Poverty, Religious Instruction Breed Xenophobia in Israel

By Dr. Israel Shahak

One of the best-kept secrets in the U.S. is the existence of Jewish xenophobia in Israel and the extent of its political influence. Dr. Baruch Goldstein's massacre of Muslim men and boys at prayer, although it didn't change American attitudes, prompted an in-depth discussion of this problem in Israel.

All of the polls taken in Israel after the massacre have shown a disturbing level of approval for Goldstein's action. Breakdowns of who approve and who disapprove reveal much about the evolution of contemporary Israeli Jewish society.

A poll taken 10 days after the massacre by Eliyahu Hassin and published on March 11 by Shishi weekly was based upon a representative sample of all Israeli adults, which means that it included Arab holders of Israeli citizenship. The respondents could choose among three options: justifying the massacre, "understanding" without justifying it, and condemning it in no uncertain terms. The national result was: justifying, 6 percent; understanding, 30 percent (total of first two responses 36 percent); and condemning, 63 percent. Since the answers of Israeli Arabs, who constitute about 14.5 percent of Israeli adults, were included in these totals, we can infer that about 40 percent of Israeli Jews either justified or at least "understood" Goldstein's massacre.

This should be the point of departure for any serious analysis of Israeli Jewish attitudes, and the significant variations among various segments of the Jewish population. The most meaningful variation was between younger and older Israelis. Among Israelis (including Arab Israelis) aged 18 to 29, 8 percent justified the massacre, 35 percent understood it (for a total of 43 percent who did not condemn it), and 56 percent condemned it. Thus, overt or covert approval for the massacre was higher among this youngest segment of adults than the national average. By contrast, among respondents aged 50 to 65, only 3 percent justified it, 18 percent understood it (for a total of 21 percent who did not condemn it), and 78 percent, far more than the national average, condemned it.

The breakdown by age shows that on issues involving the Palestinians in the territories, younger Israelis are more chauvinistic than older Israelis. The opposite is true on issues not directly involving the Palestinians in the territories. On freedom of the press, the younger Israelis turn out to be more liberal than the elderly.

If the young are the most xenophobic group among Israelis, the most xenophobic group among young Israelis are the young religious (which in Israel means Orthodox) Jews. Yael Fishbein, a veteran education correspondent, makes this point in a carefully documented article in Davar of March 3. "The youth's support for Kahane and his views is no news," she wrote. "The Van Leer Institute surveyed this phenomenon in the mid-1980s, using the Dahaf Institute, to find that the percentage of Kahane supporters among the youth stood at about 9 percent. When Kahane's name was not mentioned, however, support climbed to about 33 percent...

The young are the most xenophobic group among Israelis.

"The Van Leer survey also showed that support of religious youth for Kahane was three times as large as that of secular youth, and that the former tended to profess that support in much more extremist terms, stressing explicitly such tenets of Kahanism as hatred of Arabs, the denial of their rights or the demand to expel them from the Land of Israel."

Those findings, Fishbein wrote, sparked an extensive debate but "the religious Jewish community firmly opposed any education for democracy and co-existence in the name of the double standard prescribed by the Jewish religion for attitudes toward the Jews and the Gentiles. This double standard applied with particular force against the Arabs, whom many religious Jews perceived as the 'offspring of Amalek' which they were duty-bound to exterminate.

"The Education Ministry once again researched the attitudes of youth toward Kahanism in 1990, through a survey carried out by Prof. Ze'ev Ben-Sira. Support for Kahanism was then found to have increased. Of the youths surveyed, 39 percent said that they identified or agreed with Kahane's views. When Kahane's name was not mentioned, support for his ideas climbed further. Sixty-six percent either supported or strongly supported "encouraging the Arab residents of the territories to emigrate! Fifty-three percent supported "restricting the human rights of people who did not fulfill the duties of the state's residents, such as military or national service." (With the exception of Israeli Druze and some bedouin, Muslim and Christian Palestinians are barred from military service.)

"The Ben-Sira survey also revealed an enormous difference between the attitudes of secular and religious Jewish youths. The overall percentage of those who expressed their preference for the domination of the territories over human rights was about 60 percent. But in secular educational institutions the idea commanded the support of only 35 percent, compared to as many as 74 percent in the religious institutions.

"In secular vocational schools (i.e. attended mostly by children of parents with below average incomes), 61 percent expressed that preference, compared to 71 percent in the religious vocational schools."

The Impact of Poverty

In addition to documenting the formidable influence of religious institutions in Israel upon the formation of xenophobic attitudes, the Ben-Sira survey noted the impact of poverty. This finding was recently corroborated by Eliyahu Hassin, who found that among respondents with below average incomes, 7 percent justified Goldstein's murders, 40 percent "understood" them (for a total of 47 percent who did not condemn them), and 51 percent condemned them. Condemnation was far higher among respondents with incomes above average. Of these,' 4 percent justified Goldstein's actions, 20 percent "understood" them (for a total of 24 percent who did not condemn them), and 75 percent condemned them.

These findings, which are consistent with a wealth of other data, demonstrate that Jewish religious teachings in Israel and poverty (especially if caused by unemployment) are two major factors explaining Jewish xenophobia. While not ignoring either, I would attribute more importance to the influence of religion.

This is my conclusion from numerous surveys and other research into the causes of Kahane's election to the Knesset in 1984. It was demonstrated conclusively at that time that Kahane's support was the heaviest in localities or neighborhoods which were both religious and poor. Neither of those variables alone sufficed to explain the massive vote for him. Jointly, however, these variables relate more closely to Kahane's support than does any other variable.

The silence of not a few Jews about the influence of Jewish Orthodoxy always strikes me as pernicious in its political effects. Perhaps not incidentally, for all the difference between the conditions under which the Palestinians live as compared to the Jews, the combination of extreme poverty with religious influence appears to generate religious extremism among Palestinian Arabs, just as it does among Israeli Jews.

The pernicious influence of Jewish religious education was also discussed by another veteran education correspondent, Nilli Mandler, in Ha'aretz of April 5. She reports that Jewish religious educators recently began to use the term "Amalek" as referring to "all Gentiles who can be presumed to hurt the Jews." As an example, she quotes a new book, Adey Ad ["Forever and Ever"], authored by Dr. Dov Ehrlich. It contains "essays in education and philosophy" published by the Ministry of Education's autonomous Department of Religious Education for the use of its teachers.

Since Bible study is a central subject in religious education, both teachers and their students can be presumed to know the biblical verses commanding the Jews to exterminate the Amalekites, e.g. "now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass" (I Samuel, Chapter 15, verse 3).

But, Ehrlich continues: "Amalekites now can be found all over the world, but especially within the borders of the Greater Land of Israel which the Lord, blessed be His Name, gave to us, the Jews. The Amalekites are fated to hate us forever and ever, so we are justly commanded to hate them twice as strongly. The Bible commanded us to exterminate the Amalekites. Just as we obeyed the command by exterminating the ancient Amalek, we now must do the same to the modern Amalek."

Dr. Ehrlich then explains that "it is always important to disclose where the hatred of the nations toward the Jews comes from. But the hatred of modern Amalekites toward the Jews cannot be logically explained, because they suck it with their mothers' milk. Such hatred toward the Jews can be contested only by our reciprocal hatred toward them."

Mandler also shows how two formerly separate and even mutually hostile Jewish religious education networks, one autonomous butstill belonging to the state and the other totally independent and managed by the ultra-pious Haredim, are now coordinating their endeavors. Coordination between them already has produced a book for religious teachers which posits the construction of the Third Temple as an urgent necessity, and "notes with astonishment that instead of building it, the Jews who returned to their own land didn't even put at the top of their priorities the purification of the Temple Mount from the abominations now standing there" [i.e. the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa mosque, comprising the third holiest site in the world to one billion Muslims]. I would anticipate a repeat of the 1984 attempt to demolish the Temple Mount mosques as a near inevitable effect of the politics of education under this discussion.

A Direct Political Effect

Let me end by pointing to one direct political effect of the increasing Jewish xenophobia. Penetration of the Israeli Security System by the religious zealots has enabled them to directly influence Israeli policies toward Palestinians. For example, a few weeks ago, after the Shabak (Israeli internal security police) commander of the Ramallah district, Noarn Cohen, was killed by Hamas activists, his parents were interviewed. The interviews revealed that he had been deeply religious and regarded his service in Shabak, and before this in the top elite unit of the Israeli army, "The General Staff Patrol," as a sacred duty.

He was told by his spiritual mentors that if he were killed while serving in Shabak, he would attain martyrdom and his soul would be instantly transported to paradise. His pious father, Dr. Yehezkel Cohen, a well-known religious educator, told the press that this must actually have happened. Dr. Cohen also told the press that his son often had assured him that Shabak activities were perfectly humane and beneficent to the Arabs, and that Jews "who slander Shabak" were traitors.

Some of Ramallah's Palestinian inhabitants appear to hold religious views eerily similar to Dr. Cohen's. After one of Noam Cohen's assailants was killed by the Israeli army, the assailant's father told a Hebrew paper that it was his martyred son who was in Paradise, since he had "relieved Ramallab's inhabitants from a despot terrifying everybody." It appears that a holy war is waged in the West Bank in which Shabak, penetrated by Jewish religious zealots, is hardly different from Hamas, representing Palestinian religious extremists.

Dr Israel Shahak, a Holocaust survivor and retired professor of chemistry at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, is chairman of the Israeli League of Human and Civil Rights.