Peace Index - August, 2010
Prof. Ephraim Yaar and Prof. Tamar Hermann
Summary of the Findings
. "The whole world is against us." That is what 56% of the Jewish public
believes. A
larger majority (77%) thinks it makes no difference what Israel does and how
far it
may go on the Palestinian issue; the world will continue to be very critical
of it. The
positions of the Arab public are reversed: a large majority (75%) disagrees
with the
maxim that the whole world is against Israel, and a majority of 54% sees a
connection
between Israel's actions and world criticism.
. Should Israel take world opinion into account? The Jewish public is split
almost
evenly on this question: 51% think Israel should consider world opinion when
making
foreign policy decisions while 48% think it should not. The picture is quite
different
when it comes to the United States - a sweeping majority (71%) thinks Israel
should
take Washington's positions into account. In the Arab public, a huge
majority (85%)
thinks Israel should take world opinion into account when making foreign
policy
decisions and an even larger majority (89%) thinks Israel should be
cognizant of U.S.
opinion.
. A people that dwells alone? On the question of Israel's current status in
the
international arena, a small majority of the Jewish public thinks Israel is
moderately or
completely isolated (54%), compared to 46% who say it is not isolated. The
picture in
the Arab public is the reverse, but not dramatically so: 48% think Israel is
isolated
while 51% see it as not being isolated.
. What distances young Jews in the Diaspora from Israel? Out of four factors
that
were presented, the highest rate of respondents (49%) attributed a strong
influence to
the general weakening of Jewish identity among young people in the Diaspora.
An
identical rate of 27% each attributed a strong influence to the fact that
Israel does not
grant equal status to non-Orthodox denominations and to the fading memory of
the
Holocaust. Only 22% attributed a strong influence to Israel's policy on the
Palestinian
issue.
. The government received a failing grade for the handling of Israel's
foreign
relations by the majority (62%) of the Jewish public. Only about a third
(34%) see
the government's functioning in this realm as moderately or very
satisfactory.
Surprisingly, the Arab public is more "positive": 47% give the government a
good or
very good grade and a similar number assign it a bad or very bad one.
. The Lieberman effect - Specifically regarding the functioning of Foreign
Minister
Lieberman, only a minority (35.5%) of the Jews polled think he is
contributing to
Israel's status in the international community whereas the majority of
Jewish
respondents (51%) think he is moderately or greatly damaging it. In the Arab
public
an overwhelming majority (81%) sees Lieberman as damaging Israel.
. Deport or allow to remain? As for the government's decision to allow 800
children
of foreign workers to stay and to deport 400 others, only a small minority
of the Jews
(16.5%) approves of the decision in its entirety. Thirty percent oppose
allowing the
800 children to stay (that is, they want all 1,200 to be expelled), whereas
the largest
group (46%) favors allowing the 800 children to stay but opposes ousting the
other
400 (that is, they would want all 1,200 children to remain in Israel).
The Findings in Detail
One of the fascinating phenomena concerning the way the Israeli Jewish
public views
world criticism of Israel and Israel's low status in the international
community is the
perception of a weak connection between Israel's actions and attitudes
toward Israel. In
other words, it is assumed that no matter what Israel does, it will always
incur foreign
criticism. The guiding assumption of the majority is that "the whole world
is against us"
(56%). Yet an even larger majority (77%!) asserts unequivocally that it
makes no
difference what Israel does in the Palestinian context and what policy it
adopts; the world
will continue to be very critical of Israel in any event. In other words,
these numbers show
that while a significant number of respondents (42.5%) disagree with the
maxim that the
whole word is against us, many of those same individuals believe that Israel's
actions and
policies are not the main source of the criticism directed at the Jewish
state.
Not surprisingly, a segmentation of the Jewish public's answers to the
question of
whether "the whole world is against us" by the respondents' definition of
themselves as
secular, traditional, religious, or ultra-Orthodox revealed large
differences between these
groups. Among the secular, only 46% think the world is against us, compared
to 62% of
the traditional, 70% of the religious, and 80% of the ultra-Orthodox
respondents.
Regarding this question, a difference was also found between women and men,
with more
women than men viewing the world as hostile towards Israel (59% vs. 53%).
Interestingly, age does not systematically influence this basic position.
As for the connection between Israel's actions and criticism of Israel, the
whole scale
indeed rises, but the differences remain: 73% of secular respondents see no
connection
between Israel's actions and world criticism, along with 75% of traditional,
92% of
religious, and 95% of ultra-Orthodox respondents. Regarding this question as
well, a
difference emerged between women and men, and in the same direction as
before (82% of
women compared to only 73% of men see no connection). Here too age did not
have an
effect.
On the question of how much Israel should take world opinion into account
when making
foreign policy decisions, a thought-provoking similarity emerged between the
positions of
the ultra-Orthodox and of the secular: in both groups a similar majority
(54.5% and 52%,
respectively) favored taking world opinion into account. Among those
defining
themselves as religious or traditional, a clear majority (68% and 55%,
respectively)
thought Israel can and should ignore world opinion. The ultra-Orthodox
position can
apparently be explained by the traditional Jewish attitude of "Don't scale
the wall, don't
climb the mountain" that is espoused by that community - in other words, do
not provoke
the nations of the world. A segmentation of the answers to this question by
voting patterns
in the latest Knesset elections revealed a majority for the position that
Israel need not
consider world opinion among voters for Shas (78%), Likud (72%), Yisrael
Beiteinu
(Israel Our Home) and the National Union (HaIchud Haleumi) (67% in the
latter two
cases). Among voters for the rest of the parties, a majority favors taking
world opinion
into consideration.
As for paying heed to U.S. positions when formulating Israeli foreign
policy, a large
majority of the Jewish public, as we saw, favors consideration of the
American stance,
including a majority of all four groups - secular, traditional, religious,
and ultra-
Orthodox. However, a clear-cut majority of secular, traditional, and
ultra-Orthodox
respondents would take U.S. opinion into account, among the religious the
finding is
borderline (exactly 50% vs. 48%, with 2% responding "don't know").
Despite media reports regarding the rise in negative attitudes toward Israel
in many places
in the world, a slim majority (53%) of the Jewish public feels that Israel
is very or
somewhat isolated (vs. 46% who feel it is fairly unisolated or not isolated
at all). This
could explain why there is currently no sense of great urgency about
reaching some sort
of solution with the Palestinians or with other adversaries in the region,
such as Syria.
Apparently, thanks to their conviction that the whole world is against us,
the sense that
Israel is isolated is especially strong among ultra-Orthodox respondents
(71%) and
somewhat less so among secular and traditional respondents (53% in both
cases). Among
those defining themselves as religious, however, (most of whom, as we saw,
also thought
that Israel need not particularly take world opinion into account when
determining its
steps, which is similar to the ethos of "It doesn't matter what the non-Jews
say but what
the Jews do" that was prevalent in Israel's early years), only a minority,
though a
significant one (44%), feels that Israel is internationally isolated.
In this context of isolation, amid the recent "hot" debate on whether the
connection of
Diaspora Jewry to Israel, especially among its young generation, is
weakening, we asked:
"Studies have shown that many Jews in the Diaspora, particularly young
people, are
becoming distanced from Israel for a variety of reasons. Following are four
possible
reasons. Please indicate the extent to which you think each contributes to
the distancing of
young Jews in the Diaspora from Israel, if at all." It turns out that a
majority of the Israeli
Jewish public again ascribe the responsibility for the distancing to the
other side, this time
to the young people of the Diaspora. Respondents attribute a strong
influence on the state
of Diaspora-Israel relations to the fact that young Diaspora Jews are losing
the connection
with their Jewish identity. In comparison, Israel's problematic policy
regarding the issue
of non-Orthodox denominations, which is cited repeatedly in studies and
reports, as well
as Israel's policy on the Palestinian issue, are seen by the Israeli Jewish
public as factors
with minor influence on the relationship between the young people of the
Diaspora and
Israel.
Because of space limitations we will not present here the full range of
(significant)
differences between secular, traditional, religious, and ultra-Orthodox
respondents
regarding the influence of the four factors included in the question. The
following graphs
summarize only the differences found regarding Israel's attitude toward
non-Orthodox
denominations and regarding Jewish identity of young people in the Diaspora,
regarding
which the religiosity variable is particularly relevant. As can be seen,
religious
respondents ascribe much less influence to the issue of Israel's policy
toward non-
Orthodox denominations than the other groups (even less than the
ultra-Orthodox - 4%
vs. 22%!). Regarding the Palestinian issue, ultra-Orthodox and religious
respondents both
assess the issue's influence as negligible, as compared to secular and
traditional
respondents.
Notwithstanding the tendency to assign responsibility to the world, a
majority of the
Israeli Jewish public (62%) is not satisfied with the government's
functioning in the realm
of foreign relations and defines it as bad or very bad. (Since, in the not
too distant past, we
found that a majority were satisfied regarding the issue of the army and
security, this
should not be seen as an indication of an overwhelmingly critical position
regarding the
government's functioning.) Only among voters for Shas and the National Union
(61%
and 83%, respectively) is there a majority that is satisfied. Even among
Likud voters a
higher rate are dissatisfied with the government's functioning in foreign
affairs (49%)
than are satisfied (47%). However, regarding Foreign Minister Avigdor
Lieberman, there
is almost a "negative consensus," with only one-third of the entire Jewish
public satisfied
with his functioning. Nevertheless, the data show that among voters for his
party his
leadership is particularly stable, with 80% of Yisrael Beiteinu voters
saying that he brings
more benefit than harm to Israel.
Finally, regarding the government's decision to allow 800 children of
foreign workers to
remain in Israel and to deport 400 children: As we mentioned, the prevailing
opinion in
the Jewish public as a whole is against the deportation altogether (46%).
Beyond this,
30% are in favor of deporting all 1,200 children, and 16.5% support the
government's
decision completely. In the Arab public, half (50%) oppose allowing 800
children to stay
here - in other words, they would prefer that all 1,200 of the foreigners'
children be
deported - while only 26% would want to see all 1,200 children remain in
Israel. As the
graph of the month shows, a segmentation of the Jewish public by degree of
religiosity
reveals sharp differences: among secular respondents, 58% want all the
children to
remain; among traditional respondents, 45% want all the children to remain;
among the
religious, 22% want all the children to remain; and among ultra-Orthodox
respondents,
only 7% want all the children to remain. A segmentation by voting in the
latest Knesset
elections shows especially strong support for keeping all the children in
Israel among
Meretz voters (75%), Kadima voters (71%), and Labor voters (69.5%), , while
the
greatest opposition is concentrated among Torah Judaism voters (70%) and
Shas voters
(65.5%).
The Negotiation Index for August 2010 is: 54.2; Jewish sample: 50.6.
The Peace Index project is conducted under the auspices of the Evens Program
for
Conflict Resolution at Tel Aviv University and the Israel Democracy
Institute. The survey
was carried out by telephone on August 8-9 by the Dahaf Institute. The
survey included
601 respondents, who constitute a representative sample of the adult
population of Israel.
The measurement error for a sample of this size is 4.5%. Statistical
processing: Ms.
Yasmin Alkalay. An overview of the Index was published in Yediot Aharonot on
August
19, 2010.
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