In preparation for the State ceremonial days – Memorial Day and Independence Day – the Central Bureau of Statistics published the official statistics for this past year, as usual every year.
Let’s start with the statistics of Memorial Day – this year, 1,545 fallen have joined into the ranks of the fallen soldiers of war and the victims of hostilities, including 834 civilians (almost all of them on October 7th) and 711 soldiers (almost all of them in the framework of the Iron Swords War, and about half of them on the first day of the war – 7/10). In this respect, This is the most difficult year for Israel since 1973, the year of the Yom Kippur War, and we hope that this is a record that will never be broken again during our lifetime.
The Independence Day statistics are optimistic: Over the past year, Israel’s population has grown by nearly 200 thousand citizens – a natural increase of nearly 2%, nearly the highest on a global scale. The State of Israel now has 9.9 million citizens, more than 10 times the population that lived there at the time of its establishment in 1948. Most of the West, by comparison, grew by 2 or much less during this period. This, of course, has to do with the large waves of immigration that have blessed the country over the years – a total of 3 and a half million ‘Olim’, of whom 37 thousand came in the past year, despite the war. However, today over 80% of the country’s population is native to the land of Israel – generations of “Sabras” have grown in our country.
73.2% of the population identify as Jews (over 7 million people), making the Jewish community in Israel the largest of all time, and this is a record that continues to grow every day. According to current forecasts, in the year of the country’s 100th anniversary, 2048, the population will be greater than 15 million – that is, a 50% increase in 25 years. Israel’s population is young, and its fertility is high (This writer is 22 years old, and he is astonished to find that about 40% of the population of Israel is younger than him) – all the more reason for optimism.
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