Saturday, April 1, 2017

Australia's Latest Poll on Palestine/Israel

From a March 30 media release by APAN (Australia Palestine Advocacy Network):

"A Roy Morgan Poll released this week revealed that the Australian public is much more sympathetic toward the Palestinians than the Turnbull government.

"An overwhelming majority of survey participants expressed support for the recognition of Palestinian statehood: 73% (up from 62% in 2011), while a majority (55%) indicated that they regarded the Palestinians' call for 'a boycott of Israeli goods, services, companies and institutions profiting from the occupation of Palestine' as reasonable."

Other findings were as follows:

"61%... opposed the construction of Israeli settlements in the Occupied territories."
"53%... opposed the Turnbull government's rejection of UNSC Resolution 2334."

These figures would, I believe, be much higher but for several political and media-related factors such as:

1) Blind, bipartisan support for Israel by LibLab.
2) The ignorance/cowardice of the national Greens on this issue.
3) The failure of the ACTU to take up the issue. (In fact, its vice president, Michael Borowick, heads an Australia Israel Leadership Dialogue (AILD).
4) The ignorance/cowardice and self-censorship of the Fairfax press.
5) The strident, unrelenting pro-Israel line of the Murdoch press.
6) The 'soft' pro-Israel line of Guardian Australia.
7) The presence of prominent pro-Israel gatekeepers at the ABC (Adams, Doogue, Kohn, et al).

Considering our generally skewed media coverage, I am not surprised by this finding:

"Despite extensive media coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict, only 44%... indicated that they knew either 'a lot' or 'a fair amount' about the issue."

An interesting question not put by the poll would have been:

How do you view the Palestine/Israel conflict?

a) primarily a religious conflict between Jews and Muslims
b) primarily a colonial-settler conflict
c) other

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

An excellent anallisis of the malign and intellectually dishonest influence makers at work. There is another malign and sinister group of crackpots to add to the list of the usual suspects: Christian Zionists.