2.9 kids per family. If it weren't for the charedi and religious, I wonder what the rate would be: one child per family?? Not to mention all the single women who don't have children. In the Galut, more Jews are dying than being born. What a terrible situation.

"Tell the world the truth - Israel is not as bad as seen on TV" Actually, Israel is much worse than as seen on TV. Why, because US news does not report or follow up on Israeli attrocities and we all know why. Do you think any american saw the story about an entire palestinian village's water supply being cut off because some low level politician's daughter hit some donkey? Or the one about muslims being beaten, monitored and supervised by civilian thugs? Or the one about Israel's education minister demanding bus segregation for jews who happen to be black? Or news about israel censoring palestinian schoolbooks to remove all reference to their own holocaust? There are many. many stories not being reported by our "free" press. Israel is headed for a meltdown because thare is an absolute absence of civilized, societal values.

Couldn't agree more there.