In one of the scariest moments in modern history, we're doing our best at ScheerPost to pierce the fog of lies that conceal it but we need some help to pay our writers and staff. Please consider a tax-deductible donation.
By Juan Cole / Informed Comment
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A new opinion poll by the Sadat Center at the University of Maryland finds a sea change in the American public on the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. For the first time, the percentage of Americans who say they sympathize with Palestinians (28%) exceeds the percentage who sympathize with Israelis (22%)[!!!] Some one fourth (26%) of Americans say they are equally sympathetic to both. So 54% of Americans now sympathize with Palestinians, either primarily or equally with Israelis. Some 12% don’t like either one, and 13% don’t know. So of the Americans who have an opinion and feel knowledgeable, actually 67.5% either sympathize mainly with the Palestinians or equally with them and Israelis.
I’ve been following this issue all my life, and I’m in my early 70s, and this outcome is an absolutely astonishing turnabout.
In 2010, just 15 years ago, the respected Zogby polling organization found that 65% of Americans were favorable toward Israel, and 49 percent had a favorable view of then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (down from 53% the year before).
And the percent favorable toward Palestinians? 21% in 2010, with 73% “unfavorable.” 34% supported Israeli squatter-settlements on the Palestinian West Bank, with only 40% opposing them — even though the latter was at the time the official policy of the US government. Only 6% wanted the US government to lean toward the Palestinians. Some 50% wanted a middle course.
Now, 22% of Americans think Israel is committing a genocide, and if you combine them with those who think Israel is committing war crimes of some description, it comes to nearly half the respondents. Moreover, that is in a situation where 23% say they don’t know.
Only 22% of Americans in this poll think that Israel’s actions are justified under the right of self defense.
Netanyahu and his rogues’ gallery cabinet has driven Israel’s numbers into the basement.
Moreover, some 61% of Americans frankly acknowledge that the US is complicit in allowing the Israelis to pursue these war crimes.
These attitudes have formed even though American network and cable television “news” almost never report what is going on in Gaza, and even though the newspapers of record often give permission for genocide by framing it as self-defense or acting as stenographers for false Israeli propaganda that hospitals are Hamas command centers and journalists are covert Hamas operatives. Principled journalists are actually resigning from major news services over it. I mean, I’m to the point where I can’t bear to watch American media on this issue.
Yet despite the ways in which mainstream media runs cover for Israel’s genocide, the American people have figured it out. There isn’t much hope for our politics, but maybe this is a sign that Lincoln’s adage that you can’t fool all the people all the time still holds in the post-truth era.
Editor’s Note: At a moment when the once vaunted model of responsible journalism is overwhelmingly the play thing of self-serving billionaires and their corporate scribes, alternatives of integrity are desperately needed, and ScheerPost is one of them. Please support our independent journalism by contributing to our online donation platform, Network for Good, or send a check to our new PO Box. We can’t thank you enough, and promise to keep bringing you this kind of vital news.
You can also make a donation to our PayPal or subscribe to our Patreon.
Juan Cole
Juan Cole, a TomDispatch regular, is the Richard P. Mitchell collegiate professor of history at the University of Michigan. He is the author of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: A New Translation From the Persian and Muhammad: Prophet of Peace Amid the Clash of Empires. His latest book is Peace Movements in Islam. His award-winning blog is Informed Comment. He is also a non-resident Fellow of the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies in Doha and of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN).