Survey: Most Israeli Arabs Do Not Support Hezbollah
August, 2006

A survey conducted mid August by Mina Tzemach, Israel 's leading pollster, revealed that the vast majority of Israeli Arabs did not support Hezbollah during the Lebanon War. According to Tzemach, only 18% of Israeli Arabs backed Hezbollah, yet 55% of Israeli Jews thought that all or most Israeli Arabs supported Hezbollah. An additional 21% felt that half of Israeli Arabs sympathized with Israel's Lebanese Shiite enemy.

Last week, Environment Minister Gideon Ezra fanned the flames of these racist misconceptions by suggesting that Israel's Arabs do not deserve to be part of the government rehabilitation plan for the north because they "carried on as normal." In fact, 40% of the Israeli civilians killed by Hezbollah during the war were Arabs. In a Haaretz article entitled "After the War the Equality Between Arabs and Jews Must be Rebuilt," Shuli Dichter, co-director of New Israel Fund grantee Sikkuy: The Association of Civic Equality in Israel, wrote, "Half of the citizens of the Galilee are Jews and half are Arabs and Israel's civil strength in the region depends first and foremost on basic equality between the two sectors."

The gap between Israeli Jewish perceptions and reality demonstrates the critical importance of New Israel Fund's activities to promote Jewish-Arab coexistence in the aftermath of the war. Indeed, the third cycle of New Israel Fund's emergency grants in the wake of the war emphasize coexistence and joint living projects, including: allocations for a summer camp for Arab children run by Mossawa Centre; Jewish and Arab workshops about the feelings evoked by the war operated by Mahapach: Education, Housing and Livelihood; and coexistence activities at the Neve Shalom Jewish-Arab kindergarten and primary school.