Public support for Israel in the western world is levelling to its pre-October 1973 height following an upsurge during and immediately following the Yom Kippur War. This is the main finding of a “Survey of Surveys,” a study of public opinion polls undertaken for the Foreign Ministry, by visiting Prof. Percy H. Tannenbaum of the U.S. at the Hebrew University’s Institute of Communications. Tannenbaum is professor of public policy and psychology at the University of California at Berkeley.
His survey embraced over 50 polls conducted in a dozen western countries. It showed a “hard core” of pro-Israel support averaging around one-third of the population (though in Mediterranean countries: Spain, Italy and France it is much lower) and a pro-Arab hard core of between five and ten percent.
During times of crisis–the Six-Day War or the Yom Kippur War–a “swinging vote” of some five to ten percent on the average tends to rally to Israel’s support, the survey finds. But when the crisis passes, this support subsides again into “neutrals” and “don’t knows.” Arab support remains pretty constant in most countries, though Prof. Tannenbaum found a rise in pro-Arab sympathy in recent months in West Germany. There, while eight percent supported the Arabs after the October war, 13 percent do so today.
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