Israeli Arabs Support Hezbollah Kidnappings and Rocket Attacks

More than a quarter of Israel's Arab citizens believe the Holocaust never happened, and nearly two thirds of Israeli Jews avoid entering Arab towns, a poll by an Israeli university showed Sunday, demonstrating the poor state of relations between the two communities.

The poll, conducted by Sami Smoocha, a prominent sociologist at the University of Haifa, showed a wide gap of mistrust, anger and fear between Israel's Jewish and Arab citizens.

In its most dramatic finding, the poll showed that 28 percent of Israeli Arabs did not believe the Holocaust happened, and that among high school and college graduates the figure was even higher - 33 percent....

Among Israeli Jews, 63 percent said they avoid entering Arab towns and cities, and 68 percent fear the possibility of civil unrest among Israeli Arabs....

Asked about the war with Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon last summer, nearly half of the Israeli Arabs polled - 48 percent - said they believed that Hezbollah's rocket attacks on northern Israel during that war were justified, even though numerous Arabs were killed and wounded in those attacks.

While 89 percent said they viewed the IDF's bombing of Lebanon as a war crime, only 44 percent said they saw Hezbollah's attacks on Israel as such. Hezbollah pelted northern Israel with nearly 4,000 rockets.

Half of Israeli Arab respondents said Hezbollah's capture of IDF reservists Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev in a cross-border raid was justified. That incident sparked the 34-day conflict.

In a press release accompanying the poll's publication, Smoocha expressed surprise at the results.

"One would have expected more pro-Israeli results among Israeli Arabs due to the uniqueness of the most recent war: a war with no involvement of the Palestinians, a war in which the lives and belongings of Israelis were endangered, a war against an Islamic fundamentalist group that most of them don't support," Smoocha said.

62 percent worry that Israel could transfer their communities to the jurisdiction of a future Palestinian state....more than two thirds said they would be content to live in the Jewish state, if it existed alongside a Palestinian state