Chris McGreal in The Guardian (today) reports on a poll of Israeli Jews towards Israel's Arab (i.e., Palestinian citizens), conducted by respected pollster Geocartographia, on behalf of the Center for the Struggle Against Racism. Here are some of the results.
*Over two-thirds of Jews would refuse to live in the same building as an Arab.
*Nearly half would not allow an Arab in their home.
*41% want segregation of entertainment facilities.
*40% believe that "the state needs to support the emigration of Arab citizens." [McGreat notes that this is in the platform of some far-right Israeli parties participating in next week's general election. This policy is known in Israel as "transfer. This is a polite way of saying ethnic cleansing.]
*63% consider their country's Arab citizens a "security and demographic threat to the state".
*18% said they felt hatred when they heard someone speaking Arabic. [This number is probably rather low because over 50% of Israeli Jews are "Eastern" or Mizrahi, mostly from Arab countries. For many Israeli Jews, Arabic is a mother tongue.]
*34% agreed with the statement that "Arab culture is inferior to Israeli culture". [Again, "Arab culture" is the culture of many Israeli Jews.]
Taleb el-Sana, a Palestinian-Israeli member of parliament, observed that polls showing "anti-Semitism in other countries are greeted in Israel with a frenzy of denunciations." "Yet when it happens at their home," said el-Sana, they're quiet, and that's why this is a two-fold failure - they are racist, and they're also not attempting to address their own racism."
McGeal also reports that, "The Yisrael Beiteinu party advocates redrawing the border to place about 500,000 Arab-Israelis inside a Palestinian state. Yisrael Beiteinu is expected to win about 10 seats in the 120-seat parliament, meaning it could hold the balance of power."
Israel: "beacon to the nations"? (Deuteronomy 4:5-9)
P.S. Of course these things can never be discussed by the mainstream US media or in polite society. To make any connections between Zionism and racism will only incite charges of anti-Semitism.
Tags: Israel
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