[News] Poll shows Israeli belief that Palestinians should be eradicated is no longer a fringe opinion

[Anti-Imperialist News]

mondoweiss.net
<https://mondoweiss.net/2025/05/poll-shows-israeli-belief-that-palestinians-should-be-eradicated-is-no-longer-a-fringe-opinion/?ml_recipient=155825277202596907&ml_link=155825168471557802&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2025-05-30&utm_campaign=Daily+Headlines+RSS+Automation>
Poll shows Israeli belief that Palestinians should be eradicated is no
longer a fringe opinion
Yumna Patel
May 29, 2025
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[image: 180523_JERUSALEM_ZU_2_00-3.jpg]
Israelis take part in the flag march marking Jerusalem Day on May 18, 2023.
(Photo: Ilia Yefimovich/dpa via ZUMA Press/APAimages)

The genocidal references of Israeli leaders to “Amalek,” the biblical enemy
nation whom God commanded the Israelites to eradicate down to the last baby
and oxen, continue to flow from Israeli leaders. Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu has used the euphemism several times
<https://mondoweiss.net/2024/05/netanyahu-invoked-another-genocidal-biblical-reference-in-his-response-to-the-icc/>
since October 7, and his statements have been closely scrutinized in
Amnesty International’s report
<https://mondoweiss.net/2024/12/israels-genocide-in-gaza-is-fully-intentional-and-other-takeaways-from-the-amnesty-international-report/>
on Israel’s genocide. Yesterday, on Jerusalem Day, Israeli Finance Minister
Bezalel Smotrich (who also holds a ministerial position in the defense
ministry, making him the *de facto* governor of the occupied West Bank)
held a speech, saying
<https://x.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1927494637490516081>:

“We are being blessed with the opportunity, thank god, of seeing an
expansion of the borders of the Land of Israel on all fronts. We are being
blessed with the opportunity to blot out the seed of Amalek, a process
which is intensifying.”

Some might be tempted to believe that these are the rantings of an
extremist few. But it turns out that these views are held by the majority
of Jewish Israelis.

A devastating poll conducted at Penn State University in March, cited in
Haaretz
<https://www.haaretz.co.il/magazine/2025-05-22/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/00000196-f3a3-d6d3-ab9e-f3bbf6070000>,
is currently only in Hebrew. One of the poll’s results shows that 65% of
Jewish Israelis agree that a present-day incarnation of the “Amalek” exists.

There is a discussion among Israel’s supporters as to whether the likening
of Palestinians to Amalek, like Netanyahu and Smotrich have done, really
means extermination. The poll seems to answer this question in the
affirmative: 93% of those who believe in that “reincarnation” of the Amalek
also answer that “eradicating its memory” also applies to Palestinians
today.

On another genocidal question, this time more explicit on the
exterminationist detail, 47% answered positively. They were asked whether
they supported the Israeli army acting the way the Israelites acted when
they conquered Jericho under the leadership of Joshua, killing all of its
inhabitants.

But on another question, which specifically involved the ethnic cleansing
of Gaza, 82% supported “forced expulsion” — not even euphemistically veiled
as “voluntary emigration.”

It doesn’t stop there. A majority of 56% also wanted the forcible expulsion
of Palestinian citizens of Israel. To compare, in 2003, the figures for
those two items were at 45% and 31%, respectively.

Ethnic cleansing and genocide are not disconnected categories. As genocide
scholar Omer Bartov notes
<https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/10/bartov_genocide_apartheid>, “there
is a connection between the two, because often ethnic cleansing becomes
genocide.” This is logical because when people do not voluntarily choose to
leave the land, the colonialist power may create unlivable conditions of
life designed to force them out, or, if not possible, to exterminate them.

In any case, these questions and the answers to them by Jewish Israelis
clearly demonstrate a vast and overwhelming eliminationist vein in Israeli
society.

This eliminationist vein is not isolated to the religious sector, which is
often more right-wing. It is very prevalent among secular Jews, too.

On the question of forced expulsion from the Gaza Strip, the percentage
among seculars is 70%. Among “traditional,” it’s 91%, and among the
“religious” ultra-orthodox, or Haredim, a whopping 97%.

On the question of the forced expulsion of Palestinian citizens of Israel,
the four groups mentioned answer positively at the rate of 38%, 65%, 68%,
and again, a whopping 91%, respectively.

Israel seems to have a fascist tendency as far as younger generations are
concerned. Rather than being typically more progressive than the older
generation, Jewish Israelis under 40 are more genocidal. Only 9% of those
under 40 rejected the ideas of expulsion and extermination presented to
them. Those are the people typically executing actions as soldiers in
regular and reserve army service.

Last week, Netanyahu made it crystal clear, with no ands, ifs, or buts: his
goal was ethnic cleansing in accordance with “Trump’s plan,” even though
Trump himself walked back his February statements when he said the U.S.
would “own” Gaza and turn it into a “Riviera of the Middle East” after
expelling its people.

In a press conference
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-implementation-of-trumps-gaza-relocation-plan-is-condition-for-ending-war/>,
Netanyahu said that the “war” would end “under clear conditions that will
ensure the safety of Israel: All the hostages come home, Hamas lays down
its arms, steps down from power, its leadership is exiled from the
Strip…Gaza is totally disarmed, and we carry out the Trump plan.”

Netanyahu said the plan was “revolutionary.”

But since the goals are unattainable, what Netanyahu is really advocating
for is plain genocide, and there’s nothing revolutionary about it. It’s
happened before, we said “never again,” yet here it is, happening again.

The poll shows that the problem is much bigger than that of Netanyahu. All
of Israel is a giant chorus shouting genocide. Will anyone listen?
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