Real and fake statistics use results out of context to justify preexisting ideas

If you believe any of it, you’re ignorant, naïve, or a fool, IMHO

My judgments are merciless, and skip this if you don’t like such texts.

Democracy and equality shouldn’t mean that we all must be the same. Smashing stereotypes and appreciating diversity are crucial. But the study below to strengthen democracy and equality just confirms prejudices.

Let’s go over the report blow by blow. I’ll ignore the illustrations.

For no scientific reason, the headline is negative. Positive news won’t sell.

No doubt, in honor of the start of the new school year, we are told that a survey among parents found that most religious-Jewish Israelis and many Jewish Israelis in general don’t want their kids to mix with Arab kids or have Arab teachers, but most Arab Israelis have no such problems.

The stats are from a center that advocates democracy and equality, so the automatic spin is that most Jews are bigots and most Arabs are not.

Jewish is used ethnically; Arab does not include the majority of Israeli Arabs, who are Mizrachic Jews. They mean non-Jews, mostly Muslims.

The differences between Jews and Arabs (we maintain their flawed labels) are then spun as a difference in attitudes, potentially revealing a ‘worsening in already-strained Jewish-Arab relations in Israel.’

The Center for a Shared Society probed how Jewish and Arab parents view ‘the other.’ That’s the first bias. (Bias is deadly for any statistics.) They ‘explain’ an unwillingness from religious and ultra-Orthodox Jews to have their kids mix with Gentile kids as ‘not seeing the other’ and a measure of inequality and unfairness. The truth is that Jews don’t want the mixing so that their kids won’t marry out. Muslims don’t worry as much, as, for deterrence, it’s a capital sin for their kids to convert to Judaism, while they welcome Jews converting. And being close to Jews is economically more profitable in the Jewish-majority State. So, this doesn’t signal tolerance or respect at all. In reality, Muslims en masse and safely travel Jewish cities on Jewish buses, while no Jew enters Arab buses or cities in Israel for fear of their lives. Arab settlements on the West Bank are even forbidden to Jews since the IDF doesn’t want to endanger troops to rescue stupid Jews.

Very tactically, the following questions were not asked. Do you approve of your children marrying out? What if the partner converts? What if your child were to convert? Is there a difference if it’s your sons or daughters?

Since this report is published in a non-religious publication, an added distortion is the portrayal (slandering) of religious Jews as bigots.

The article admits that the survey did not probe attitudes between different Jewish or Arab groups, but the Center’s director theorizes ‘that Haredi and religious attitudes toward [Jewish] secular teachers in their schools would probably be similar to those held toward Arab teachers.’ This portrays them as intolerant but, unintendedly, in fact, explains that these Jewish parents don’t want teachers for their kids who don’t share their beliefs and lifestyle. In other words, this has nothing to do with bigotry or intolerance. In Judaism, we learn that teachers must be role models. While others may have wonderful character traits, you want them to learn them from co-religious teachers who practice what they teach.

The Center’s bias is that it doesn’t respect the different sections of the population as equal. Secularists are the norm. (The Arab votes are not specified for religiousness—another smart move.) So much for equality.

In the greatest deceit, the report only asks if parents are against mixed summer camps. It’s completely silent about ‘Palestinian’ summer camps being meant to train kids to martyr themselves while murdering Jews.

The sample sizes and sampling errors are given, but there’s no word about guarantees whether the answers will be kept confidential. Why would an Arab parent in Israel admit to strangers that they despise Jews?

The director of strategy at the Center then interprets the results as ‘the depth of the alienation.’ He spins, we’ve not been in this situation before, although he has no prior studies. He then terms the supposed worsening (brace yourselves), ‘the nearly two years of war in Gaza following the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led invasion of Israel and the resulting societal polarization have negatively affected Israeli attitudes.’ The Chamas-led invasion? It’s like calling the Holocaust ethnic tension between Germans and Jews. If that’s how you frame genocide, you’re not pro-equality.

Other surveys on ‘mutual trust’ are now produced. Always beware when someone equates Jews and Muslims in Israel. Trust is no commodity in Muslim society. Many Jews, on the other hand, love to speculate that trust is natural, even after millennia of genocide, showing how naïve we can be.

We’re then told that a lack of mutual trust almost has tripled over the past two years, with 72% of Jews expressing fear and lack of trust in Arabs, and 51% of Arabs feeling the same toward Jews. But the fear of the Jews is of being murdered. The fear of Israeli Arabs is for revenge, which doesn’t occur. So, this must be a projection of their own hatred and anger.

But now, exaggerating the gap between religious and secular Jews, they say that at least most secular Jews and traditional Arabs both support and want to understand each other, democracy, and equality. So, she replaced the Jewish-Arab divide with the Jewish religious-Jewish secular distance. Is that promoting mutual understanding, democracy, and equality? No!

Completely ignored is that mutual understanding can come from learning together in higher education and meeting each other at the workplace. This, besides Jews meeting Muslims as bus drivers and service providers.

Then we are told that the minority Arab population is ready to mix with Jews. Look how they lie with numbers. They asked if they’d let their kids go to a summer camp with Jewish kids. ‘82.5% of Druze said they were willing to do so, along with 79.3% of Christians and 57% of Muslims.’ Yet, only 5% of these Arabs are Druze, 7% Christian. That makes Arab approval of mixed summer camps two-thirds. Forget about the 80% percentages.

Then we get this beauty: ‘Druze Israelis serve in the Israeli army and therefore have more day-to-day interaction with Jews.’ Not at all. The Druze are Zionists. They’re not Antisemitic. And therefore, in the IDF.

There are often gigantic sex differences in Muslim society, and these are actively hidden, too. Statistics to hide instead of reveal.

Jews prefer to talk with their kids about politics instead of their teachers. Arab parents say they don’t care but are not asked if they discuss politics.

‘The rate of those wanting more meetings with other groups in society was highest among Arab Christians (83.8%), followed by Druze (71.2%) and Muslims (66%).’ Cleverly, they don’t compare this to other minorities.

The deceit, flaws, and idiotic conclusions pale compared to the implied hatred for all who are not secular Jews or any Gentile Arab. Does that promote equality if you slander and promote setting aside Chareidi Jews?

So many relevant details are not tallied. That is very potent because the more you don’t ask, the more you can speculate. Differences between Ashkenazic and Mizrachic Jews. Do you live in the North (Chezbollah), the Center, around the Gaza Strip, or in the South (Chamas), or on the West Bank (the PA)? Do you have neighbors, close friends, family, or colleagues who are Muslim, Jewish, Christian, etc.? (Secular White people love to talk about embracing non-Caucasians without ever having one such friend.) Do you personally know someone who got murdered or maimed on October 7, 2023? Do you personally know someone who became a terrorist? Do you personally know someone who is or was in the police or army?

A lack of difference between various Jewish fractions is also not polled or shared. I believe that Judicial reform, a hot topic, will show that almost all Jews are against it. This poll will only tell us how its darlings are superior.

Israelis (except for Arabs and secular Jews) are depicted as intolerant, but we’re much better and less divided than that. And in every group, there are exceptional people leading toward change, made invisible in stats.

And an organization for the promotion of democracy has a vested interest in showing that the situation is dire to highlight its continued relevance.

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