A poll conducted by an Israeli organisation has revealed that the vast majority of Israeli Jews believe there are “no innocents” in the Gaza Strip. aChord, a research group linked to Hebrew University specialising in social psychology, said 76 percent of the Jewish public partially or fully agree that “there are no innocents in Gaza”.

The survey found that even among Israeli opposition voters, 47 percent fully supported the claim, while among Jewish opposition voters, a majority also agrees with the claim. Researcher Ron Gerlitz described the results of the survey as “difficult findings” that indicated attitudes that fed into acceptance of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.

Anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab sentiment in Israel has been growing in recent years, targeting both Palestinians in the occupied territories and Palestinian citizens of Israel. Last week, a Palestinian bus driver in Israel was attacked by a group of Jewish youths shouting “death to Arabs”, the latest incident in a string of racist attacks on Palestinian citizens of Israel. The bus driver, Mohammed Abd al-Hadi, told Ynet the incident happened after he asked the young passengers to stop screaming and vandalising the vehicle. “They insulted me and shouted racist sayings like ‘Jew - good; Arab - son of a removed’ and ‘death to Arabs’,” he said.