The Jerusalem Post - Fair And Balanced

Poll: 75% of Palestinians support Haifa restaurant attack

That's the headline blaring from the 16 October 2003 edition of the Jerusalem Post. The Post gets this figure from public opinion poll carried out 7 - 14 Oct 2003, and published 16 October, by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (CPSR).

The Post is correct to say that 75% of those surveyed supported the bombing of Maxim's restaurant, though to present that single finding on its own, outside of the context of the survey as a whole, is certainly misleading. Like all polls, the answers that you get will depend on how exactly you word the question. Especially when respondents are being asked to give a one-word answer to an issue that may be beyond summing up in a single word.

Think back to 23 July 2002, when the Israeli Air Force assassinated Sheikh Salah Shahadah (deputy chief of Hamas' military wing in the Gaza Strip) by dropping a 1,000lb bomb on the apartment building where he was staying with his wife and daughter. The "collateral damage" to that attack comprised 15 Palestinian non-combatants, including 11 children (five of them siblings). I spoke to probably a dozen Jewish-American acquaintances over the following week (I'm not claiming this is a scientific survey) and, although they were all generally supportive of the elimination of Shahadah, none of then gave their support unequivocally. All of them agonised over the deaths of bystanders, especially of course so many children, and all of them qualified their support in some way: "Yes, I support it, if he really did what the IAF said he did, and if this was the only way to save the lives of his future victims"; "Yes, it was justified, but I wish there was any way at all to bring him to justice without killing those children"; "I'm not sorry about Shahadah, but it makes me sick to see Sharon crowing about the deaths of all those people as 'one of our greatest successes', etc.

The point is that if those people had been respondents in a CPSR poll, they would have responded to the question: "Do you support this week's bombing of the apartment complex in Gaza City?" with a unanimous "Yes". So would al-Quds or The Jerusalem Times have been justified in headlining the fact that "100% of American Jews support the bombing of residential Gaza"? Of course not; because a yes or a no by itself is largely meaningless when you are answering questions that defy yes/no answers. To take that "yes" by itself, deliberately isolated from the context in which the respondent framed it, is to some degree a misrepresentation of the respondents' answers.

So how does the CPSR take into account the fact that its polls are asking Yes/No questions about a complex situation which defies simplistic solutions? Well, the usual format for CPSR polls during this current intifadeh is to first ask a general question about support for "armed resistance", ie suicide bombings, or other armed attacks by Palestinian groups. (The question about the Maxim's Restaurant bombing, which made the JPost headline, fulfilled this purpose in this week's poll). Over the past three years, there has been majority support - fluctuating between 50 and 80 per cent - among Palestinians surveyed for what they would call armed resistance.

But then the CPSR goes on to ask a more specific, contextualizing, second question to establish under what circumstances those questioned defend the use of violence; e.g. do they support armed militancy per se, or would they abandon support for violence if there was a negotiated peace process under way, or if Israel too ceased violence against Palestinians etc. Basically, the second question allows all those who wanted to answer "Yes, but..." to question one, to express what they mean by "but". The current poll's question in this category asked whether respondents supported a complete cessation of violence by Palestinians, if the Israelis would simultaneously desist from acts of violence against Palestinians: 85% of respondents said that they did, while only 14% opposed it.

This result is entirely in keeping with the results of CPSR's surveys over the last three years. Palestinian public opinion polls during this intifadeh have consistently found that a majority of Palestinians support the use of violence while the IDF continues "targeted killings", incursions, curfews, and closures etc against them. But when offered the alternative prospect of a mutual renunciation of violence, and a return to negotiations, an even greater majority invariably supports this approach. For the Post to take one satisfyingly-negative finding from this survey and headline it outside the context of the poll as a whole is misleading, to say the least.

Instead of 75% of Palestinians support Haifa restaurant attack, the Jerusalem Post could have reported: 85% of Palestinians support an end to all violence between Palestinians and Israelis, with equal accuracy. But of course it didn't, because that doesn't give the same opportunity to demonize and dehumanize the opposition. Something to think about next time the so-called Liberal media tosses an isolated statistic at you, and tells you that you now know everything you need to know about the intractable foreign policy issue du jour.