[News] Overwhelming majority of Jewish Israelis share genocidal belief there are ‘no innocent people in Gaza’

[Anti-Imperialist News]

mondoweiss.net
<https://mondoweiss.net/2025/07/poll-overwhelming-majority-of-jewish-israelis-share-genocidal-belief-there-are-no-innocent-people-in-gaza/?ml_recipient=158996172810225465&ml_link=158996066750956824&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2025-07-04&utm_campaign=Daily+Headlines+RSS+Automation>
Poll: Overwhelming majority of Jewish Israelis share genocidal belief there
are ‘no innocent people in Gaza’
<https://newsletters.mondoweiss.net/ty/c/eyJ2Ijoie1wiYVwiOjU5NzMwLFwibFwiOjE1ODk5NjA2Njc1MDk1NjgyNCxcInJcIjoxNTg5OTYxNzI4MTAyMjU0NjV9IiwicyI6IjRkNGU2YjNiM2YyMmZmNTYifQ>
Adam Horowitz
July 3, 2025
------------------------------

A poll
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-06-10/ty-article/.premium/64-of-israelis-see-no-need-for-more-reporting-on-gazans-sufferings/00000197-59e8-deed-a9bf-5def9d770000>
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 Israelis agree with this statement, almost two out of three. But it
is actually considerably higher among Jewish Israelis, because that number
is heavily weighted by Palestinians with Israeli citizenship. Palestinians
make up about 20% 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. 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
<https://www.france24.com/en/20180408-israel-defence-minister-says-no-innocent-people-gaza>
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 <https://www.icj-cij.org/node/203446> at the ICJ in
South  Africa vs. Israel.

Herzog later blasted
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/a-blood-libel-herzog-says-icj-twisted-my-words-to-support-unfounded-contention/>
the ICJ for “blood libel” and for “twisting his words,” but that’s just
nonsense. Herzog is a notorious racist liar
<https://mondoweiss.net/2018/07/herzog-apologize-intermarriage/>, and
everyone understood him the first time.

*Haaretz* has been running articles like this one
<https://www.haaretz.com/life/2025-05-25/ty-article/.premium/there-are-no-innocents-in-gaza-what-to-do-when-your-child-comes-home-radicalized/00000197-075e-dff8-abff-975e51870000>
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 <https://mondoweiss.net/2018/05/israeli-lawmaker-return/> 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
<https://mondoweiss.net/2017/09/ayelet-fascist-ideology/>, yet she had the
temerity, or *chutzpah*, to mock the idea of her being a fascist, in a
mock-ad <https://mondoweiss.net/2019/03/criticisms-policies-democracy/>
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 <https://mondoweiss.net/2017/03/apartheid-wears-veil/>.

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*

   1. 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? ↩︎
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