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| By: Israel Insider staff |
| Published: July 3, 2007 |
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According to a recent poll conducted by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, 64 percent of Israelis and 31 percent of Israeli Arabs support the idea of legislation that would deem that the prime minister of Israel must be Jewish.
The poll, conducted among 609 Hebrew, Russian and Arabic-speaking Israelis to explore the public's liberal and democratic views, brought some interesting results that show contradiction in Israeli society.
For instance, while a vast 97 percent of respondents hold tolerance between Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews to be important, one third also thought that the groups should live in separate neighborhoods.
Also, 37 percent of respondents who speak either Hebrew or Russian consider Israel's Jewish values as more important than it's democratic ones, whereas nearly half of Arabic-speaking respondents (47 percent) feel the opposite.
In the area of security, a significant 75 percent of Israelis, including 21 percent of Arab respondents, support lifting restrictions on Israel's defense organizations in their counter-terrorism activity, even if the activity violates the human or civil rights of a terror suspect.
"The poll's contradictory results illustrate that the Israeli public attributes the highest importance to liberal values and democratic institutions, despite the lack of willingness to implement this principles in some fields. This probably stems from the unique and difficult security situation in the region, which leads to a heightened need for security and for protecting democracy," stated Dr Hans Georg Plack, representative of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation in Israel. |
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