Americans Ignoring GOP Falsehoods about Obama and Israel

David Streeter — June 13, 2011 – 5:48 pm | Barack Obama | Foreign Policy | Israel | Polls | Republicans | Stop the Smears Comments (1) Add a comment

The Washington Post‘s Greg Sargent has published new analysis of a recent Pew Research poll from May which shows not only that Americans are ignoring the right-wing’s misguided attempts to paint President Barack Obama as anti-Israel, but that a plurality believes Obama has struck the right balance with his approach to Israel and the Palestinians. Sargent wrote (emphasis his):

Some on the right have confidently asserted that Obama’s recent speeches on the Middle East have finally unmasked his hostility to Israel and his shameful (if carefully disguised) sympathy for Palestinians.

In that context, you’d think this Pew poll would be getting a bit more attention:

Regarding the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, far more Americans continue to say they sympathize with Israel rather than the Palestinians (by 48% to 11%). These opinions are little changed from recent years.

A plurality (50%) says Barack Obama is striking the right balance in the Middle East situation, while 21% say he favors the Palestinians too much. There has also been no change in these views over the past year; in April 2010, 47% said Obama struck the right balance and 21% said he favored the Palestinians too much.

Barely more than a fifth of Americans agree with the right’s contention that Obama has revealed himself as too pro-Palestinian even though they’re also far more disposed to sympathize with Israel.

And that’s not all. Not even Republicans and white evangelicals - who appear to be one of the target audiences of the campaign to paint Obama as anti-Israel - are willing to go along in any greater numbers with this nonsense:

Even among Republicans and white evangelicals—who already were more likely to say that Obama tilts too much toward the Palestinians—there has been no significant increase in the percentages expressing this view since last year.

Unfortunately, Pew tells me that the sample of Jewish Americans surveyed is too small to indicate whether there’s been any movement among them on these questions. ... But as I and Ben Smith have both pointed out, it’s highly unlikely that Obama will lose a meaningful amount of Jewish support in the end.

He wrote in his second update:

It gets even better. I just got a further breakdown of the numbers from Mike Dimock, the associate director at Pew Research, and he tells me that a plurality of those who are more sympathetic with Israel also say Obama has the balance right.

Of those who are more sympathetic to Israel, 49 percent say he strikes the right balance, versus only 38 percent who say he favors the Palestinians too much.

Sargent concluded his original post:

To be sure, the campaign to paint-Obama as anti-Israel isn’t just about Israel. ... I don’t know how you measure whether that subtext is gaining any traction, but the first national poll taken since Obama’s Mideast speeches seems to demonstrate clearly that the American public overwhelmingly rejects the topline argument conservatives are making about them.

 

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