Survey finds 28 pct of Israeli Arabs deny Holocaust
Pastor Dale Morgan
Tuesday March 20, 8:39 PM Reuters
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Survey finds 28 pct of Israeli Arabs deny Holocaust*
By Dan Williams
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - More than a quarter of Israeli Arabs deny the
Holocaust took place, a new survey has found, calling the findings a
reflection of the depth of disaffection felt by the Jewish state's core
minority.
The independent poll released this week also found that many of the
Arabs, who make up a fifth of Israel's population, feel subject to
racism and fear possible deportation more than six years into a
Palestinian uprising.
According to the Haifa University survey, 28 percent of Israel's Arab
citizens do not believe the Nazi killing of six million Jews during
World War Two occurred.
Khaled Mahmeed, an Israeli Arab who founded what he describes as the
Arab world's only Holocaust museum, in Nazareth, said the findings were
plausible. He accused Israel of failing to educate its Arab minority
about the genocide.
"They don't want us to learn. Perhaps if more Arabs did, we would insist
on the lessons of the Holocaust being applied in terms of bring justice
for Palestinian refugees," Mahmeed said.
The Israeli Education Ministry official in charge of Arab schooling,
Abdullah Khatib, rejected Mahmeed's accusation.
"Arab pupils all take mandatory history classes, which include Holocaust
studies. There are also joint study programmes on the Holocaust with
Jewish schools," Khatib said. He did not dispute the survey's findings
but declined to comment on them.
Sammy Smooha, a Haifa University social sciences professor who conducted
the poll, said Holocaust denial was a sign of Israeli Arab anger at
perceived discrimination by the Jewish establishment and Palestinian
failure so far to win statehood.
"Israeli Arabs do not have a narrative of their own. They share the
Palestinian narrative, in which the Holocaust is seen as a political
event, exploited to justify Israel's existence and offences against
Palestinians," Smooha told Reuters.
"There is a definite protest element here," Smooha said.
REFUGEES
Israel has served as a refuge for Holocaust survivors, opening its doors
to Jewish immigration while refusing to allow Palestinians who fled or
were expelled during the 1948 Middle East war to return. Successive
Israeli governments have said those refugees should resettle in a future
Palestinian state.
In the survey of 721 Israeli Arabs, 67 percent described Zionism as
racist and 60 percent said they feared mass deportation.
Nonetheless, the poll found that 67.5 percent would want to remain in
Israel even if there were a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip. Sixty-two percent voiced concern their towns could be ceded to
Palestinian jurisdiction.
A far-right Israeli cabinet minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has proposed
that Israeli Arab communities go over to Palestinian control under an
ethnic partition of Israel and the West Bank, an idea rejected by
centrist Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
Israel's central Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem said the eruption of the
Palestinian revolt in 2000 had temporarily disrupted efforts to boost
Holocaust studies in Arab schools.
"Virtually all the schools in the Arab sector suspended their
participation," said Yad Vashem spokeswoman Estee Yaari. "But in 2006
there was a shift, and many more Arabic schools have begun coming to Yad
Vashem, many subsidised by Yad Vashem."
Smooha said those Arabs in Israel who acknowledged the Holocaust as fact
-- 71.1 percent -- tended to accept "that it is part of the country's
raison d'être".
The poll, which has a margin of error of 3.7 percent, also surveyed 702
Jews on their attitudes towards Arab compatriots.
Among Israeli Jews, 63 percent said they avoid entering Arab towns,
while 68 voiced worry about the possibility of a flare-up of Arab civil
unrest.
Despite the statistics, Smooha cautioned against concluding that race
relations in Israel had been irrevocably strained.
"The findings clearly show that the Arabs in Israel are closely
connected to life in Israel, see their future as being part of the state
and under no circumstances want to become part of the Palestinian
state," he said.