The New York Times/CBS News Poll (pdf) taken from 21-25 July and released for the
July 27 paper, contains important information about American public opinion on a variety of issues, including Israel and the Middle East. Among other things, we learn that
Israel's favorability rating has strengthened and Israel is viewed more favorably than George Bush (duh), Hillary Clinton, John McCain, or Al Gore.
Favorable Unfavorable DK/NA 13%
Israel 61% 26% 13%
Favorable Not Undec. DK Refused
Bush 32% 50% 15% 1% 1%
Hillary 32% 39% 21% 8% -
Q. 31. Is your overall opinion of Israel very favorable, mostly favorable, mostly unfavorable or very unfavorable?
Very Mostly Mostly Very DK/NA
Fav. Fav. Unfav. Unfav.
1/00 11 43 21 7 18
2/01 18 45 20 12 5
2/02 16 42 25 10 7
7/21-25/06 20 41 20 6 13
Q. 32 In general, is your opinion of the Democratic party favorable or not favorable?
(The order of questions 32 and 33 was rotated.)
Q. 33. In general, is your opinion of the Republican party favorable or not favorable?
Fav. Not fav. DK/NA
Democratic 52 41 7
Republican 43 51 6
Q. 71. How much have you heard or read about the current conflict between Israel and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon -- a lot, some, not much, or nothing at all?
A lot Some Not much Nothing DK/NA
40 34 17 8 -
Q. 73. Do you think the U.S. has a responsibility to try to resolve the conflict between Israel and other countries in the Middle East, or is that not the United States' business?
U.S. responsibility Not U.S. business DK/NA
33 58 8
Q. 75. What do you think about the way Israel is responding in the current conflict with Hezbollah militants? Has Israel gone too far, not far enough, or has Israel's response been about right?
Too far Not enough About right DK/NA
26 9 48 17
Q. 76. In your opinion, do you think the conflict etween Israel and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon is likely to lead to a larger war between other countries in the Middle East, or not?
Likely Not likely DK/NA
61 28 11
Q. 77. Who do you think is mostly to blame for the current fighting between Israel and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon - mostly Israel, mostly the Hezbollah militants, or both sides equally?
Israel Hezbollah Both equally Other nation (vol.) DK/NA
5 38 46 1 11
Q. 78. What should the United States do in this conflict? Should the United States government publicly support Irael, should it say or do nothing, or should it publicly criticize Israel?
Support Say nothing Criticize DK/NA
39 40 7 14
Q. 79. Do you think the United States should play a more active diplomatic role in trying to bring peace between Israel and its neighbors, or should the United States reduce its diplomatic role in trying to bring peace between Israel and its neighbors, or should it maintain its present role?
More active Reduce Maintain DK/NA
25 17 53 6
Q. 80. In order to try to end the fighting between Israel and the Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, would you favor or oppose the United Nations sending in a peacekeeping force? IF YES: Would you favor or oppose the United States sending ground troops as part of the United Nations peace-keeping force?
Favor UN & US troops Favor UN, oppose US Oppose UN DK/NA
32 28 32 8
What does this mean?
Over the last six years, hostility to Israel has been fairly stable, ranging from 35% (in February 2002 and February 2004), to 23% in February 2006, and now 26%.
During this same period, support for Israel also has been high and stable: 62% today, maintaining a better than 2-1 ratio to hostility; a low of 58% in February 2002; and a high of 68% in February 2006.
Significantly, only 5% of Americans hold Israel mostly to blame for the current fighting in Lebanon, while 38% hold Hizbullah mostly to blame, a nearly 8-1 ratio.
Seemingly, so long as Americans understand Israel to be responding to situations imposed on it (and, perhaps, not fighting for Greater Israel), support for Israel is high and stable.
All this suggests that trying to distance the United State or the Democratic Party from Israel is not a winning tactic for Democrats. (This does not mean that people for whom opposing Israel is a high priority should not make the effort. I'm only pointing out that Democratic candidates are likely to pay a political price among ordinary Americans for doing so.)
Fortunately, there are good reasons on the merits to maintain our country and our party's traditional support of Israel, even in the present context. I am not saying that Israel should escape legitimate criticism. Rather, I am saying that the reasons for our basic, underlying support for Israel remain firm. One reason some may think otherwise may have to do with how much attention is paid to the context and to thinking through the issues, and how much is an understandable, but I suggest ultimately mistaken, gut response to horrific pictures and casualty figures.
I start with certain basic positions that have nothing to do with Israel as such:
* Some wars are justifiable in accordance with Just War theory. These are questions of jus ad bellum.
* Whether or not a particular war is just, there are both just and unjust ways of fighting. (See above and, e.g., The Fifth Hague Convention, The Fourth Geneva Convention, and the Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol 1). These are questions of jus in bello (justice in war).
* Accordingly, even in a just war, not everything goes. All sides are bound by principles of justice in war.
It also follows that, as Israel may have a just cause even if some of the charges made against in terms of justice in war are true. Norman Geras offers two useful analogies:
Here's a small supporting example and then a big one. (1) In the struggle against apartheid, there were some who thought that the 'necklacing' of collaborators, or - what this meant in practice - individuals thought by others to be collaborators, was a legitimate weapon of struggle. It wasn't. It was, unambiguously, a crime. The struggle against apartheid was still supported by many, as a just struggle against oppression, that criminality (never officially endorsed by the ANC, so far as I know, though on one notorious occasion encouraged by Winnie Mandela) notwithstanding. (2) By the norms of jus in bello there is no question that certain actions of the Allies during World War II - like the bombing of civilians, in Dresden, at Hiroshima and Nagasaki - were war crimes. I doubt that there are many amongst Israel's present critics who would want to say today that the war fought by the Allies against Nazism was not a just one.
Israel has just cause. As Michael Walzer, (perhaps our leading just war theorist), recently wrote:
The most important Israeli goal in both the north and the south is to prevent rocket attacks on its civilian population, and, here, its response clearly meets the requirements of necessity. The first purpose of any state is to defend the lives of its citizens; no state can tolerate random rocket attacks on its cities and towns. Some 700 rockets have been fired from northern Gaza since the Israeli withdrawal a year ago--imagine the U.S. response if a similar number were fired at Buffalo and Detroit from some Canadian no-man's-land. It doesn't matter that, so far, the Gazan rockets have done minimal damage; the intention every time one is fired is to hit a home or a school, and, sooner or later, that intention will be realized. Israel has waited a long time for the Palestinian Authority and the Lebanese government to deal with the rocket fire from Gaza and the rocket build-up on the Lebanese border. In the latter case, it has also waited for the United Nations, which has a force in southern Lebanon that is mandated to "restore international peace and security" but has nonetheless watched the positioning of thousands of rockets and has done nothing. A couple of years ago, the Security Council passed a resolution calling for the disarming of Hezbollah; its troops, presumably, have noticed that this didn't happen. Now Israel has rightly decided that it has no choice except to take out the rockets itself.
Requiring of Israel more justification than other states before it defends its citizens is a sign of prejudice.
But having just cause, as I wrote above, does not give Israel a blank check to do whatever it might wish in aid of its legitimate objectives. Here, for example, is where the principle of proportionality comes in. But proportionality does not mean what some people think it means. A letter to the editor in today's Boston Globe, exemplifies the mistake from a "pro-Israeli" viewpoint:
Regarding Israel's alleged lack of "proportionality" in its response to Hezbollah: I always thought the job of a government is to take whatever action is necessary to protect its citizens from attack by aggressors. Proportionality theory, however, ludicrously measures the legitimacy of a state's response to attack against the level of the provocation, even if the response is insufficient to protect citizens from further attack.
Proportionality, then, lets the aggressor establish the proper response of the victim.
No. The error is in thinking that proportionality is a matter of the relation between the triggering event and the response. In fact, what must be proportional is the relation between a side's legitimate objectives and the means used. And so I think friends of Israel must say in good faith and without equivocation that, even though Israel's cause is just, targeting civilian infrastructure without military justification or violating Art. 51(5)(b) of the Protocol Additional, which proscribes
An attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated,
is simply wrong. As Jan Egeland, the emergency relief co-ordinator for the UN, rightly said after visiting south Beirut law weekend:
"Bombing civilian populations is wrong, destroying civilian infrastructure is wrong. . . . It is wrong also for Hezbollah to continue firing rockets against Israeli towns. My position is very clear ---- the hostilities must stop immediately. Civilian populations are not targets. That is against the law, humanitarian law."
But then Israel's critics also ought to act in good faith, and sometimes they do not. Norman Geras explains how we can tell the difference:
1. Do the critics of Israel condemn Hizbollah for themselves putting civilians at risk in the areas in which they operate, attempting 'to shield military objectives from attacks' by the way they locate these military objectives? [See Art. 51(7) of the Protocol Additional:
The presence or movements of the civilian population or individual civilians shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular in attempts to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield, favour or impede military operations. The Parties to the conflict shall not direct the movement of the civilian population or individual civilians in order to attempt to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield military operations.
2. Do these critics allow that some of the civilian casualties caused by Israel in Lebanon are inevitable, and fall within the laws of war, precisely because of this policy of Hizbollah, which bears responsibility for them? Do they charge Hizbollah with war crimes?
3. Do these critics allow that some of the damage to infrastructure is permissible within the laws of war, where the piece of infrastructure in question is a legitimate military target?
4. Do these critics condemn Hizbollah for targeting Israeli civilians?
5. Are they anguished by the deaths of Israelis, as they are by the deaths of Lebanese?
If the answer to these questions is no, their criticism is not in good faith. It betokens a hostility to Israel and its people, a hostility preceding rather than following from Israel's actions.
There is considerable room for reasonable people of good will to be concerned by particular aspects of Israel's response to Hizbullah. Not all criticism is illegitimate or not in good faith, much less antisemitic. But fair-minded people will require serous, credible, verifiable evidence, and will evaluate that evidence under the applicable standards before accepting claims of disproportionality.