A since-deleted blog in The Times of Israel said that Israel needs "lebensraum," a concept historically associated with the Nazi party, to combat the country's projected exponential population growth.
The blog post, written by Dan Ehrlich, details how Israel's population is expected to reach 11.1 million by 2030, 13.2 million by 2040 and 15.2 million by 2048, and cites a lack of land mass needed to sustain populations of this size in Israel.
Stating that the idea of "lebensraum" is why Israel's desire to control the West Bank is such a "contentious issue," Ehrlich wrote, "These people need places to live in a nation short of land mass. Compare Israel to its neighbor Jordan, which has a smaller population, yet about five times the land area. If Israel is to maintain its agricultrural industry, its exploding population will [need] to grow up, in high-rise apartment complexes, as well as out, possibly into Judea and Samaria."
Newsweek reached out to Ehrlich for comment via LinkedIn outside of business hours.
Newsweek has also contacted The Times of Israel for comment via a form on its website.
The total area of the state of Israel is 22,145 sq. km (8,630 sq. miles) and the current population is 9,402,617, according to the CIA.
In the removed blog post, Ehrlich also discusses the growing global population, and migration to the U.S. and the U.K. rather than to countries with lower populations such as Russia, Australia, and Canada. He also discusses how migrants will feel the effects of climate change.
Although the article comes up in Google searches, when the link is clicked it directs users to the homepage for The Times of Israel.
What Does Lebensraum Mean?
According to Merriam-Webster, the word "lebensraum" is a noun that can be defined as "territory believed especially by Nazis to be necessary for national existence or economic self-sufficiency." The term also can be defined as "space required for life, growth or activity."
The idea of lebensraum was crucial to making up the Nazi worldview regarding military conquests and racial policy, according to the Holocaust Encyclopedia.
The term was coined in 1901 by German geographer Friedrich Ratzel and was taught to German youth as Nazi propaganda in the 1930s. Lebensraum began as an isolationist concept, with Ratzel and others believing that a country had to be "self-sufficient in terms of resources and territory (a concept known as autarky) to protect itself from external threats."
The idea of lebensraum also came from Ratzel's interpretation of Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection and his argument that people's development and adaptability were dependent on geographic territory.
This focus on geographic territory later expanded as the Nazi party viewed expansion into Eastern Europe as German "manifest destiny," a 19th-century American concept rooted in expansion into the Western US.
Who is Dan Ehrlich?
Erhlich is an American senior multimedia journalist and editor based in London, currently working as a freelance journalist.
He has a career spanning print, TV, online news and radio, and has previously worked at the New York Daily News, Talk Radio UK, CNN and more.
Ehrlich has written numerous blogs for The Times of Israel about Donald Trump's reelection in the US, the International Criminal Court's arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and NATO's World War III fears.
