U.S. college students back Israel over the Palestinians by a 4-1 margin, according to a new survey.
The mid-July survey of 300 students found that 43 percent of respondents called themselves supporters of Israel, while only 11 percent backed the Palestinians.
Another 29 percent did not take either side in the conflict, however, and 10 percent said the United States should stand behind both sides equally, according to the poll taken by Washington pollster Stanley Greenberg.
Half of the students also favored the creation of a Palestinian state while 31 percent opposed it. Some 55 percent said the United States should use military force if Israel came under attack.
Officials of the American Jewish Committee, which underwrote the survey — part of a larger study of American attitudes toward Israel — said it showed that American students largely support Israel despite recent flare-ups of anti- Israel activity on campuses such as the University of California at Berkeley and San Francisco State University.
“While several highly publicized anti-Israel demonstrations on the West Coast this spring gave the impression that campuses were unfriendly, the truth is that support for Israel among students is about the same as in the general population,” said David Harris, AJCommittee’s executive director.
But the results sparked some debate about just how closely they measured student attitudes, with one critic saying the study distorts the real picture on campus.
Gary Tobin, president of the San Francisco-based Institute for Jewish and Community Research, said the poll was “absolutely not” reflective of prevailing campus attitudes about the Mideast.
“On college campuses, the overwhelming sentiment is about justice for the Palestinians with the solution of a Palestinian state,” he said.
Tobin also said the ethnic and religious makeup of the sample — 4 percent of whom were Jews, and 40 percent of whom refused to disclose their background — skewed the results.
Jews are more likely to support Israel, he said. In addition, with Jews disproportionately represented on college campuses relative to their percentage of the overall population, some of those who refused to reveal their backgrounds may also be Jewish.
One observer who agreed with the poll’s findings was Larry Sternberg, associate director of the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass.
Sternberg said the survey was “consistent” with other polls showing most Americans in general, and students in particular, support Israel.
The poll “shows that we’re in no worse shape on campus than anywhere else, or we’re in equal shape,” Sternberg said.
Campuses such as Berkeley and San Francisco State “are exceptions, not the rule,” he said.
Sternberg, however, said earlier surveys have shown that students back Israel over the Palestinians by a margin of about 3-1 or 4-1, reflecting American views in general.
Several polls from 2001 bear out Sternberg’s view.
A poll taken in the week after the Sept. 11 attacks by the Institute for Jewish and Community Research in San Francisco and the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the Hudson Institute showed that 92 percent of Americans wanted “full cooperation” between the United States and Israel in the war on terror.
A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, also taken just after Sept. 11, said 55 percent of Americans back Israel and only 7 percent back the Palestinians. In October, 2001, a CBS/New York Times poll said 60 percent felt very or somewhat favorable toward Israel, mirroring other polls taken in the past decade.
Among the results of the latest poll:
Asked whom they supported in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, 11 percent of students said they were “strong” Israel supporters; 32 percent called themselves supporters of Israel; 9 percent said they supported the Palestinians and 2 percent were “strong” Palestinian supporters.
Asked if they oppose or favor the establishment of a Palestinian state in “the current situation,” 29 percent said they “somewhat” favor one; 21 percent “strongly” backed one; 23 percent were “somewhat” opposed; and 8 percent were “strongly” opposed.
Eighty-nine percent of the students agreed with the statement, “the final goal, at the end of any negotiations, must be two states — Israel and Palestine — which accept each other’s right to exist and live in peace.”
Tobin dismissed the survey as a “whitewash.”
“This doesn’t help the Jewish community and the college community deal with the growing level of coarseness, hate speech and rising anti-intellectualism on many campuses,” he said.
A more revealing poll would have compared the attitudes of Jewish with those of non-Jewish students and should have covered a larger sampling of about 1,000 students, Tobin said.
In fact, “the only near unanimous opinion is that nearly 9 of 10 respondents said they support a two-state solution,” Tobin said.
Much of the anti-globalization, anti-colonial, anti-white and anti-West fervor sweeping college campuses encompasses an anti-Zionist ideology, he added.
Tobin is conducting his own survey of student attitudes that he will release in the fall. The results show “unequivocally” that U.S. college campuses are tilted toward pro-Palestinian opinion, he said.
But an AJCommittee spokesman, Kenneth Bandler, defended the latest survey, saying it accurately reflected broad student support of Israel despite the recent focus on anti-Israel activities.
“It’s hard for people to accept results that disprove a widely held perception,” Bandler said.
Perhaps the most important finding in the poll, Sternberg said, was that many students are undecided about where they stand on the Mideast conflict.
To shape this undecided group, he added, Jewish and pro-Israel groups “want to continue to advocate effectively on Israel’s behalf.”
Other findings were that:
Twenty-eight percent of students said the U.S. supports Israel because the Jewish state is an ally of the United States.
Nineteen percent said the U.S. takes Israel’s side because “Israel is fighting against terrorism and Islamic extremism.”
Ten percent said the U.S. favors Israel because it is the only democracy in the Mideast.
Forty-eight percent support a Saudi Arabian peace plan that calls for a complete Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the division of Jerusalem, while 35 percent oppose it.
Twenty-three percent said they have grown more sympathetic toward Israel in recent months, while 15 percent have grown more sympathetic to the Palestinians.
Twenty-six percent agreed that the United States should back Israel because the Christian Bible predicts that Israel must be under Jewish control “before Christ will come again.”
Of those who held that view, 80 percent said they believe the passage from the Christian Bible’s Book of Revelations prophesizing that “armies from the North will enter Israel and kill two-thirds of the Jews before Jesus returns and the messianic age begins.”
The survey carried a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percent. Respondents were 79 percent white, 5 percent black and 3 percent Hispanic. Some respondents did not identify their race.
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