- Fox News host Jesse Watters claimed in a racist rant how Palestinians are uneducated and pose a threat to Israelis due to their high birth rate.
- His inflammatory remarks have sparked intense backlash, with critics comparing his statements to Adolf Hitler.
Fox News host Jesse Watters is facing significant backlash after using Palestinian birth rates to claim that Palestinians are a “threat” to Israelis.
“There is no one, no one, on American television who speaks in a more racist and genocidal way about Palestinians than Jesse Watters,” tweeted Mehdi Hasan, founder of Zeteo. “This is Nazi-level shit right here,”
During Tuesday’s episode of The Five, Watters and the panel discussed President Donald Trump’s recent ultimatum to Hamas, in which Trump demanded the release of all Israeli hostages by Saturday, warning that Gaza would face severe consequences if the demand was not met.
Watters commented:
“But the Arab world, the Europeans, the media—they’re not pressuring us. They’re not pressuring the Israelis. We have a free hand here. But this population in Palestine is hostile, it’s uneducated. It’s even more radicalized than they were at the beginning of this. I mean, now they have no homes at all. They’re even more hateful of the Israelis. And their birth rate is explosive. The average Palestinian woman has five and a half babies. The average Israeli woman has only two and a half babies. So demographically, they’re a threat—not to mention the national security threat. There is no way you can have these two people living side by side.”
Watters’ comments are not supported by any data!
According to Statista, the fertility rate in Gaza and the West Bank in 2022 was 3.44 children per woman, while by comparison, Israel’s fertility rate was 2.89.
Furthermore, in September 2018, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics reported that Palestinians possess one of the highest literacy rates globally, reinforcing their longstanding reputation as the world’s “best-educated refugees”—a distinction frequently echoed by international organisations and regional observers. Especially in the Middle East, Palestinians have earned a reputation as exceptionally skilled professionals, often fluent in multiple languages and excelling in fields such as engineering, business, and medicine. This tradition of academic excellence and resilience continues to define Palestinian identity despite decades of displacement and bombardement.
The false claims about Palestinian birth rates, coupled with characterising Palestinians as “hostile” and “uneducated,” sparked outrage online. Many criticised Watters’ rhetoric, drawing parallels to Adolf Hitler.
