Poll: Americans Overwhelmingly Blame Palestinians for Breakdown in Talks
A poll released this morning by The Israel Project (TIP) shows that voters overwhelmingly hold the Palestinian Authority (PA) responsible for the recent breakdown in peace talks and overwhelmingly agree with the stance – emphasized by both the Israeli government and the State Department – that Jerusalem can’t be expected to negotiate with an anticipated unity government that includes the designated terror group Hamas.
The group of 1,595 likely voters was among other things asked to respond to a range of “narrative” questions to evaluate how the public debate over the Palestinian unity agreement was progressing. For each question, they were asked to evaluate the Israeli position and the Palestinian position. The results were not close. Two-thirds of Americans (66%-34%) sided with the Israelis on the how the Palestinians’ move will affect the peace process:
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The Daily Beast conveyed remarks from TIP’s President and CEO Josh Block on the overall public debate, and on the specific findings of the poll:
http://www.thetower.org/0322-poll-americans-overwhelmingly-blame-palestinians-for-breakdown-in-talks/
= new reply since forum marked as read
Okay, okay. Whoo.
so. First interesting discovery? with the "What is your opinion of person X?" you see a startling result. If you ask the polled people "What do you think of Mahmoud Abbas" the result is mostly "Who?" - on the other hand you ask the same people "what do you think of Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas," the results are suddenly "VERY UNFAVORABLE OMG!" You get the exact same result with Ismael Haniyeh vs. "Hamas prime Minister Ismael Haniyeh."
This is a glimmering clue that perhaps the American discourse on the subject is not actually based rationality and and information, but rather the knee-jerk, "know it with my gut" belief that Palestine = bad. And when I say "glimmering clue" I mean "lighthouse beacon to the face."
Next, it presents two unrelated statements - one from Israel, one from Palestine - as somehow being related and asks the polled which they agree with. One statement is of course, Israel's usual "OMG U WANT TO KILL THE JEWS LIKE NAZIS HOW CAN WE TALK TO YOU?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!" nonsense, while Palestine's is a tepid advocacy for a unity government.
Since we've already established we're not dealing with particularly informed people whose responses are purely Pavlovian, we can guess the result without actually having to study the numbers.
The next question after that is about the failure of negotiations. Here's the phrasing:
This is called a leading question. Here, allow me to demonstrate.
See the lead? Further it ignores that peace talks were scheduled to close anyway.
Also the Tower is the mouth organ of TIP, so their glowing report on TIP's results can probably safely be met with a polite cough under hte best of circumstances.
Well, at least it's not Gallup.
