SURVEY OF ISRAELI RACISM: 58% OF JEWS LABEL THEIR STATE ‘APARTHEID’

October 23, 2012, Tikun Olam-תיקון עולם http://www.richardsilverstein.com (USA)

by Richard Silverstein

Yesterday, I wrote a post about an Israeli survey by Prof. Camil Fuchs, one of Israel’s leading pollsters, that examined Israeli Jewish attitudes toward ethnic and religious identity, racism and other forms of discrimination. The survey was commissioned by the Yisraela Goldblum Fund and the results were first published by Gideon Levy in yesterday’s Haaretz.

I was so intrigued by the survey that I sought to obtain the full survey results (Hebrew, English summary). Prof. Fuchs forwarded my message to Prof. Amiram Goldblum of the Hebrew University, who sent me the results. Ironically, I first met Prof. Goldblum when he wrote, asking me some questions about issues of libel because Israeli rightists have made a habit of stalking him online. I was glad to offer some ideas about how to pursue his case.

So I was delighted to find out that a Fund he created in his wife’s memory commissioned the survey. He summoned a distinguished group of Israeli academics, diplomats, attorneys, former MKs, and human rights activists to formulate questions that would plumb attitudes of Israelis (Jews) on these critical issues of the day. Among them were Ilan Baruch, who recently resigned in protest from the Israeli foreign ministry, Alon Liel, who sponsored an initiative for Syrian-Israeli peace that was interrupted by the 2006 Lebanon war, human rights attorney Michael Sfard, Prof. Menachem Klein (Bar Ilan University), and IDF Col. (res.) Morela Bar-On.

My post yesterday largely followed the summary of it published by Gideon Levy. Today, I wanted to delve into it in more detail and convey the results more fully.

The first question asked how satisfied were respondents with their life in Israel. Though the overall response was 69% favorable, it’s notable that fully one-third of secular Israelis answered No to that question. Though dissatisfaction with life in one’s homeland isn’t a sure indicator that you’ll leave, it should be a worrying sign to those concerned with preserving this important demographic. These Israelis are the proverbial canary in the coal mine and tell us in which direction that sector of Israeli society is moving. In fact, I’d guess that this number will rise as Israel becomes even more religious, and the poor become poorer as the rich get richer, and wars and violence continue unabated.

While a plurality of 39% of Israeli Jews believe there’s discrimination against new immigrants who wish to work in government ministries, 50% believe there is such discrimination against Israeli Palestinian citizens. 59% believe there should be discrimination in favor of Jews pursuing such jobs.

A minority of 41% believed new immigrants should not be allowed to vote in year following their immigration to Israel. 33% believed that a law should be enacted prohibiting Israeli Palestinians from voting. Not only is this question important as an indicator of the disintegration of democratic values and the triumph of Israeli racism–it’s important because a number of far-right proposals suggest that Israel annex the Territories along with all their Palestinian population, while restricting or denying voting rights. This is precisely the sort of apartheid attitudes this poll was designed to explore.

There was an even 49-49% split on the question of whether the State should cater more to Jews or non-Jews. If an Israeli Palestinian family lived in their building, 42% of Israeli Jews would find this offensive. A similar percentage would be offended if a Palestinian child was in the same class as their own child.

It’s perhaps an unintended irony that when asked how they would respond to an American author who supported BDS and refused to visit Israel, a plurality of 48% suggested inviting the author to visit the country. When told that the author believes Israel is an apartheid state, 58% agreed that it was, either in full or in “certain spheres.”

36% of Israelis believe that the South African boycott contributed in whole or in part to the end of apartheid there. 30% had no opinion, which I interpret to mean some were too frightened to contemplate the question and its personal implications for them (and Israel).

38% want Israel to annex the Territories (48% oppose this option). A plurality of 47% of Israeli Jews support the ethnic cleansing (euphemistically called “transfer” in Hebrew) of Israeli Palestinian citizens. 36% of Israelis support the plan of Avigdor Lieberman to annex sections of Israel that are populated by Israeli Palestinians to Palestine (thus forcing their expulsion from Israel). Were Israel to annex the Territories, 19% of Israelis favor giving Palestinians living there the right to vote (this in essence is what a one state solution would mean). 69% would not offer them the right to vote (which in essence would be a replication of South African apartheid).

(Amir Mizroch’s Twitter profile featuring a “KILL” IDF vision test and a Middle East map on which the word “Bad” is stamped on every Arab country)

Only 17% of Israelis believe that segregated roads should not be permissible. 74% either are untroubled by segregated roads or are troubled by it, but accept it as necessary.

This is an extremely important social document. Please do you best to make it known as widely as possible.

There was one question I wish had been asked, but I know the answer even without it being included. If you asked whether they supported Israel being a democratic state, the overwhelming majority would say Yes. Which goes to prove that a country can go to hell in a handbasket while its citizens believe they’re well on their way to heaven.

A side note: I just came across the Twitter account of Amir Mizroch, Yisrael HaYom’s English edition editor. Go visit it before he hears that I’ve outed him and censors himself. It features the accompanying images: one is an IDF vision test featuring the sole word, “Kill.” The other is a map of the Mideast on which every Arab country has the word “Bad” stamped. N-o-t v-e-r-y f-u-n-n-y. Racist? Yes. Funny? No.

This is the way the winds are blowing in Israel. Yet another indication of the racism that infects not just the Israeli poor or uneducated, but the media elite and virtually every (Jewish) strata as well.

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ISRAELI POLL: ISRAELIS SUPPORT ETHNIC CLEANSING, ANNEXATION AND APARTHEID STATE

October 22, 2012, Tikun Olam-תיקון עולם http://www.richardsilverstein.com (USA)

by Richard Silverstein

Yediot graphic juxtaposes Israeli ID with Kach party emblem, a closed fist, for an article on the threat of Jewish fascism

A new poll (if anyone can find the full poll results please let me know) of Israeli Jews by Camil Fuchs and commissioned by the New Israel Fund has alarming findings concerning the deterioration of democratic values in Israel. Gideon Levy writes in Haaretz that Israelis (Jews) have largely shed their previous veneer of democratic values and now hold views that can only be described as authoritarian-racist, if not fascist.

The majority of the Jewish public, 59 percent, wants preference[s] for Jews over Arabs in…job [appointments] in government ministries. Almost half the Jews, 49 percent, want the state to treat Jewish citizens better than Arab ones; 42 percent don’t want to live in the same building with Arabs and 42 percent don’t want their children in the same class with Arab children.

A third of the Jewish public wants a law barring Israeli Arabs from voting for the Knesset and a large majority of 69 percent objects to giving 2.5 million Palestinians the right to vote if Israel annexes the West Bank.

A sweeping 74 percent majority is in favor of separate roads for Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank. A quarter – 24 percent – believe separate roads are “a good situation” and 50 percent believe they are “a necessary situation.”

Almost half – 47 percent – want part of Israel’s Arab population to be transferred to the Palestinian Authority and 36 percent support transferring some of the Arab towns from Israel to the PA, in exchange for keeping some of the West Bank settlements.

Although the territories have not been annexed, most of the Jewish public (58 percent ) already believes Israel practices apartheid against Arabs. Only 31 percent think such a system is not in force here. Over a third (38 percent ) of the Jewish public wants Israel to annex the territories with settlements on them, while 48 percent object.

…The survey indicates that a third to half of Jewish Israelis want to live in a state that practices formal, open discrimination against its Arab citizens. An even larger majority wants to live in an apartheid state if Israel annexes the territories.

…The interviewees did not object strongly to describing Israel’s character as “apartheid” already today, without annexing the territories. Only 31 percent objected to calling Israel an “apartheid state” and said “there’s no apartheid at all.”

In contrast, 39 percent believe apartheid is practiced “in a few fields”; 19 percent believe “there’s apartheid in many fields” and 11 percent do not know.

The clarion call for liberal Zionists (including the New Israel Fund, which sponsored this poll) has always been that Israel is a “Jewish democratic state.” No one was allowed to separate those two words and say Israel was only a Jewish state or only a democracy. It had to be both. We can no longer say this is true. The majority of Israeli Jews hold views that are clearly antithetical to democracy. In fact, they’ve largely embraced the agenda of Meir Kahane, who held that democracy was a type of illness imported from the west and alien to the Middle East. Kahane favored a Jewish state that offered no democratic rights to non-Jews. This poll shows that Israeli Jews are rapidly flocking to this point of view.

Jews favor superior rights for themselves over non-Jewish citizens. They favor denying Palestinian citizens the right to vote. They favor preferences to Jews over non-Jews in awarding government jobs. They favor an apartheid transportation system. They support the ethnic cleansing of non-Jewish citizens from the State.

In an accompanying op-ed, Levy adds:

Israelis have never appeared so pleased with themselves, even when they admit their racism. Most of them think Israel is a good place to live in and most of them think this is a racist state. It’s good to live in this country, most Israelis say, not despite its racism, but…because of it.

I’ve written here before about the similarities between far-right Israeli attitudes and the Nuremberg Laws. The most extreme of Israel’s ultranationalists harbor such views explicitly. This poll indicates that vast numbers of Israeli Jews share such views, though perhaps they wouldn’t articulate them as virulently.

I find it astonishing that a majority of Jews explicitly accept the term “apartheid” to describe what Israel is. Also interesting is the finding that while 40% favor annexing the Territories, 48% oppose this. That does not mean, of course, that this group is willing to return the Territories. More likely it means they want to retain the status quo in which the West Bank is neither a Palestinian state nor annexed to Israel.

I do not believe Israel is a country that can save itself. Once it has stopped being a democracy, the solution to its problems cannot come from within. I’m afraid that we must wait for a dysfunctional country to perpetrate an act so heinous that the rest of the world cannot help but intervene to prevent something much worse. Serbia brought such a fate upon itself through the massacre of Srebenica and subsequent genocide in Kosovo. Syria is coming to such a crossroads with its recent likely assassination of Lebanon’s security chief. Israel will follow in Assad’s footsteps. It’s only a question of when. And how much bloodshed can the world absorb before it calls Israel out for its behavior.

The poll comes on the heels of an Israeli government report that finds that for the first time there are more Palestinians than Jews in the territory that encompasses Israel and the Occupied Territories. This means that if Israel refused to accept a Palestinian state and annexed the West Bank to Israel, there would still be a Palestinian majority. That in turn means that Israelis will have further reason to jettison the notion that they live in a democracy. In such a predicament, they will have to create an apartheid state in order to guarantee Jewish political dominion. The poll results indicate that this is beginning to sink in. Which means that we must deny supporters of the Occupation regime called Israel the right to call iself a democracy. Its own citizens, as indicated in this poll, explicitly recognize that it is not:

The “Jewish” gave “democracy” a knockout, smashing it to the canvas. Israelis want more and more Jewish and less and less democracy. From now on don’t say Jewish democracy. There’s no such thing, of course. There cannot be. From now on say Jewish state, only Jewish, for Jews alone. Democracy – sure, why not. But for Jews only.