WarSclerotic

JPost.com | BlogCentral | Rosner’s Domain | Is Obama “fair and friendly”?.

I  must say I was surprised to see the headline, but less so after reading the small letters more carefully. As I’m sure this new Haaretz poll is going to make headlines – it will be highlighted by all those wanting President Obama to pressure Israelis even more – I thought some clarification is needed.

Here’s what the headline says: Haaretz poll: Most Israelis see Obama as fair and friendly

Here’s what the article says:

U.S. President Barack Obama’s popularity may be declining in American public opinion, but a sweeping majority of Israelis think his treatment of this country is friendly and fair, according to a Haaretz-Dialog poll conducted this week.  The poll also found that most Israelis don’t believe politicians who call Obama anti-Semitic or hostile to Israel, or who say he is “striving to topple Netanyahu.”

Do you get a very positive picture of a President that is seen by Israelis as “fair and friendly”? Well, think again. Here’s the actual numbers from the poll. As you’ll be able to see, Israelis don’t think Obama is fair and friendly – they think he is either fair or friendly, or… Take a look:

The blue represents the people saying “fair” – the majority of Israelis. The yellow is “friendly”. The red means “hostile” (the green “don’t know”). As you can see, “fair and friendly” is misleading. Fair is the norm – not as bad as one might think, and I must admit that I was somewhat surprised to have such high number of Israelis defining Obama as “fair”. But it is also not great, because most Israelis like their American President “friendly” rather than just fair. Bill Clinton was friendly, George Bush was friendly – Obama is just fair. Not “fair and friendly” – because more Israelis think he’s hostile than those believing him to be friendly.

And note a couple more things:

1. This poll includes both Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs. We don’t know what the numbers would be for Jews alone – it can make quite a big difference (what if all 20% of Arabs said he was “friendly”?).

2. “Nearly half the respondents (48 percent) said Israel must keep building in the capital, even at the expense of a rift with the United States, while 41 percent said Israel must accept the American demand (and Palestinian ultimatum) to stop building in Jerusalem until the end of the negotiations (which haven’t begun yet)”. Again, the numbers will be different for Jewish Israelis, because all Arab Israelis would like to see a “freeze” in Jerusalem – with or without American demand.

3. Polls by other papers have somewhat different questions – with different results, and different headlines. With the Haaretz poll, Netanyahu can be quite satisfied. But the poll in Yediot is much less positive for him.

4. In the Yediot poll, more Israelis say the US should be blamed for the crisis (37%) but a similar number (35%) say it is Israel’s fault. 51% of Israelis don’t want Israel to freeze construction in east Jerusalem, 46% would freeze it.

5. Update: According to a Channel 2 survey 30% of Israelis blame the administration for the crisis, 26% more blame Obama personally (the anti-Semitic loonies), and 17% say Israel’s right-wing coalition is responsible for the crisis.

This entry was posted on March 22, 2010 at 4:17 PM and is filed under Iran / Israel War. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.