Interesting topic and discussion. Thanks for the ping.
There is a military point to this that bears looking at.
Israel is surrounded by hostile neighbors who number approximately 250-275 million, IIRC. Israel numbers about 6 million.
Israel has kept a military edge for two reasons:
1) G-ds promises and protection ( big reason)
2) Israels reliance on technology and innovation to bridge the lack of strategic depth ( read-population difference).
Israel has won every war with their Arab neighbors by using technology and innovation in the inital phases of the wars to keep combat operations on enemy territory as much as they can so they could mobilize their reserves and put the rest of the military in play. Once the Israeli military is mobilized, they are fully capable of defending Israel. The problem is mobilizing them and standing them up for combat operations in a short time period.
If we examine the draft elgible pool in all combined Arab nations who hate Israel, and use the standard 10 percent ratio, we see the Arabs could field an army of 25-17 million, and the Israelis a maximum of 2 million, which could be increased a little by relaxing enlistment requirements in order to maximize troop strength.
This boils down to a basic problem the nation of Israel will have to face in order to survive another catastrophic war: Lack of strategic depth.
In order to fix that problem, there are three solutions:
1) Increase your available manpower pool
2) Develop a naval presence to allow you the ability to project power from offshore and away from fixed bases. In a word: carriers, amphibious forces, and naval airpower.
3) Strategic bombing from remote bases in forward deployed areas outside of Israel ( B-52's from offshore bases).
Whether a person is Jewish or not, that population difference and the geographical disadvantage Israel faces if they abandon the "West Bank" is a big reason in itself to support immigration to Israel of any desirable population who are committed to the survival of the nation of Israel.
"Whether a person is Jewish or not, that population difference and the geographical disadvantage Israel faces if they abandon the "West Bank" is a big reason in itself to support immigration to Israel of any desirable population who are committed to the survival of the nation of Israel."
Very true. Israel needs all the immigrants they can get, as long as they arent russian prostitutes.