Gaza and the Polls, the Bad and the Less Bad

By Scott McConnell • November 19, 2012, 3:05 PM

Virtually every American political leader has defended the Israeli strikes on Gaza, most notably President Obama. And fans of the Israeli bombing and missile campaign can draw satisfaction from the results of a CNN poll, which indicates that 57 percent of Americans support the Israeli strikes, versus 25 percent who say they are not justified.

Those of us in the minority, inclined to point to things like Israel’s blockade and virtual occupation of Gaza, or that it broke the most recent ceasefire by assassinating a Hamas leader, might refer to some interesting internals in the poll. For instance, 36 percent of Democrats (versus 41 percent) said the Israeli strikes were not justified. This sentiment is held in contradiction, even defiance, of Obama’s own expressed views, which apparently are more in line with what one might expect from a GOP politician.

This is a sign that the vocal defiance of the “All of Jerusalem belongs to Israel” resolution, forced through at the Democratic National Convention, was not a mere one-off; it rests on a solid base of sentiment. As Alana Goodman argues in the above linked article, the days of “bipartisan” support for whatever the heck Israel wants are numbered.

Posted in Foreign policy. Tagged Alana Goodman, Gaza, Israel, public opinion.

18 Responses to Gaza and the Polls, the Bad and the Less Bad

Philip Giraldi says:

November 19, 2012 at 3:24 pm

Senator Lindsey Graham is blaming Egypt – saying that it is encouraging Hamas to “attack” Israel. Graham demonstrates why replacing congress with five hundred aardvarks would not substantially diminish the quality of governance in this country.

What I am finding astonishing is the bias in the overall media presentation, including on the BBC, which is depicting this as a slugging match between two well armed adversaries. The Palestinians have no air force or army and are firing mostly homemade rockets while the civilian population is taking it on the chin. Israel is suffering virtually no damage. And yes, Israel started the fighting by assassinating the Hamas official who was trying to arrange a truce. By some accounts he had come up with a framework for a permanent truce.
Downsize DC says:

November 19, 2012 at 5:00 pm

U.S. aid to Israel, or any country, is certainly not justified.
Ken Hoop says:

November 19, 2012 at 5:41 pm

The banksters are not the only crowd, not that the difference is one of striking contrast, which has engaged in regulatory capture of Congress.
Wesley says:

November 19, 2012 at 5:42 pm

Maybe Israel can work harder to prevent more civilian casualties just as the U.S. has worked to prevent more civilian causalities from the drone strikes in Pakistan since they first began in 2004. But it wasn’t Israel that broke the ceasefire. Hamas broke the ceasefire by launching thousands of rockets into Israel. And these rockets have been launched for several months, but Israel just in the past several days finally decided that it couldn’t withstand the rocket attacks anymore.

Hamas may have decided to break the ceasefire, because of the new Muslim Brotherhood-led government in Egypt that is sympathetic to Hamas. The Egyptian government has supposedly been privately putting pressure on Hamas to stop the rocket attacks. But publicly, President Morsi and other Egyptian government officials have sided with Hamas against Israel. The U.S. government should use our aid funds that we give Egypt as leverage to pressure the Egyptian government to persuade Hamas to stop the attacks. But knowing President Obama, he won’t.
Rambler88 says:

November 19, 2012 at 6:15 pm

And, of course, those who think the Israeli strikes are justified as self-defense, and those whose sympathies are more with the Israelis, don’t necessarily believe that the U.S. should support Israel totally and blindly, or even that it’s any of our business either way.
reflectionephemeral says:

November 19, 2012 at 7:06 pm

Glenn Greenwald made this point at Salon awhile back, perhaps during Operation Cast Lead, about the divide between the opinion of the Democratic rank and file and of Democratic politicians.

There’s no particular reason that such a divide couldn’t go on indefinitely. But in this case, with Israel facing, in Jeffrey Goldberg’s phrase, “South Africanization” of the rights of folks in the West Bank, it seems to me that Alana Goodman is right– Israel probably won’t always have the same nearly unanimous support it’s accustomed to from Democratic (and Republican) politicians going forward.
Rafael says:

November 19, 2012 at 11:36 pm

Polls show that American support for Israel has not changed at all in the last years. If it was true that the US left is now turning its back on Israel, this would’ve had an impact on poll numbers. If Democrats are more divided on the Israel question than are Republicans, most likely this is only because that was always the case, not because some long-standing bipartisan consensus is now broken.
Cliff says:

November 20, 2012 at 6:00 am

Rafael, the US left turned its back on Israel quite some time ago. Of course, the US left is about as large as the Shaker church, so you may not have noticed.
Ellen says:

November 20, 2012 at 9:09 am

Israel broke the ceasefire by assassinating the Hamas military commander? In what alternative reality does one live to ignore the hundreds of missiles launched into Israel prior to this and blame Israel for breaking a “ceasefire” with taking him out?

And to those concerned that Israel do more to minimize civil casualties, please take note of all they are doing: cell phone calls to targeted areas, leaflet dropping, “roof knocking” (dummy bombs that warn residents to get out), calling off attacks when civilians are spotted….and note well the large number of Hamas ordinance that falls short of its target and lands in Gaza, often killing their own people. Fully 50%.
BB Nazeer says:

November 20, 2012 at 11:04 am

Wesley forgets the core issue. Israel is in occupation of Palestine. Either the occupation has to be vacated or all citizens must have the same rights in a unitary state.
In a secular age a tribal nation that brings together people from all over the world through fictional genetic history and mixes mythology with politics is headed for violence and disaster. Such is the historyof the modern state of Israel, exclusionary, violent and tragic.

Unfortunately the ‘money changers’ (wealthy supporters of israel) manipulate US lawmakers to support violence by Israel. This has not gone unnoticed by the rest of the world and has greatly impoaired US ability to be an effective moral voice in modern statehood and international diplomacy.
RayTheFourth says:

November 20, 2012 at 11:42 am

While I really like the writing on this website concerning domestic policy and politics, I find the foreign policy writing wanting. How can you write that Israel broke the cease fire when Hamas had been sending missiles into Israel since operation Caste Lead, any one of which is justification for war?

I am surprised that writers who are otherwise so fluent and knowledgeable about the US are so naive when considering foreign policy.
Rafael says:

November 20, 2012 at 12:39 pm

Ellen, please read at least one of these articles:

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/11/201211168825952495.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/15/israel-gaza-obama-assassinations

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/15/bodies-for-ballots.html

http://rt.com/news/peace-settlement-hamas-israel-882/

http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2012/11/16/john-mearsheimer/a-pillar-built-on-sand/

http://antiwar.com/blog/2012/11/11/israels-latest-assault-on-gaza-the-lie-of-who-started-it/

And let’s put the “hundreds of missiles” that hardly ever kill anyone in context:

Gaza Rockets fired at Israel in 7 years since 2005 (according to Israel itself): 9000

Israel shells fired at Gaza from 2005-2006 ALONE (according to the UN OCHA): 15,000.
Wes says:

November 20, 2012 at 12:55 pm

Ellen,

I was sure that Israel was doing everything that it could to prevent civilian casualities. I had heard about everything that they did in that regard during the last war against Hamas. I just hadn’t heard about the same things this time.
James Canning says:

November 20, 2012 at 1:20 pm

I think more attention should be drawn to the fact Israel assassinated a high-level Hamas leader when that person was negotiating a permanent cease-fire between Hamas and Israel. Great piece.
James Canning says:

November 20, 2012 at 1:26 pm

I think Philip Giraldi’s comment helps explain Aipac’s effective control of the US Congress, in matters related to Israel.
James Canning says:

November 20, 2012 at 1:28 pm

Let’s hope more Democrats wake up, and that this can erode the “bipartisan” support for Israel right or wrong.
Thomas Sm says:

November 20, 2012 at 1:37 pm

Ellen,

1. The Hamas military commander was their chief negotiator and working through Egyptian intermediaries on a brokered ceasefire deal. Instead of finishing the deal, they killed him.

2. Gaza is a massive concentration camp and it is being poked all the time. You can drop all the leaflets you want and tell people to avoid Hamas buildings and associated people because they are all targets, however it is one of the most densely-populated strips of land in the world. It is like saying “avoid Democrats” in Manhattan.

3. Since Gaza is a concentration camp, these primitive missiles are the only weapon they have. They are indiscriminate but ultimately ineffective. If Israel calls off attacks on civilian targets, seriously then how can be that 80-90% of casualties are civilians, by any measure? No, don’t give me the “human shield” malarkey, refer to point 2 above.

Any way you look at it, Israel is barbaric. Even if you accept 3/4 of their propaganda, you only need to remember that they built up Hamas in the first place, and, along with the US and EU, pressured the PLO into having open elections, and then punished them for electing Hamas. This is all indisputable.
someotherdude says:

November 20, 2012 at 4:06 pm

I thought it was Islamic Jihad who had been shooting rockets into Israel, in response to killings at boarder check points.

That’s like the UK bombing Roman Catholic neighborhoods in Ireland, because the more radical splinter groups of the IRA attacked London.