Israel Matzav

Most Israelis oppose cease fire with Hamas

Most Israelis aren't as stupid as their government. A new poll indicates that a whopping 71% of Israelis oppose a cease fire with Hamas. And a majority want real military action against the Gaza Strip: 26% want to reoccupy Gaza, while another 33% want to undertake a 'limited operation' in Gaza after which the IDF would withdraw. Given that approximately 20% of the country is 'Israeli Arabs,' who were included in the survey, the percentages among Jews are likely even higher.

There is also some interesting information about the rest of the country's feelings towards southern Israel:

Recently a persistent question has been whether Israel's response to the ongoing missile attacks is related to the fact that those on the receiving end are peripheral communities of the South.

It turns out that a majority - 56% - indeed thinks the government fails to assign supreme urgency to tending to these communities' security problems because of their remoteness from the central region, and would not practice restraint to the same extent if the center of the country was under attack. Only a minority of 37% disagreed.

However, the public also showed self-criticism on this issue: 51% assented that the citizenry was less interested in the southern residents' security problems because of their remoteness from the center while 42% dissented.

I wish I could see the next part of the survey broken down by region of the country. In other words, I would like to hear what those outside Tel Aviv said.

At the same time, only 38% thought that the residents of "the state of Tel Aviv" - a term some in the media use to describe those in the center of the country - do not identify with the southern residents' suffering and 64% rejected the claim that people in central Israel were less patriotic than those in other parts of the country.

A majority of 55% denied that the residents of the Center were not interested in the suffering of the South, while 38% said they were. An even larger majority, of 64% rejected the claim that those in "the state of Tel Aviv" were less patriotic than those in other parts of the country.

And who participated in this survey?

The telephone interviews were conducted by the B. I. Cohen Institute of Tel Aviv University on 3-4 March 2008 and included 590 interviewees who represent the adult Jewish and Arab population of Israel (including the Jewish population in the West Bank). The sampling error was 4.5%.

See, Jews aren't so dumb after all. It's just their government.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:33 PM