A poll conducted by an Israeli organisation has revealed that the vast majority of Israeli Jews believe there are “no innocents” in the Gaza Strip.
aChord, a research group linked to Hebrew University specialising in social psychology, said 76 percent of the Jewish public partially or fully agree that “there are no innocents in Gaza”.
The survey found that even among Israeli opposition voters, 47 percent fully supported the claim, while among Jewish opposition voters, a majority also agrees with the claim.
Researcher Ron Gerlitz described the results of the survey as “difficult findings” that indicated attitudes that fed into acceptance of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.
“These findings can of course shed light on the enormous number of Palestinian civilians killed in the war in Gaza,” he wrote on X.
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“It is important for me to write that agreeing with ‘there are no innocents’ is not the same as ‘we need to kill everyone there’. It’s not the same thing. But the consciousness of ‘there are no innocents’ is the toxic soil that grows dynamics and actions that cause the killing of innocents.”
Anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab sentiment in Israel has been growing in recent years, targeting both Palestinians in the occupied territories and Palestinian citizens of Israel.
Last week, a Palestinian bus driver in Israel was attacked by a group of Jewish youths shouting “death to Arabs”, the latest incident in a string of racist attacks on Palestinian citizens of Israel.
The assault took place in Petah Tikva, in central Israel, on Saturday, according to a report by Israeli news website Ynet.
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According to footage of the attack circulating online, one of the youngsters smashed a windshield inside the bus with an emergency hammer, next to a woman holding a baby. He then smashed one of the bus doors.
The bus driver, Mohammed Abd al-Hadi, told Ynet the incident happened after he asked the young passengers to stop screaming and vandalising the vehicle.
“They insulted me and shouted racist sayings like ‘Jew – good; Arab – son of a bitch’ and ‘death to Arabs’,” he said.
Another attack took place in May, when fans of Beitar Jerusalem, a football team affiliated with the Israeli far right, attacked two Palestinian drivers in Jerusalem after their team’s loss in the final of the Israeli championship.
Ahmad Kara’in, one of the attacked bus drivers, needed medical treatment as a result. He told the Israeli public broadcaster Kan 11 that 150 fans beat him, attacked him with gas and punctured the wheels of his vehicle, all while shouting “death to Arabs”.
The Abraham Initiatives, an organisation that seeks to advance equal rights for Palestinian citizens in Israel, told Middle East Eye that the incidents were “not exceptional”, but rather “part of a dangerous wave of violence and racism against Arab citizens of Israel”.
“This violence is a direct result of ongoing incitement and governmental lawlessness, which allows the attackers to raise their hand against people just because of their origin,” the group said.
