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The Obama administration's recent ill-founded and counterproductive tantrums against Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, for the grievous sin of building homes for Jews in Jerusalem, has inspired a flood of sage commentaries by columnists in the U.S. media.

Many of these columns, such as David Remnick's two-page discourse in the March 29 New Yorker, Trudy Rubin's dispatch in the Philadelphia Inquirer (reprinted, in abridged version, in the Star Ledger on Sunday, March 21), and Thomas Friedman's March 14 column in the New York Times criticize Israel while purporting to be motivated only by concern for the Jewish state.

"Without the creation of a viable contiguous Palestinian state, comprised of a land area equivalent to all of the West Bank and Gaza (allowing for land swaps), and with East Jerusalem as its capital, it is impossible to imagine a Jewish and democratic future for Israel," Remnick lamented. "There is nothing the Israeli leadership could do to make the current fantasy of an indifferent American leadership become a reality faster than to get lost in the stubborn fantasy of sustaining the status quo."

"Israel's ongoing construction in West Bank settlements and East Jerusalem -- despite a limited freeze -- will doom a two-state solution," Rubin warned. "And the death of the two-state solution is a dire threat to Israel -- and us."

"Israel needs a wake-up call," Friedman declared. "Continuing to build settlements in the West Bank, and even housing in disputed East Jerusalem, is sheer madness."

In reading these columns, it becomes clear that they often rest on two basic premises: 1) Due to demographics, if Israel does not negotiate a peace settlement then "Arab voters will soon outnumber Jewish voters" and 2) the Palestinian authority is truly interested in negotiating a peace settlement.

There is good reason to believe that neither premise is true.

Citing information from the United Nations, demographics researcher Yoram Ettinger reported on Ynetnews.com (April 2, 2008) that in recent years Muslim and Arab fertility rates have experienced the sharpest decrease in fertility rates in the world. By contrast, the Jewish fertility rate in Israel has been increasing.

"In sharp contract to the [Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics], the U.N. Population Division claims that the drop in Muslim and Arab fertility rates is the highest in the world," Ettinger wrote. "Over the course of a mere 25 years Iranians have gone from an average of 10 children per woman to 1.8. In Egypt and Jordan numbers have plummeted to fewer than 2.5 and 3 children per woman, respectively... The demographic reality is a source of hope and optimism -- not their opposites."

Jackson Diehl recalled in the Washington Post (March 22) that in 2008 Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert presented Mahmoud Abbas with a final settlement offer that included a Palestinian state with a capital in Jerusalem and provisions to accommodate refugees. Abbas refused the offer and presented no counteroffer.

Taking these facts into consideration, it makes a lot more sense for Israel to respond to their own demographic needs and ignore the dire warnings, and poorly informed advice, of Obama administration sycophants.

Harry Glazer welcomes responses to this column and can be reached at donlegofzechut@yahoo.com.