The JTA reports on an interesting new study measuring "the Israeli-Jewish Collective Memory of the Israeli-Arab/Palestinian Conflict," and it has some surprising results. Perhaps the most important is that 47% of Israeli Jews believe that the Palestinian refugees were expelled by Israel in 1948.
The study was conducted by two Israeli researchers last summer, Rafi Nets-Zehngut, a fellow at the International Center for
Cooperation and Conflict Resolution at Teachers College of Columbia
University, and Daniel Bar-Tal, a faculty member at the School of
Education at Tel Aviv University. You can find all the survey results here. Although some of the results are still pretty disturbing (56% still believe
that Arafat rejected the "generous offer" because he did not want peace
with Israel), the report shows a positive trend where younger Israeli
Jews are less likely to believe the Zionist narrative.
Several interesting points stand out. First, it's clear the researchers were interested in the relationship between the collective memory of Israeli Jews and the prospects for peace. Bar-Tal comments, "holding such a Zionist narrative serves as an obstacle to peace since
it promotes negative emotions, mistrust, de-legitimization and negative
stereotypes of Arabs and Palestinians.” The report shows that the more people are connected to the Zionist narrative, the less likely they are to support peace agreements. The report also shows a that "a strong connection was found between the collective memory of "past
Jewish persecution" (regarding anti-Semitism and the Holocaust)" and identification with the Zionist narrative. Coincidence?
