A poll from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in early June provided a chilling statistic: An overwhelming majority of Jewish Israelis agree with the idea of there being “no innocents in Gaza.”
64% of the Israeli public agree with this statement, almost two out of three people. But it is actually considerably higher among Jewish Israelis, because that number is weighted by Palestinians with Israeli citizenship. Palestinians make up roughly 17% of the Israeli population and 92% of them oppose the statement, so that leaves Jewish Israelis with overwhelming support.1
The poll also measured the percentage of Israelis who “highly agreed” with the sentiment across the political spectrum:
- 87% of supporters of the current government
- 73% of right-wingers who didn’t vote for coalition (like Avigdor Lieberman voters etc.)
- 63% of centrist voters
- Even 30% of “left” voters
This obvious support for patently genocidal calls against Palestinians calls for pause.2 But it is also important to recognize this support did not start yesterday, nor on October 7, 2023.
In 2018, then Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that “there are no innocent people in the Gaza Strip.”
In October 2023, the Israeli President Isaac Herzog paraphrased the same idea by saying that “an entire nation out there that is responsible. This rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved — it’s not true.” This statement was one of the many genocidal statements that became part of the case for genocide at the ICJ in South Africa vs. Israel.
Herzog later blasted the ICJ for “blood libel” and for “twisting his words,” but that’s just nonsense. Herzog is a notorious racist liar, and everyone understood him the first time.
Haaretz has been running articles like this one from late May, titled “‘There Are No Innocents in Gaza’: What to Do When Your Israeli Child Comes Home Radicalized”:
“Amid the war in Gaza and a deepening civil crisis in Israel, many parents are facing a painful challenge: their children are returning home with extreme views and expressions of hatred. These range from justifications for the killing of civilians in Gaza to racist remarks against the ultra-Orthodox, LGBTQ+ individuals and other communities. For many families, this clash between the values taught at home and the messages children absorb from the world around them is deeply troubling.”
But the poll indicates that this is entirely missing the point — all of Israeli society is radicalized and overwhelmingly supports genocide. The soldiers are not coming home to another universe — it is the same genocidal universe.
In 2014, during one of Israel’s “mowing the lawn” onslaughts on Gaza, which killed an estimated 2,200 Palestinians, including 551 children, Ayelet Shaked, then a Jewish Home lawmaker but not-yet minister, shared a social media post with the following text:
“Who is the enemy? The Palestinian people. Why? Ask them, they started [….] Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism. Actors in the war are those who incite in mosques, who write the murderous curricula for schools, who give shelter, who provide vehicles, and all those who honor and give them their moral support. They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.”
The post caused some commotion and she took it down, but the idea was clearly one that she endorsed. The next year, she would become Justice Minister. Shaked voiced downright fascist statements, yet she had the temerity, or chutzpah, to mock the idea of her being a fascist, in a mock-ad where she advertises a perfume called “Fascism,” saying, “smells like democracy to me.”
The truth of the matter is that Israeli leaders have been pushing genocidal advocacy for many years. The genocidal thinking has always been a part of the Zionist project in one way or another, fueled by its settler-colonial logic of elimination. But these genocidal tendencies have often had to be balanced with a semblance of democracy, just like in the case of its apartheid.
But now, Israel seems to have unleashed itself from such constraints to a much greater degree. It appears that Israel no longer sees the need to put on the perfume of democracy.
Notes
- Correction: The original version of this article stated that “roughly 82% of Jewish Israelis” agreed with the idea of there being “no innocents in Gaza.” This statistic was based on a calculation using an incorrect percentage of Palestinians with Israeli citizenship and has been removed from the article.
A calculation using the correct percentage shows that roughly 75% of Jewish Israelis agree with the idea that “there are no innocents in Gaza,” which still demonstrates overwhelming support for this genocidal notion. (Thank you to Tamir Sorek, Liberal Arts Professor of Middle East History at Pennsylvania State University, for help in correcting this statistic.) ↩︎ - A similar percentage (also 64% overall) thinks that there is no need for a wider coverage of the situation of civilians in Gaza. Israeli media hardly covers any of that at all, so it is equivalent to saying that they just don’t want to know about those starving babies. Among coalition voters, it’s 89%. This is not very surprising, since if most of these people don’t see any Palestinians in Gaza as “innocent”, why would they even care to hear about their starvation and death by other means? ↩︎
I have just watched the documentary Gaza: Doctors Under Attack. It was commissioned by the BBC, who then chickened out of broadcasting it, but has now been shown on Channel 4:
https://www.channel4.com/programmes/gaza-doctors-under-attack/on-demand/78415-001
Outside the UK, you can watch the film here:
https://www.basementfilms.co.uk/
It’s the third powerful recent documentary showing how bad Israel is. No Other Land won an Oscar but has struggled to find a distributor in the US. The Settlers presents a disturbing picture of how evil illegal West Bank squatters treat the indigenous population over whom they have total power. Gaza: Doctors investigates Israel’s targeting of medical staff and hospitals in Gaza for murder and destruction. It contains graphic video of scenes that are scarcely ever shown on Western media, including shocking footage of the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel. Two things particularly moved me – one emotional reaction and one based on my knowledge of history.
1. The presenter, Ramita Navai, conducting interviews with surviving medics and others. I’ve never seen a journalist so clearly on the verge of tears just doing her job.
2. The videos of Palestinian prisoners herded half naked into ditches by IDF soldiers in scenes reminiscent of the SS murdering Jews in the Holocaust; and the testimony of Dr, Khaled Hamouda, one of those Palestinians, describing how he and his fellow prisoners were directed to the left or to the right by their captors, just like at the gates of Auschwitz.
Horrifying, irrefutable proof of genocide.
Explains this:
“The IDF’s operations against hospitals generally started with (a) airstrikes or shelling on the hospitals and/or in the hospital’s vicinity, often resulting in serious damage to the hospitals’ premises and equipment; (b) besieging the hospitals with ground troops, preventing Palestinians from accessing the hospital and blocking medical supplies; (c) raiding the hospital with the assistance of heavy machinery, including tanks and bulldozers; (d) detaining medical staff, patients and their companions, as well as the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) sheltering inside the hospital; (e) forcing remaining patients, IDPs and others to leave the hospital; and finally; (f) withdrawing troops from the hospital, leaving in their wake severe damage to the structures, buildings and equipment inside, effectively rendering the hospital non-functional.”
Thematic Report – Attacks on hospitals during the escalation of hostilities in Gaza (7 October 2023 – 30 June 2024)
Even assuming Hamas was present in these hospitals, Israel committed war crimes by systematically destroying hospital infrastructure, blocking medical supplies, forcibly evacuating patients, and detaining medical staff. This pattern shows the real aim was to dismantle Gaza’s health system and eliminate its doctors through killings, abductions, and intimidation — not only a war crime, but part of Israel’s Genocide and making Gaza unlievable.
I apparently can’t comment properly any longer not because of anything to do with moderation but because something in my device posts my comment before it’s finished and edited making some of the comments seem nonsensical and not in the way that you’re typical MW commenter would assume a Zionist is nonsensical. I’m talking words that we’re not typed by me I needed to be edited out because they were auto typed without any control. I gladly take criticism out even ridicule as par for commenting here. But comments posted that seem overtly psychotic is where I draw the line. It’s probably the actual device which is acting up in other strange ways-but I am literally physically attached to it with a sensor, monitor and robotic pancreas after decades of dealing with juvenile diabetes. Not that my comments will be missed but if I’m going to be chastised, insulted, corrected, accused, etc I prefer it be of what I actually wrote.
if there was a poll like the one described(andv I’ll take it at face value that at least there was a poll and the results were generally in line with whatv ofir claimed I work still not 6 me surprised because I am certain these same Hebrew U students have seen countless polls put out
We see the power of narrative manipulation.
Likely, a high percent of Israelis actually believe Israell has sought peace and it has been not them but the Palestinians who have been the obstacle. Perceptions are powerful.
Many fear Palestinians actually want them dead…. and see evidence in slogans. Fear can overwhelm.
“Equality in one state or independence in two” could in time challenge perceptions and be gamechanging as the alternative to co-existing is unacceptable.