Middle East studies in the News

More on Public Opinion on Israel/Gaza [incl. Juan Cole]

by David Bernstein
The Volokh Conspiracy
January 15, 2009

http://volokh.com/posts/1232071726.shtml

http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/6624

Via Rosner's Domain, the Powerpoint presentation from respected pollsters Greenberg and Newhouse linked on this page has to be pretty sobering for the Juan Coles and Glen Greenwalds who think American public opinion is on their (anti- very hostile to Israel's policies vis-a-vis the Palestinians) side. For example, five times as many people blame only Palestinian leaders for the violence in Gaza as blame only Israeli leaders (55-11); almost ten times as many people (48-5) think only Israeli leaders want peace and are working towards it as think the same of Palestinian leaders; almost seven times as many people think only Israel has moral leaders who work to limit civilian casualties as think the same about the Palestinians (47-7); and, perhaps most tellingly, despite the images of Israeli bombs exploding in Gaza for the last two weeks, almost four times as many people blame the humanitarian crisis in Gaza on Hamas as blame Israel (66-17).

I'm not confusing public opinion with wisdom, though even stopped clocks are right twice a day. Rather, the incessant complaints from certain ideological outliers that American public opinion really agrees with them on Israel, but the "Israel lobby" prevents the politicians from doing anything about it, aren't consistent with reality the polling data.

Note: Articles listed under "Middle East studies in the News" provide information on current developments concerning Middle East studies on North American campuses. These reports do not necessarily reflect the views of Campus Watch and do not necessarily correspond to Campus Watch's critique.

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