New York Times cites Palestinians as "demographic" threat

No, he didn't say "threat" (let alone "death warrant") but the liberal Zionist leader Jeremy Ben-Ami has: he wrote of "... the inexorable demographic threat to Israel's future as a democratic state that remains the homeland for the Jewish people."

But the awareness that you shouldn't use such language is beginning to break on some folks in the mainstream -- if not the New York Times. Here's a Guardian profile today of B'Tselem's Hagai El-Ad, by Eve Fairbanks:

"When I asked El-Ad whether he thought a moral society in Israel could remain Jewish, it was the closest I ever saw him to expressing anger. 'I think the narrowing of Jewish identity to demographics -- that's profoundly un-Jewish,' he snapped. 'When you build a wall in this city to expunge, reject, thousands of people on a demographic basis, that's un-Jewish.'

"'What is Jewish?' I asked.

"'Treating people with dignity,' he answered. 'I think that's enough.'"

And here's liberal Zionist Daniel Levy on the ugliness of the phrase, four years ago:

"[Avigdor] Lieberman is the bastard child of the demographic analysis of why we need to end the occupation, you cannot treat the Palestinian Arab public as a demographic threat and advocate full equality inside Israel."