It seems these days as if much of the world is against us.
According to the latest March Gallup poll that surveyed 1,016 American adults, a majority disapprove of our continuing war against Hamas. Support for the war has dropped from 50% in November 2023 to 36% now, while the number of those who disapprove has increased from 45% in November 2023 to 55% now. Approximately 9% of respondents had no opinion on the matter.
On the other hand, a recent American Harvard-Harris Poll among 2,000 registered voters was more comforting. Seventy-nine percent of Americans support Israel over Hamas, while 20% support Hamas. Were these polls carried out in many countries in Europe, however, they would certainly be far less supportive of Israel.
The reality is that many people outside of Israel have lost track of why we are fighting this war. To many it seems punitive. To progressives, it is part of the continuing pattern of Jewish oppression of the Palestinians and suppression of their rights.
Despite its distortions and falsehoods, the Palestinian narrative has captured the imagination of much of the world. Hamas has also succeeded in increasing radicalization among a significant proportion of Muslims in the Western world.
Many of the world’s political leaders have also convinced themselves that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a political struggle, and therefore one that is amenable to a political solution. I have argued in articles in The Jerusalem Post and other publications that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is primarily a religious one and has been so since its inception. We now have the awesome task of changing world opinion about the justice of our cause, and the religious aspects of this struggle should be foremost in our arguments.
Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood and a Sunni fundamentalist, messianic movement with an apocalyptic vision of destroying the State of Israel, killing its Jewish population by jihad, and replacing the Jewish state with a religious Islamic one. Accomplishing this will demonstrate the superiority of Islam over Judaism and foreshadow the Day of Judgment and the End of Days.
Moreover, Yahya Sinwar, the present head of Hamas in Gaza, has promised there will be no letup in Hamas pursuing its aims. Hamas’s allies, the Shi’ite Twelvers of Iran, have a similar vision of destroying Israel and creating a global caliphate prior to an immanent End of Days. This is also the aim of other Sunni fundamentalist groups, such as ISIS. [Imamiyya or Twelver Shi’ism, the state religion in Iran – shared by 150 million Muslims worldwide – believes that there will be 12 imams who are spiritual successors of Mohammed and that the 12th imam will be al-Mahdi and appear at the End of Days. He is not mentioned in the Quran.]
The crucial question for us Israelis is how much support these religious beliefs have among the average Palestinian in Gaza and Judea and Samaria. Could it be that they are confined to the leadership of Hamas and those most involved in this organization, or do they have wide support among the Palestinian people?
The latest polling survey by the Palestinian Policy and Survey Research (PSR) from March 2024 shows that satisfaction with the role of Hamas among Palestinians is at 70% (75% in the West Bank and 62% in the Gaza Strip). Support for Hamas dropped in the West Bank by 10 points from three months previously, when it was 85%, but it is the exact opposite in Gaza. Satisfaction with Hamas increased by 10 points from 52% to 62%.
Are people motivated by their nation, or their faith?
When asked about their preferences for the party that should be in control in the Gaza Strip after the war, an average of 59% selected Hamas (64% in the West Bank and 52% in Gaza. One percent chose the IDF. Only 7% of Palestinians place the blame for their suffering on Hamas, while 64% blame Israel.
Nevertheless, despite all their figures and graphs, the PSR data is insufficient, since it tells us nothing about the religious dimensions of this struggle. All the questions asked were of a political nature, which could lead to the impression that the war in Gaza is solely about the wish of the Palestinians for more political freedom. Hence, the analysts of PSR speculate that the increase in Palestinian support for Hamas is because the people in Gaza believe they are winning this war and the world is now paying more attention to their demands for a Palestinian state.
What is urgently needed is polling data that would enable us to distinguish between a Palestinian struggle for independence and freedom vs a religious struggle between Islam and Judaism. If only a very small minority…
Read More: The world needs good polls of Palestinian public opinion