Things Have Only Gotten Worse Since Pew Concluded Their Troubling Survey of Israel

[Israeli]

Pew's questioning of 5,000 Israelis ended in May 2015. Since then, the yawning chasms in society have widened.

Haaretz Editorial Mar 11, 2016

The American polling company Pew Research conducted an in-depth survey of 5,000 Israelis between October 2014 and May 2015, with respondents from every segment of society, including West Bank settlers and Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem. The findings, which were published this week, are worrying in and of themselves, but their gravity is heightened by the fact that in the months since the poll was conducted, the divisions within Israeli society have gotten even worse.

With regard to the internal make-up of Israeli Jews, about half of respondents self-identified as secular, three in 10 as traditional, 13 percent as religious and nine percent as ultra-Orthodox. The farther down this ladder you go, the greater the preference for Judaism over democracy becomes, heading toward a state governed by religious law. This threatens to erode the presumption that Israel is both a Jewish and a democratic state.

But the divisions within Jewish society are dwarfed by the yawning chasm between Jews and Arabs. Four out of every five Jews favors discriminating in favor of Jews. Fully 48 percent agree with the statement that “Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel.” Ultra-Orthodox, religious and traditional Jews all support that statement by large majorities. Only secular Jews somewhat balance out the picture – but even among this group, one third signed off on the transfer idea.

Given this, it’s no wonder that suspicions between the two peoples run so deep. The only thing they both agree on – in identical proportions, 40 percent each – is that their leaders aren’t worthy of their trust. Mutual fear and loathing are tainting the country and bringing forth an evil miasma of racism. This is fertile ground for violence and for abandoning dreams of coexistence, reconciliation and peace.

continued @: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.708238

[Little Tich]

2. I hope you forgot the sarcasm tag.

Your post gets a whole different meaning without it.

[grossproffit]

4. +1

Last edited Fri Mar 11, 2016, 07:25 AM - Edit history (1)

Love your wit.

[King_David]

5. Ha ha

Yes

[azurnoir]

6. sorry to hear this but no surprises either

Fifty percent of the Jewish respondents said they disagreed with a recent statement by IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot saying the army should operate greater restraint in acting against alleged terrorists.

The poll also found sharp differences of opinion between Jewish- and Arab-Israelis about the involvement of Palestinian residents of Jerusalem in attacks on Jewish-Israelis. While 57 percent of Jews said there is “no connection” between discrimination against residents of Arab sections of Jerusalem and the attacks, 52 percent of Arab-Israelis had the opposite view.


Read more: http://forward.com/news/breaking-news/335326/israelis-prefer-hillary-clinton-to-bernie-sanders-by-2-1-margin/#ixzz42brZmE9t

[Israeli]

7. and this azurnoir.......

IDF Intelligence Chief: More Worried About Israeli Society Than Terror Attacks

read more: http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.707961

[azurnoir]

8. thanks interesting

Halevi added in the long term, there were issues that worried him more than terror attacks. “I’m much more concerned by the extent to which we are really one society,” he said. “How cohesive Israeli society is today and if it will still be this way in 10 years. If the situation, I hope, gets better, perhaps we’ll feel less of a need for this togetherness.”

While he did not say so specifically, it could be understood from his remarks that he was referring particularly to issues relating to democracy and human rights. “If there’s a place that’s trying to broaden the common denominator and not disqualify anyone for any reason, but to accept everyone as he is, I’m prepared to be there,” he said.

“In my small place today in the IDF we are really trying hard to bring everyone possible in the IDF,” he said. “We are making great efforts in this regard. I think that in the State of Israel the IDF, which is the people’s army, is a force, a force for many years to come. And I hope that we are succeeding in educating our soldiers to be more tolerant and better accept the other.”

read more: http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.707961

[shira]

9. Not much can be gleaned by those Pew Poll questions w/o follow-up....

4 of 5 Jews having preference for Jews over others (or being in favor of Law of Return / keeping Israel a Jewish State) does not imply racist motive, but rather self-preservation.

As to 48% of Arabs being expelled from Israel, what does that mean? Yes, that sounds bad but whom? Israeli Arabs? Or just the ones in East Jerusalem? Maybe the entire West Bank? All the above?

Follow-up questions are needed. Let's suppose that 48% of Israelis really and truly want Israeli Arabs out. Okay fine, but does that mean all who are good citizens willing to live in peace with Jews? Or just terrorists & their accomplices? Any difference in attitude between Christians, Muslims, Bedouin, Druze, Circassians....?

I'd be interested in THOSE numbers before passing judgment.

[Israeli]

10. Who was it that said .....

...................give me the child and I will give you the man ?

Israeli Schools' Map to Right-wing Ignorance

The map of the country that seventh-graders use omits the Green Line and all Israeli Arab communities except Nazareth and Umm al-Fahm.

Dror Etkes Mar 11, 2016

It’s a standard map, used to teach seventh-graders the geography of “Israel,” according to its name. The name does not specify whether it’s a map of the “State of Israel” or of “Eretz Yisrael,” the Land of Israel, but even a brief glance is enough to establish that it is not a political map: It includes whole areas that are beyond the boundaries of the sovereign State of Israel. Nor is it a map of the Land of Israel, which according to the biblical promise extends from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates.

The so-called Green Line marking Israel’s pre-1967 borders was erased from the maps back in the early 1970s, saving a generation of schoolchildren the need to acknowledge their state’s official eastern borders. It’s no wonder, then, that the majority of Israelis today cannot make the distinction between the State of Israel, a modern political concept, and the Land of Israel, a religious, historical and romantic concept that never had defined boundaries.

The denial of the Green Line is one thing, but with the exception of Nazareth and Umm al-Fahm, Arab communities within the State of Israel were also erased from the map – saving seventh-graders from having to contend with the fact that they live in a state in which some 1.7 million human beings – over 20 percent of the population – are Palestinian.

Amazingly, also on the eastern side of the Green Line the Palestinians appear to constitute a negligible minority, even though this minority comprises around 82 percent of the population there. They live in hundreds of Palestinian cities and villages, only a small number of which appear on the map – among them a few of the main cities. On the map, settlements such as Karnei Shomron (population 6,500) and Kiryat Arba (pop. 7,000) appear to be the same size as the Palestinian cities. In addition, there is not even a mention of areas A and B, the bantustans created in the wake of the Oslo Accords – which were signed around a decade before today’s seventh-graders were born.

To judge by the map’s southwestern edge, one might think that one of Israel’s biggest problems has been solved, or that it never existed. The label “Southern Coastal Plain,” inside of which the “Gaza Region” is located, does nothing to help children who occasionally hear news from “the south” to understand that this is the location of the Gaza Strip, where 1.8 million Palestinians are crammed into an area of 360 square kilometers.

Anyone who uses this map to teach Israeli children the local geography without explaining its distortions and omissions compromises these children’s right to a basic historical and geographical education about their homeland. It impairs their ability to comprehend the political and demographic situation into which they were born and saps their future potential to formulate intelligent, well-founded political opinions – right-wing or left-wing – in order to be engaged in shaping the character of the state and its people.

This map holds one of the secrets to the rise of the Israeli right in its current iteration: Its power increases the more its successive governments exploit their monopoly over the state education system to wage all-out war against the citizens’ right (not to say duty) to understand something about the reality they live in. Maps and geography lessons of this kind played, and continue to play, a vital role in the crystallization of this right wing. Most of it is a byproduct of the abandonment by Israeli society of the provinces of knowledge, in favor of the pseudo-rational. This right wing came to power because successive Israeli governments disregard the right of Israelis to obtain an education.

The understandable argument about the refusal of ultra-Orthodox Jews to teach core subjects in their schools has been made, and rightfully so, for decades. Anyone who is not completely divorced from reality recognizes that a modern state cannot allow, much less fund, an education system that colludes in denying its students the ability to support themselves. Now we find that the state school system chooses, in the name of reinforcing “national identity,” to fight to keep the rest of the population from being capable of independent thought.

The Arabs who live here also know this secret, despite the efforts by the map’s editors to conceal this fact. They sum up this farce with the following saying: “Al-aqal ghalab el-dawla.” That is, the intellect (or knowledge) threatens the powers that be.

Source: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.708169