Jewish and Arab Israelis Want to Coexist

A mixed couple - Mulim woman and Jewish man.

Do all Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs hate each other, and does each group hope to eradicate the other from the State of Israel?  No, not all Israeli Jews and Arabs hate each other, and not all of each group wants to remove the other from Israel.  Donna Rosenthal gives many examples of tolerance and acceptance, while Pew Research Center’s study shows a downward trend, and +972 Magazine publicizes a poll that shows an upward trend.  These are not to say that there are some Arab communities within Israel that are utterly anti-Semitic, and there are some Jewish communities with hostility towards Arab Israelis, but this aggressive mentality is chiefly limited to highly religious Muslim communities.  Rosenthal describes the relationship between Muslims and Jews in her book The Israelis.   The Muslims chapter, in particular, she tells the story of a physician Yasser Mansour, an Israeli Arab Muslim who lives in Haifa.  Through the lens of Mansour, Arab and Jewish Israeli doctors care together for Jewish soldiers, Jewish victims of terrorism, Israeli Arab victims of terrorism, and even terrorists (Rosenthal, 258).  In living amongst each other, the ability to do so is not just limited to physicians.  Yasser Mansour described the fact that coexistence takes on its true meaning in Haifa where there is a mix of “Muslim and Christian Arabs, secular and Haredi, Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews” and that they live together, not together but separate as seen in Jerusalem, Jaffa, Lod, and Acre (Rosenthal, 260-261).  The example Rosenthal illustrated with Yasser Mansour is in Haifa, Israel – but in this chapter, she also discusses Umm al-Fahm, the largest all-Muslim town in Israel, an area that is considered dangerous for Jewish Israelies (Rosenthal, 276).  As mentioned before, the Arab groups that do hate Jews are the most religious Muslims.  This is the only instance where it’s discussed, and is not an issue in the The Bedouins, or The Christians chapters. Throughout her book there are relative examples that Jews and Arabs are tolerant of each other’s existence and accepting the fact that they live amongst each other.  In The Muslims chapter, her point of view is to research and discuss the lifestyle of Israeli Muslims and how they fit into Israeli society.  Because of the years she spent in Israel studying the cultures and sub-cultures of all Israelis, Donna Rosenthal’s information is presumably reliable and accurate.  She interviews many people from all over Israel, whose testimonies support her writings as evidence to what she presents.

Coexistence between Religious figures - Muslim and Jewish

Jews and Arabs praying together in Gush Etzion

We must then look at research from other studies to corroborate Rosenthal’s small sample in Yasser Mansour.  Dahlia Scheindlin of +972 Magazine is a political analyst and an expert on public opinion based in Tel Aviv, Israel.  According to her bio, she works for a variety of local and international organizations specializing in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  +972 Magazine published an article by Scheindlin earlier this month which recently asked Jewish and Arab Israelis from an internet panel about the relationship between them and if they recognize the legitimacy of each other’s national identity.  The sample consisted of a little more than 410 Jewish and Arab Israelis respectively, which is much more than what we drew from Yasser Mansour’s story in Rosenthal’s book.  76% of Arab Israeli respondents said their interactions with Jews are usually positive, while only 53% of Jews say they experience positive interaction with Arabs.  In the same article, the same sample were asked if Palestinians recognize the Jewish people, and if Jews accept the existence of Palestinians.  The question asked, “Are there both Jewish and Palestinian peoples or only a Jewish/Palestinian people?”  While only 52% of Jewish respondents say both, 94% of the Arab respondents recognize both.  Pew Research Center, a non-partisan “fact tank” that researches a wide variety of topics studied trends between 2013 and 2015 that ask Arabs and Jews if there can be a peaceful coexistence between Israel and an independent Palestinian state (Pew, 176).  In this research, there was a steady decline over the two years, representative in the Arab response.  In 2013, 74% of Arabs felt the two states could coexist.  In 2014, it dropped to 64%, and by 2015, only 50% felt they could coexist (Pew, 176).  By contrast, the Jewish respondents consistently stayed in the minority:  In 2013, 46% felt they could coexist, 2014 only 37%, and by 2015 only 43% (Pew, 176).  The Pew article regards the Gaza war as the reason for the decline in what could be a peaceful coexistence.  We should take note, however, that the Pew Research was conducted in the years of 2013-2015, while the +972 Magazine article looks at data from much more recently.  We can consider that it is likely that public opinion has shifted towards a peaceful coexistence in the past four years.  The information in these two polls, while producing somewhat conflicting results are surely objective and use samples that are representative of both groups of ethnicity.  As mentioned, the differing results is likely due to the studies being conducted in different times.  However, even with the conflicting data, there is still acceptance among the two studies.  The viewpoint of the Pew Research Center on this topic is nonpartisan in an attempt to analyze data in order to consider behavioral trends.  Scheindlin’s point of view is centered around the fact that Israelis and Arabs are considerably less than what the politics in Israel lets on, in an effort to show her readers that coexistence is a real possibility.

Arab and Jewish children want to be friends.

We can also look at an article published in Arutz Sheva, which is generally regarded as a right-wing news source.  In 2017, Arutz Sheva published an article that revealed most Jewish and Arab youth want to interact with each other.  The details of sample sizes were not revealed in the article, but it was discovered that 91% of Arab participants and 85% of Jewish participants were interested in interacting with people from the other ethnicity.  In a stamp of disapproval, Arutz Sheva made sure to disclose subjective information in their conclusion regarding the Palestinian Authority (PA) continuing to educate their youth in extremism.  The authors of this article attribute the poll being conducted by the Rafi Smith Institute which conducts surveys on a wide range of studies throughout Israel.  The information in the poll is objective information because of the reputation of the Rafi Smith Institute, that is, until Arutz Sheva offers its own spin to the results.  The viewpoint of Arutz Sheva is to show that the youth of Israel – between Arabs and Jews, want to interact.  But in its conclusion it is clear that Arutz Sheva wants its readers to disagree.  “In addition,” they report, out of the Arab youth they surveyed, 69% feel that they are not included in Israeli society, the article claims that this is an increase from 2015.