Are we racists?
Susan Hattis Rolef/The Jerusalem Post
The survey tried to demonstrate whether one can qualitatively compare the anti-Arab sentiments of Israeli Jews to the antisemitic sentiments of non-Jews in Europe.
On December 9, Yaron London of TV Channel 10 presented the results of a survey, prepared for the channel by the Guttman Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research, in which the Jewish public was asked to express its attitudes toward Israel’s Arab citizens, on the basis of the criteria on which CNN had held a survey concerning antisemitism in Europe.
In other words, the survey tried to demonstrate whether one can qualitatively compare the anti-Arab sentiments of Israeli Jews to the antisemitic sentiments of non-Jews in Europe.
Not surprisingly, the results demonstrated that most of the views on Jews held by non-Jews, which we consider to be antisemitic, are qualitatively not much different from the views of a majority of Israeli Jews regarding Israel’s Arab citizens.
Of course, the two situations are far from identical. Jews in Europe are hated for reasons that are based on facts, prejudices and outright lies, though Jews have never actually posed a physical threat to their existence. Israeli Jewish hatred of Arabs, on the other hand, is also based on a combination of facts, prejudices and outright lies. At the same time, many Arabs (both among those holding Israeli citizenship and those who do not) either actively support Israel’s annihilation as a Jewish state, or would not mourn its disappearance. To this one must add, however, that many Israeli Jews would be happy to see the Arabs (both Israeli and non-Israeli) vanish from the Land of Israel, irrespective of their roots in it, and some would be willing to help cause this to happen physically.
Incidentally, there is nothing new about Jewish Israeli racism vis-a-vis the Arabs. Until 1966 there was only a minority of Jews who called for the abolition of the military administration under which Israel’s Arab citizens lived, which limited their freedom of movement, speech and occupation. In fact, Herut movement leader Menachem Begin was one of the few who openly called for the abolition of the draconic administration.
Like today, a majority of Israeli Jews objected to their children being friends of Arabs (today the figures are 51% who object to their son being friends with an Arab boy, 53% who object to their daughter being friends with an Arab girl, 76% to their son being friends with an Arab girl, and 80% to their daughter being friends with an Arab boy). Intermarriage was always a taboo, but this does not apply only to Arabs but to any non-Jew. Furthermore, Israeli Jews were never enthusiastic about living in proximity to Arabs (except for mixed cities and towns, though even there the preference has always been for separate neighborhoods).What is new is the complaints about there being too many Arab doctors in the hospitals and public health system, and too many Arab pharmacists (about half the pharmacists in Israel are Arab). In the past Arabs simply weren’t visible in any of the academic professions, and today, following the vast increase in Arab academics, and because there are many professions in which Arabs are not welcome or denied access for alleged security reasons, it is not surprising that they find their way into professions that suffer from a shortage of manpower.
But there is something else that is new in Israeli Jewish anti-Arab sentiments: the loss of shame among those who express such sentiments, and the absence of condemnation of this phenomenon among our leaders. Thus, when MK Oren Hazan (Likud) attacked Muslim Arab television host and presenter Lucy Aharish for marrying a Jew and thereby “sullying the Jewish race,” he was criticized for the style of his attack but not for its essence.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also remained mum over public statements by his favorite interviewer, Shimon Riklin (of Channel 20), who for the last few weeks has constantly accused the Left of playing an active role on the issue of violence against women, even though half the murders of women in Israel are in the Arab sector, and finds this proof that the treasonous Left has more concern for the welfare of Arabs than of Jews. In other words, according to Riklin, the issue of violence against women is not a decent issue to be dealt with by patriotic Jews, because it is largely an Arab affliction (not true – violence against women, including rape, battering and murder, occurs in all sectors, though more Arab women are murdered).Of course, Netanyahu’s infamous call to potential Likud voters to come out to vote in the 2015 election because “the Arabs are rushing to the polling stations, and are being bused there by left-wing NGOs” was pure racism, besides being based on lies.