Post poll: Obama still in single digits
By GIL HOFFMAN The Jerusalem Post 26/03/2010 00:01
www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=171849

9% of local Jews say US administration pro-Israel; 48% call it pro-
Palestinian.

Just 9 percent of Jewish Israelis think US President Barack Obama's
administration is more pro-Israel than pro-Palestinian, according to a Smith
Research poll taken this week on behalf of The Jerusalem Post.

Forty-eight percent said that the Obama presidency favored the Palestinian
side, 30% said his administration was neutral and 13% chose not to express
an opinion for the survey, which has a margin of error of 4.5 percentage
points.

The poll of a representative sample of 500 Israelis was conducted on Sunday
and Monday after weeks of heightened tensions between Obama and Israel, but
before the crisis intensified during Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's
visit to the White House.

Respondents who consider themselves right-wing were more likely than the
rest of the population to characterize the Obama administration as more
pro-Palestinian (72%). Those who define themselves as left-wing were more
likely to call the administration in Washington more pro-Israel (16%).

The number of Israelis who see Obama's policies as pro-Israel has risen from
4% in the last Smith Research poll taken on behalf of the Post in August. In
that poll, 51% of Jewish Israelis said Obama's administration was more
pro-Palestinian than pro-Israel, while 35% considered it neutral and 10%
declined to express an opinion.

A widely reported Post poll published on June 19 that put the first figure
at 6% had been cited by top officials in both the White House and the Prime
Minister's Office as a catalyst for American efforts to improve the
American-Israeli relationship. Taken shortly after Obama reached out to the
Muslim world in a landmark address in Cairo on June 14, that poll found that
50% of those sampled considered the administration's policies more
pro-Palestinian than pro-Israeli, and 36% said the policies were neutral.
The remaining 8% did not express an opinion.

Obama fared better among Israelis in a May 17 Post poll, on the eve of the
first White House meeting between Netanyahu and Obama. Then, 31% labeled
Obama pro-Israel, 14% considered him pro-Palestinian, 40% said he was
neutral, and 15% declined to give an opinion.

The May poll found that Israelis' views of Obama's predecessor in the Oval
Office, George W. Bush, were nearly the opposite. Some 88% of Israelis
considered Bush's administration pro-Israel, 7% said he was neutral and just
2% labeled him pro-Palestinian.

Obama had appeared to receive much better numbers in a Dialog poll published
last Friday in Haaretz. Both the English and Hebrew editions of Haaretz led
with the headline, "Poll: Most Israelis see Obama as fair, friendly toward
Israel."

The English edition elaborated near a picture of Obama that "69% say Obama
is fair and friendly."

The English edition of the newspaper contained no graphics distributing the
actual numbers, either online or in print. The newspaper's Hebrew edition,
however, included a graphic indicating that just 18% of respondents
considered Obama "friendly" toward Israel, 3 percentage points fewer than
the 21% who called the US president "hostile" to the Jewish state. Ten
percent did not know, and 51% defined Obama's approach to Israel using the
Hebrew word "inyani," which can be translated as matter-of-fact or
businesslike but not as fair.

The Post reported on Monday that Haaretz's pollster, Tel Aviv University
Prof. Camil Fuchs, called the way the results of the poll were presented
"misleading."

Haaretz English Edition editor Charlotte Halle responded that "Haaretz
published a fair and accurate representation of the survey conducted by
Prof. Camil Fuchs at the request of Haaretz. Any attempt to claim otherwise
by another newspaper is false."

Meanwhile, a CNN poll conducted on March 19-21 and released on Tuesday found
that 39% of Americans see Israel as an ally, while another 41% consider
Israel friendly to the US but not an ally. Twelve percent said they consider
Israel unfriendly and 5% said Israel is an enemy.

The CNN survey was conducted through telephone interviews with 1,030 adult
Americans. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.