Dateline Jerusalem — Nearly half of Jewish Israelis agree that Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel, and a solid majority (79 percent) maintain that Jews in Israel should be given preferential treatment, according to a Pew Research Center in Israel survey published today.
The poll, with 5,601 in-person interviews of Israeli adults, conducted between October 2014 and May 2015, found that Israeli Jews increasingly believe the West Bank settlements help, rather than hurt, Israel’s security. Most (61 percent) believe Israel was given by God to the Jewish people.
Three-quarters of Israeli Jews feel deeply connected to American Jews, but over half feel U.S. policy is not supportive enough of Israel. Meanwhile, support for the two-state solution among Jewish Israelis hasn’t changed considerably in past years (though they are less optimistic than their American counterparts), but among Arab Israelis, it has plummeted.
Overall, the majority of Israelis identify as political centrists.
Expulsion of the Arabs
The survey makes no distinction between Palestinian Arabs of the West Bank and citizens of Israel in its question about whether Arabs should be expelled from Israel. Yet, 48 percent of Jewish Israelis said they were in favor, 46 percent were opposed, and 6 percent said they didn’t know.
Breaking it down into religious groups, the Modern Orthodox (the report uses the Hebrew term dati’im), were the most likely to support such a measure, at 71 percent. At the opposite end, secular Jews were most opposed, with 58 percent against (but over one-third supported it). Jews of Sephardic or Mizrahi ancestry — many of whom have ancestors who were expelled from their countries of origin — were more keen on the idea (56 percent) than their Ashkenazi counterparts (40 percent).
Nearly half of Jewish Israelis agree with the statement: Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel.
Self-identified right-wing respondents were significantly more enthusiastic about the idea (72 percent), while those who identified as left-wing were solidly opposed (87 percent against). Among centrists, 37 percent backed it, 52 percent opposed it, and 9 percent replied that they did not know. There were no considerable differences found between settlers (54 percent support it) and those residing elsewhere (47 percent support it).
Most Jewish Israelis believe they should get preferential treatment in Israel (Pew Research Center)
Overall, Israeli Jews also overwhelmingly feel (79 percent) they deserve unspecified “preferential treatment” over non-Jewish minorities in Israel. Settlers were slightly more inclined to support preferential treatment (85 percent) than the rest of the population, but the view was popular among all Jewish groups in Israel regardless of religious level, particularly among the ultra-Orthodox (97 percent) and Modern Orthodox (96 percent), although 69 percebh of secular Jews and 85 percent of traditional (Masorti) Jews also agreed.
At the same time, the majority of Israeli Jews (76 percent) said they view a Jewish state as being compatible with democracy – but the opposite was found among Arab citizens, with 64 percent maintaining Israel cannot be both a democracy and a Jewish state (63 percent of Muslims, 72 percent of Christians, and 58 percent of Druze feel this way).
This story originally appeared in timesofisrael.com
