Not long ago a European survey found that many people ranked Israel the number one threat to world peace. So you might think that Israel is at least as big or bigger than Iraq or Iran. A serious country. Besides, there are all those Jews in America and elsewhere who are helping Israel. There must be many Jews, right? This must be the reason for the concern shown by publications like Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, and those Web sites that tell us about "Zionism and its pernicious influence," right?

The facts are not what you may think.

In the entire world, there are about 13.3 million Jews. Jews are about 0.2% of the population of the world, which is nearly 6.6 billion at the end of 2005

In the United States, there are about 5.7 million Jews. Jews are less than 2% of the US population of 295 million.

The entire population of Israel, Jews, Arabs and others,  together numbers about 6.5 million. The population of Israel is less than 10% of the population of Iran or Egypt, about a third of the population of Syria.

Israel has an area of about 20,700 square kilometers. Israel's area is about 1.25% of the area of Iran!