Number of Israelis Who View Obama as Pro-Palestinian Drops 20%

Image by Getty Images

By JTA March 29, 2013

The number of Israelis who view President Obama as pro-Palestinian dropped by 20 percent following his first presidential visit to Israel, according to a new poll.

In the poll, conducted Sunday by Smith Research for the Jerusalem Post, 27 percent of 500 Israeli respondents said they considered the Obama administration more pro-Israel than pro-Palestinian, 16 percent said he was more pro-Palestinian, 39 percent were neutral and 18 percent did not an express an opinion.

In a pre-visit poll conducted March 17, 36 percent of respondents said they thought Obama was more pro-Palestinian than pro-Israel, 26 percent said Obama was more pro-Israel and 12 percent expressed no opinion. The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Palestinian disappointment with Obama’s positive messages about Israel and his failure to visit former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s grave was widely reported in the Hebrew press.

Among Labor voters who participated in the post-visit poll, 51 percent said Obama was pro-Israel. That figure was 29 percent among Yesh Atid voters; 27 percent for Likud-Beiteinu and Shas supporters, and 20 percent for those who supported the Jewish Home party.

The proportion considering the administration more pro-Palestinian than pro-Israel was 40 percent among Shas voters, 20 percent for those who voted Jewish Home, 19 percent for Likud-Beiteinu, 11 percent among Yesh Atid supporters and 6 percent among Labor voters.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO