 |
 |
 |
|
|
A house damaged by a Hizbullah Katyusha rocket, July 2006
|
|
|
|
|
|
| By israelinsider staff March 19, 2007 |
|
| |
 Bookmark to del.icio.us |
| |
According to a recent poll, over a quarter (28 percent) of Israeli Arabs do not believe the Holocaust ever happened and among educated Israeli Arabs -- those who have graduated from high school and college -- 33 percent deny the Holocaust.
Over three-quarters (76 percent) of the Arabs polled described Zionism as racist.
The poll was conducted among 721 Arab and 702 Jewish participants by a top sociologist at the University of Haifa, Prof. Sami Smooha.
According to Smooha's analysis, Arab extremists see the Holocaust as a political event, and denial of it is therefore seen as a form of opposition or resistance to Israel.
On the topic of last summer's war, almost half (48 percent) of the Israeli Arab respondents believe Hizbullah's rocket attacks on innocent civilians in northern Israel were justified. Many Israeli Arabs were killed in the attacks.
Only 18.7 percent of the Arabs polled believed that Israel had good reason to engage in the war, as opposed to almost 70 percent of Jewish Israelis.
Furthermore, almost 50 percent of Israeli Arabs polled defend Hizbullah's kidnapping of IDF soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, and 90 percent claim Israel's bombings in Lebanon were war crimes.
In contrast, less than half (44 percent) of Israeli Arabs polled view Hizbullah's nearly 4,000 rocket attacks on heavily populated areas of Israel last summer as war crimes.
The only subject Jewish Israelis and Arab Israelis agreed on was doubt over Israel's military capabilities. 60 percent of Arabs and 63.6 percent of Jews doubt Israel's capabilities following the outcomes of the war.
At a press conference following the poll's publication, Prof. Smooha said he was very surprised by the results. He explained, "One would expect Israeli Arabs to be more pro-Israel due to the unique situation in the last war.
"The war did not involve the Palestinians and the Hizbullah rockets endangered their lives and property too. The aggressor was a fundamentalist Islamic organization that most Israeli Arabs do not support," Smooha said.
"Hizbullah, a Shiite movement, is supported by a fundamentalist Shiite non-Arab country (Iran) that the Arabs are not keen on. During the war, the attacker also violated the sovereignty of an Arab country (Lebanon) and caused major damages to it," he explained.
Israeli-Arab MK Ahmed Tibi (UAL) responded to the survey, saying he had doubts about some of the results, according to The Jerusalem Post.
Referring to the large-scale anti-Israel sentiments expressed by the Israeli Arabs, Tibi said, "usually there is no empathy for the aggressor."
The MK added that he doubted the statistics on Holocaust denial "reflect the situation in the Arab elite."
Tibi added that Holocaust denial is "immoral," but said the attitude of denial could stem from "reservations about the way the Holocaust is used as a political tool" by Israel.
The findings of Smooha's survey will be presented at the first Haifa Conference for Social Responsibility. |
|
 
|
|
|
|
Click on the blue headline to read a Talkback comment and respond to it. Click on the  icon to send a private email to the talkback writer. The icon appears only if the writer has decided to be contacted. If no popup window appears, please make sure your popup blocker allows israelinsider.com.
|
|
| |
|
|
