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ABOUT
NEW ISRAEL FUND
NIF works to strengthen
Israel's
democracy and to promote justice and equality for all
Israel's citizens.
The leading funder of social change in Israel, NIF
supports grassroots organizations working to safeguard civil
and human rights, bridge social and economic gaps, and foster
tolerance and religious pluralism. www.nif.org
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Israel
Office
Survey:
Most Israeli Arabs Do Not Support Hezbollah
A survey conducted last week by Mina Tzemach,
Israel's leading
pollster, revealed that the vast majority of Israeli Arabs did not
support Hezbollah during the Lebanon War. According to Tzemach, only
18 percent of Israeli Arabs backed Hezbollah, yet 55 percent of
Israeli Jews thought that all or most Israeli Arabs supported
Hezbollah. An additional 21 percent felt that half of Israeli Arabs
sympathized with Israel 's Lebanese Shiite
enemy.
This week, Environment Minister Gideon Ezra
fanned the flames of these racist misconceptions by suggesting that
Israel's Arabs do not deserve to be part of the government
rehabilitation plan for the north because they "carried on as
normal." In fact, 40 percent of the Israeli civilians killed by
Hezbollah during the war were Arabs. In a Haaretz article entitled
"After the War the Equality Between Arabs and Jews Must be Rebuilt,"
Shuli Dichter, co-director of NIF grantee Sikkuy: The Association
of Civic Equality in Israel, wrote, "Half
of the citizens of the Galilee are Jews and half are Arabs and
Israel's civil strength in the region depends first and foremost on
basic equality between the two sectors."
The gap between Israeli Jewish perceptions
and reality demonstrates the critical importance of NIF's activities
to promote Jewish-Arab coexistence in the aftermath of the war.
Indeed, the third cycle of NIF's emergency grants in the wake of the
war emphasize coexistence and joint living projects, including:
allocations for a summer camp for Arab children run by
Mossawa
Center; Jewish and Arab workshops about
the feelings evoked by the war operated by Mahapach: Education,
Housing and Livelihood; and coexistence
activities at the Neve Shalom
Jewish-Arab kindergarten and primary
school.
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