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[Excerpt:]

"The most common nervous reaction among a certain segment of Israel’s left is the refrain that Israel is always threatened by undemocratic forces from within. The Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research at Tel Aviv University recently released a poll showing that the average adult Jewish Israeli believes “there is too much freedom of expression” and that many respondents “favor punishing Israeli citizens who support sanctioning or boycotting the country.” Haaretz’s headline screamed “Israel’s Jews back gag on rights groups.” The reaction was fast and furious from the academic establishment, which had commissioned the study. Prof. Daniel Bar-Tal of TAU claimed “Israelis have a distorted perception of democracy – most people are almost anti-democratic.” David Newman of Ben-Gurion University and fellow Jerusalem Post columnist claimed the results were “very worrying.” THE SURVEY was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Large segments of Israeli academia and various organizations like the Israeli Democracy Institute believe the public is anti-democratic and they craft surveys to tell them exactly that."