Survey: Most Israeli Jews wouldn’t give Palestinians vote if West Bank was annexed

By Gideon Levy, HAARETZ | Oct. 23, 2012 |

Most of the Jewish public in Israel supports the establishment of an apartheid regime in Israel if it formally annexes the West Bank.

A majority also explicitly favors discrimination against the state’s Arab citizens, a survey shows.

The survey, conducted by Dialog on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, exposes anti-Arab, ultra-nationalist views espoused by a majority of Israeli Jews. The survey was commissioned by the Yisraela Goldblum Fund and is based on a sample of 503 interviewees.

The questions were written by a group of academia-based peace and civil rights activists. Dialog is headed by Tel Aviv University Prof. Camil Fuchs.

The majority of the Jewish public, 59 percent, wants preference for Jews over Arabs in admission to jobs 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 distinguishes among the various communities in Israeli society – secular, observant, religious, ultra-Orthodox and former Soviet immigrants. The ultra-Orthodox, in contrast to those who described themselves as religious or observant, hold the most extreme positions against the Palestinians. An overwhelming majority (83 percent ) of Haredim are in favor of segregated roads and 71 percent are in favor of transfer.

The ultra-Orthodox are also the most anti-Arab group – 70 percent of them support legally barring Israeli Arabs from voting, 82 percent support preferential treatment from the state toward Jews, and 95 percent are in favor of discrimination against Arabs in admission to workplaces.

The group classifying itself as religious is the second most anti-Arab. New immigrants from former Soviet states are closer in their views of the Palestinians to secular Israelis, and are far less radical than the religious and Haredi groups. However, the number of people who answered “don’t know” in the “Russian” community was higher than in any other.

The Russians register the highest rate of satisfaction with life in Israel (77 percent ) and the secular Israelis the lowest – only 63 percent. On average, 69 percent of Israelis are satisfied with life in Israel.

Secular Israelis appear to be the least racist – 68 percent of them would not mind having Arab neighbors in their apartment building, 73 percent would not mind Arab students in their children’s class and 50 percent believe Arabs should not be discriminated against in admission to workplaces.

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 survey conductors say perhaps the term “apartheid” was not clear enough to some interviewees. However, 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 “Russians,” as the survey calls them, display the most objection to classifying their new country as an apartheid state. A third of them – 35 percent – believe Israel practices no apartheid at all, compared to 28 percent of the secular and ultra-Orthodox communities, 27 percent of the religious and 30 percent of the observant Jews who hold that view. Altogether, 58 percent of all the groups believe Israel practices apartheid “in a few fields” or “in many fields,” while 11 percent don’t know.

Finally, the interviewees were asked whether “a famous American author [who] is boycotting Israel, claiming it practices apartheid” should be boycotted or invited to Israel. About half (48 percent ) said she should be invited to Israel, 28 percent suggest no response and only 15 percent call to boycott her.

April 7, 2014 | 14 Comments »

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14 Comments / 14 Comments

  1. @ yamit82:
    Agree in all points. The arabs are cowards and freeloaders. They live from charity and from exploiting the Israelis. They use the money they get from the US and the EU to build tunnels. They do not pay taxes on the merchandise they bring through the tunnels. They are not good workers neither good businessmen. Just moochers and tieves.

  2. Surveys can be manipulated to show just about anything depending on where the survey’s authors are coming from, who they engage to complete the surveys, where they are solicited from,how many individuals were surveyed and how were the questions phrased. Although we are not provided this critical information, a hint is provided by the limited information we do have. To wit, ” The questions were written by a group of academia-based peace and civil rights activists. Dialog is headed by Tel Aviv University Prof. Camil Fuchs.” Additionally, 503 individuals can hardly be seen as representing a majority of over 6 million Jewish Israelis.

    There is also a fair bit of dis-ingenuousness to the story. I suggest that the “secularists” from Tel Aviv return their property to their hypothesized peace partners and live with their new neighbors in peace and harmony, rather than their attempting to dictate to the residents of Yehuda and Shomron to engage in that fanciful and downright foolish course of action. Funny but i don’t hear anyone complaining about Saudi Arabia being an Apartheid state even though they won’t even allow a Jew to enter. Or Peace Partner Abbas who has declared on many occasions (albeit in Arabic) that no Jew will be allowed to live in “Palestine.” No, the left-wing extremists don’t see that as a problem. If the self-defeating Arabs hadn’t been resolutely and intrinsically anti-Israel to begin with, this conversation would not have happened.

  3. CuriousAmerican Said:

    You cannot ethnically cleanse them.

    We can!!!!

    Not without earning the opprobrium of the world.

    Who cares we already have the approrium of the worls, Big deal.

    You cannot then deny them the vote without being called Apartheid and you will not have an adequate reply

    Doesn’t scare us and we can defend against the slanderous accusations. Even if we fail it won’t be becuse the accusations are true it will be because of you gentiles anti Jewish willingness to ignore the facts and truth and believe the lies….. So what else is new?

    Since if you annex the land, and deny them the vote,it will look like Apartheid If you do ethnically cleanse the Palestinians anyway, you can not claim to be better than us goyim That last would really hurt.

    I love your last argument.. Reverse psychology. We are no better than you goyim but neither are we worse. That you brought up this argument and attempt to use it against us maybe it has some merit that we Jews are better than you goyim. It won’t take much convincing me that we are better especially when we have those like you as opponents. You must be worried or really scared we will do it and get away with it. 🙂

    YOU KNOW MY RECOMMENDATION! It is cheaper than war. And you can still get to call yourselves a light unto the nations. You get to keep the land and your pride. A bargain at any price.

    No it’s not cheaper than war. I have explained to you in the past many reasons it won’t work which you ignore. I wonder why? Light unto the Nations? You have no idea what that means. I understand A couple of hundred Nukes going off at the same time will light up the nations. The Jews can Light up the world with a hundreds of millions of candles with the push a few red buttons.

    Once the Jewish state stops subsidizing local Arabs with money, municipal infrastructure, free education, health care, and municipal services for which Arabs refuse to pay, and forces them like all other citizens into the army—they will go. We have tanks, and Israeli Arabs don’t, so they will certainly go. In 1948, a thousand times as many Arabs fled Israel as the number killed today. This proportion would be even better, making our enterprise relatively humane compared to any other countries’ wars.

    Rabbi Meir Kahane HY”D, often repeated that all the Arabs in the world are not worth a fingernail of one Jewish child. This saying of his was well within halacha. Theology and nationalism deal in absolutes: to G-d and themselves, Jews are absolutely more important than their enemies. It’s not that N Jews are more valuable than M Arabs, but less valuable that 1,000*M of them. Theologically, we are entitled to kill the largest number of Arabs or any Gentile to save the smallest number of Jews. Secular nations think likewise: in WWII, the Allied commanders sought to kill as many Germans as possible and to save the American soldiers’ lives whatever the concomitant losses among the Nazis. Jews need not be ashamed of practicing the most human of all human traits: killing enemies, in the widest sense and in the largest numbers, is far preferable to dying or endangering your own people. And more than that, it just feels great to see your enemies dead.

    As King David remarked, “the righteous should wash their feet in the blood of the wicked”.

  4. Ted Belman Said:

    . I came out in favour of separation, at least for Israel

    From the Book “They Must Go”:

    http://www.jewish-e-library.net/Works/Kahane/They.Must.Go/TMG.Chapter10/TMG.Chapter10-034.Page-260.html
    http://www.jewish-e-library.net/Works/Kahane/They.Must.Go/TMG.Chapter10/TMG.Chapter10-035.Page-261.html

    The problem is the Jew who stupidly equates the transfer of Arabs with Hitler’s genocide of the Jews, as if we were advocating gas chambers or the killing of the Arabs in any form! As if the separation of Jews and Arabs will not save Arab and Jewish lives both! As if it is not precisely the policy of the perverted moralists that will lead eventually to the horrible bloodbath the Jewish realists see all too well!

    How outrageously dishonest is the equation. How they cheapen and demean the terrible historical uniqueness and horror of the Holocaust, those intellectual dwarfs who equate it with any event they cannot abide! Did the Jews of Germany say that the land was really theirs, stolen from them by the Germans, and that they would work until the day they became the majority and take the land and make it “Judea”? If they did, the Jews of Hitler’s time can be equated with the Arabs. Did the Jews of Europe massacre Germans, rape their women, burn their settlements, and vow to drive them into the sea? If they did, Europe’s Jews and Israel’s Arabs are the same.

    And if they did—if Germany’s Jews killed Germans and sought to take their state from them—Germans would have been justified in removing them from Germany and saving their country. But if, as really happened, the Jews sought, not to destroy Germany, not to separate from Germany, not to be independent of Germany, but to be good, loyal, fervent, assimilated Germans, then what the Germans did was horrible, and what the Jews who equate the murderous Arabs with the murdered Jews do is obscene.

  5. @ Shy Guy:
    The people who talk about apartheid have fallen into the enemies trap. Let us have pure democracy and forget the right to security of life and limb in the only Jewish country.

    They do not talk about the apartheid in Lebanon (Palestinians have no vote, citizenship, freedom of movement, right to do more than a limited amount of jobs and right to live in more than the camps).

    So how do you keep an enemy population from destroying you while trying to curry favor with confused souls like Gideon Levy and our enemies? Basically you can NOT do both.

  6. @ Buzz of the Orient:My first thought was not to post that article as it presented Jews in Israel in a bad light. But then I began to see it in a different light and wrote an article on “integration v separation”. I came out in favour of separation, at least for Israel. I hope to post it later today.

    I received an email from Mike Diamond on a related issue namely “tolerance of intolerance” and the need for our values to be maintained as more important than “democracy”. That too, I will publish.

  7. Goodbye Democracy. Hello Apartheid. Validate the Palestinian lying propaganda. Support BDS. Go ahead – DON’T make my day. (Shaking my head)

  8. In my mind this would be an issue (not letting them vote) if the Palestinians were not hell bent on destroying Israel. They are not interested in voting in Israel or being citizens. Proof is in the experience of East Jerusalem, how many have taken Israeli citizenship? Not many!

    So how do you keep an enemy population from destroying you while trying to curry favor with confused souls like Gideon Levy and our enemies? Basically you can NOT do both.

    So the trick is to find a method that provides security for Israel while not becoming as bad as our enemy who would literally throw us in the sea if they could. Voluntary emigration is going to be difficult to achieve (great in theory)

    So letting the Arabs run their own cities in Area A is the next best thing while working either in an economic union with Israel or Jordan so they can actualy function. Israel would maintain all security in all of Judah and Samaria. Israel annexes all of C and what they need of Area B.

  9. At least we allow Arabs to live in Israel with greater rights and freedoms then they have in any Arab country. Why not get rid of the Arabs altogether and extend them the same courtesy those Arab countries showed it’s Jews. Then no one can accuse Israel of apartheid.

  10. Arabs in Jerusalem don’t vote.

    And they don’t want to be Israeli citizens.

    Gideon Levy thinks they along with the Arab residents of Judea and Samaria should be forced to become Israelis. Fortunately – most Israelis disagree with him.

  11. Well, I guess no one want Haneen Zoabi as PM.

    You want the land.
    But you do not want the people on it.
    You cannot ethnically cleanse them.
    Not without earning the opprobrium of the world.
    You cannot then deny them the vote without being called Apartheid
    and you will not have an adequate reply
    Since if you annex the land, and deny them the vote,
    it will look like Apartheid
    If you do ethnically cleanse the Palestinians anyway,
    you can not claim to be better than us goyim
    That last would really hurt.
    YOU KNOW MY RECOMMENDATION!
    It is cheaper than war.
    And you can still get to call yourselves a light unto the nations.

    You get to keep the land and your pride.

    A bargain at any price.

  12. Where was the survey conducted?
    Who were questioned?
    Who did the questioning?
    How were the questions worded?
    How were the questions asked?

    Surveys can too often be written, asked and slanted to provide desired answers.

    Mickey