The World - News from Dec. 18, 1986

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir said a predicted sharp decline in the world’s Jewish population would be a catastrophe comparable to the near extermination of European Jewry by the Nazis in World War II. “This generation, which saw and experienced the loss of a third of our people, cannot tolerate a second major catastrophe in the struggle for Jewish survival,” Shamir told leaders of foreign Jewish communities meeting in Jerusalem. He quoted figures from a recent report by the World Zionist Organization indicating that the Jewish population outside Israel would fall from the current 9.5 million to about six million in less than 40 years.