The population of Israel is 6,352,117. The population grows 1.16% bigger each year. The average life span in israel is 77-81 years. Israel is slightly smaller than New Jersey.

Largely unconsciously, Israel has become one of the main sources of radicalism in the Arab and Muslim worlds. I am emphasizing that this may be unintentional because the very idea of Israel as an exclusively Jewish entity has served as a rallying point for a whole range of partially violent movements, from the socialist “lefties” to the Islamist “jihadist”. In other words, this radical opposition to the “Zionist” ideal at the heart of Israel would be out there irrespective of the actions of the state.

Of course, Israel’s self-identification with the “West” (i.e. western Europe and the United States) and its Machiavellian power politics toward the “East” (i.e. the Arab and Islamic worlds) have not been conducive to its intellectual and political integration into West Asia and North Africa. But one tends to concur with Jacqueline Rose when she writes in The Question of Zion, that “‘Zionism’ has always felt itself under threat and often for good reason.” The idea of Israel–its foundational myths, its exclusionary tenor, its us-versus-them taxonomy–has been rejected by the region from the outset.