The results are disturbing to a believer in coexistence. No dount many of these stereotypes that both Arabs and Jews had of the other were influenced by the conflict and stereotypes within the media (both national Israeli and Israeli Arab sector) But the study shows where the misconceptions lie and maybe encourages people to try and fix them, not seeing Arabs collectively or Jews collectively as embodying defined characteristics. A few troublesome Individuals are the problem not collectivities. But it also shows that for all the luny binational utopianists out there, just how remote Jews and Arabs are from loving each other and willing to live together with mutual respect. It would only get worse in a binational state when they are forced to have a nonexistent identity

This proves the fact that there is a HUGE gap between the two sides.. if this is how Jews regard Israeli Arabs then how do they view Palestinians? the first thing to be done in order to try to get to peace is presenting a true unbiased picture for all parts of this conflict.. and this is a responsibility that both sides should take over.. I think this is the case not only in Israel but everywhere.. the picture of Arabs and Muslims is mutated in the West as a whole and vice versa.. if each individual sacrifices some time and effort in trying to learn a thing or two about the other side then I believe things might move along nicely..

That would be a great Idea! (yeah right) seriously. We need to get the Rabbi's and Imams to start talking about tolerance not hate.

When I lived in Israel (20 years ago for 3 years), I was a teenager. I had met Arabs when I went to Haifa but I never got to know one personally. For that matter I never met an Ethiopian. That's a pity, I wish I had. While I may nopt like the politics of Fatah or Balad, I always had fond memories of visiting Akko and Jaffa, and Jerusalem, places with large Arab populations, and coming into contact with shop keepersm restauranters. I would have wanted to have known one more personally. Funny, it was only when I got to the US that one of my closest friends was an Arab girl from Saudi Arabia.

That Israel has been fighting for its life against the Arabs every minute of every hour of every day of every year since its creation. The most active in that battle on the Arab side have been those whom Israel not only allowed to stay after the first war but welcomed in large numbers until the third one. Amnd today Israel's arabs hold massive rallies in protest of Israel's existence, some of them join terror groups and become homocide bombers, and the MKs they elect openly advise Hamas and Hezbullah on how to exploit Israel's weaknesses (for instance it was Barakeh who by his own admission advised Hamas to kidnap Shalit). I am not saying that Israelis are right to have these particular sentiments about arabs, I think that while they should concentrate on fighting and disarming them, they should remember that they are fighting an ideology not a peopple and that crossing that thin line is very dangerous. But this is all very easy for me and most other posters on this site who sit safely in America or wherever else to say that Israelis should do this or do theat, but when you live in Israel every Arab who carries a bag or seems a little fatte rthan he ought is potentiallyy the las thing you'll ever see. Considering this and many other things that have happend in the past, I think Israelis can more than be forgiven for their negative atitude towards Arabs. similarly, though it is baseless, the Arabs' negative view of jews can also be forgiven given all that has happened over the years as long as that view does not translate to calls for and atempt at mass-slaughter of Jews and destruction of their country

yes, I agree with you, but we can start by asking how the palestinians view the jews, or talk about how the arabs view the west, not the other way around, what happened to your true unbiased picture? All you talk about is the perception of arabs and muslims by jews and the west, what about the perception of the west and jews by arabs and muslims. I guess your not going to be nominated to get this ball rolling.

why not? but I don't see why you throw it right away on Rabbis and Imams.. what I mean by every individual is me, you and others.. why wait for Rabbis, Priests and Imams? if we are capable of communicating why should we wait for our leaders tto teach us THEIR opinions about the other side?

Jews hold 150 Nobel Prizes; Muslims 8. 'Nuff said.

From the evidence of these polls, is it correct to conclude that the Jewish students are more zenophobic and prejudiced than the Arab students? It would seem so.

Many Israelis hate Arabs blindly because the Arabs have been trying to destroy their country. Similarly many Nazis hated Jews because many of the Jews during the 1920s and early 30s were trying to destroy Germany (by handing it over to the USSR) and in fact made no secret of it. The difference3 between zionists and Nazis is taht unlike the Nazis Jews do not go from disdain to mass-murder, and unlike the Nazis and some Muslims (whose opinions of Jews are very much the same as the ones expressed by Jews about Arabs in this poll) they make every effort to distinguish between enemy civilians and combatants and ven having made this distinction prefer not to attack. DDo you realize that almost al the Arabs in Israel, probably about half a million, are consentrated in a couple of towns and small villages, and that if a fraction of Israel's Jews were half as radical and hateful as the Nazis, those towns and villages wald have laready been looted and burned to the ground? (not to mention that Arabs would have long since been stripped of rights and citizenship)

The other 25% are retarded.

The amount of prejudice shown among Jewish Israelis towards Arab citizens is shameful. True there is also prejudice towards Jews from Arabs, but the Jewish prejudice is even worse. For gosh sakes less than 50 percent of all Jewisg students will even meet with their Arab peers!!!

I did not ignore the fact the we have our misunderstandings towards Jewss and the West!! did you read what I said?.. "I think this is the case not only in Israel but everywhere.. the picture of Arabs and Muslims is mutated in the West as a whole and vice versa.. " underline "and vice versa".. do not choose to ignore it! I don't at all think that Arabs and Muslims know much about Jews and Westerners!! the picture of Jews and Westerners in also mutated in the Arab world!! I apologise if I wasn't clear enough about this..

First, xenophobic is spelled with an "x". You should look at the various kinds of xenophobic attitudes in Europe and all around the world. Israel is not an exception to the general trends. Yes, the specific target might be different (though I wonder what the attitude towards Arabs is in Iran, Kurdistan, and towards Turks in Armenia and Greece)... So, with the history in place, I'd say it is not surprising. What is surprising is that Israelis have not just napalmed Gaza and West Bank.

knowing dosn't form an idea .Beliefs come from teaching these things normaly backfire case in point mujahdeen in afganistan raised by american to kill american wahabi fanatics raised by saudi to kill saudi and so on and so on you hear from those soon

BESIDES WE THINK ARABS SUPPORT TERROR OR ARE TERRORIST.

I bet 100% of Arabs viewed Zionists as evil devil worshiping murderers unclean, uncivilized etc etc etc. Given that Arabs want to drive all of us into the sea destroy our country and persons, and constantly promote anti-semitism in Europe and America and cry Islamophobia when they lose an argument why should we continue to hold them in esteem? Perhaps if Arabs didn't elect traitors like Barakeh who advised Hamas to kidnap one of our soldiers we may have a better view of them, but unfortunately they show who and what they are at election time.

Arabs have a lower educational level than Jews; that is a statistical fact. If you look at the Arab world in general, not just in Israel, the educational level, except for a small elite, is abysmal. The majority in most Arab countries are functionally illiterate. Many have only a religious education. Women have even lower educational levels than men. For that matter, even Jews from Arab countries have generally a lower educational level than European Jews, although the gap is smaller today than it was in the past. Arab culture has many aspects that a Western educated person might consider primitive & backwards. Without much effort, just watching the evening news, does not give one the impression that Arabs are very civilized, at least not in a Western sense. The position of women in Arab society is not something to be proud of. When you read about honour killings or see the violence everywhere in the Arab world, civilized is not the word I would use to express my impression. Considering the hostility of the Arab population towards the State of Israel as a Jewish state, I'm surprised that the figure of those expressing fear of Arabs is so low. And in case you think that I'm just some Westerner expressing a racist view, I myself come from an Arab country & believe me, I could have written a lot more.

In order to understand such phenomena, one needs to examine their origins. Could Jewish students' perceptions have been influenced by repeatedly seeing undulating mobs of rioting Arabs on the news - e.g. in Gaza and France? Could the Israeli Arab rioting against Jewish Israelis in October 2000 have given an impression of violent tendencies? Could it be the brainwashing Arabs inflict upon their children, teaching them to aspire to martyrdom by killing Jews? Might it be that the whole Muslim world has translated fewer books into Arabic in the past decade than Spain in one year? Could it be because Muslim women are treated like chattel - or the fact that honour killings of females by their own brothers and fathers is still accepted? (In the Arab world, it is even LEGAL!) One could go on and on. Perceptions are funny things. They are like mosaics built up over time from many impressions and experiences.

proud of, it is that they have the highest percentage of educated people in the middle east. The number of Palestinians with Ph.D is at least 5%, and the number of Palestinians with a Bachelor degree is more than 30% of them! Finally, you should realize that the issue is not with education. Most suicide bombers, to this matter, 80% of them, were university students...!

Sorry to hear that. This is a sign of ignorance. I always belived that Jews are smart and bright. It seems that it is the time to consider my views.

"as long as that view does not translate to calls for and atempt at mass-slaughter of Jews and destruction of their country " Well, it already has.

If the Jewish students interviewed were from Haifa University, it's possible that their impression was tainted by a recent journal distributed amongst Arab students at the university. The journal lauded 'great Arab leaders' such as Nasrallah and Bin Laden. Frankly, that could explain that 'uneducated' , 'uncivilized' and 'afraid' sections of the questionaire...

Yeah, why should Jews and Westerners have all these misguided notions about and prejudices against Arabs and Muslims? After all, they can't scream often and loud enough that they want to kill you, first chance they get. One could think that they're only joking, but then there are all these suicide bombers, qassams, 9/11, videotaped beheadings, kidnappings, riots in Paris, dead people on London subways, etc. etc. etc. I don't know about anyone else, but it doesn't make me want to rush out there and make friends.

I'd like to start with an anecdote: My freshman year of college (in the US), I was placed with a Pakistani roommate. In one of our first groups talks among the girls of the hallway, she said she'd always been raised to hate Jews and think they were evil, even though she had never met one. By the end of the year, she realized that she had been taught incorrectly. Why? Because she got to know a Jew and realized that I didn't have horns, didn't want to take over the world, didn't want to kill Muslim babies, etc, etc, etc. We actually found that we had more in common with each other than we did with our other two roommates. Regular dialogue is the best way to destroy stereotypes against you. It takes time, but regular human contact is the best way to destroy dehumanizing stereotypes between two people. That's where things start, among a small group of people. It's much easier to impact such stereotypes if you approach them one at a time, and one on one. Yes, I realize that it's hard to get direct access to many hate-oriented groups around the world and I realize that many aren't interested in having their notions of hate disabused, and I realize that a group mentality only fosters such hatred. That's why I say START SMALL. The more negative stereotypes you replace with positive ones, the more potential ambassadors you cerate to send back to homogenous, misguided areas elsewhere. I actually think that talkbacks can be an excellent medium for such dialogue, as long as people stay openminded and polite. And I speak from personal experience on this, as well. (Shout-out to Lynne. I liked your comment.)

Many of the reasons given for hatred towards Arabs are understandable. But they are no less disgusting in the eyes of many, including myself. Just because many Arabs in Israel and around the world may be sharing the same views towards Jews doesn't justify this attitude. Anyone not blinded by the hatred will recognize this. It's sad that as the days go by, Israelis become more and more entrenched in their bigotry. And with little to no effort being made to shake it, it's no wonder that less and less Jews worldwide are shedding their sympathies for the Homeland.

Can't you, for Pete's sakes, see that we're trying to have a love-in here? Ok, so I'm snickering, because I like your "retarded" post, but there has to be room for the dreamers, too. I just wonder what would happen, if Israel, in a raving effort to love its neighbors and be loved by them, did away with checkpoints, threw open its borders and invited everybody in for a group hug. I wonder, too, what odds Vegas would give on what percentage of Israelis to survive one or two days.

I do not believe that there is any difference in intelligence between Jews and Arabs . There are differences in culture and education , so what ! The main difference is that Arabs are educated to hate Jews , this applies to all islamic countries . The Jews try to have a peaceful coexistence with the Arabs , which is not accepted by them