October 17, 2023 - 3:54pm
Just 9% of Labour voters are more sympathetic with Israel in the Israel-Palestine conflict, a new poll has found.
According to research published by YouGov yesterday, Labour has the lowest percentage of those more sympathetic with Israel out of all three of the major parties, with 39% of Conservative voters and 14% of Liberal Democratic feeling primary sympathy for the Jewish state. Meanwhile, the Labour party has the largest percentage of those more sympathetic with Palestine (27% versus 6% and 7% respectively).
These findings draw a sharp contrast with Keir Starmer’s steadfast support of Israel. Shortly after Hamas’ attack on October 7th, the Labour leader posted on X, formerly Twitter, that “Labour and Britain must stand with Israel” before decrying Hamas’ actions as “terrorism”. Starmer then followed up this statement on LBC, stating that “Israel has the right to defend herself”, even condoning Israel’s move to cut water and electricity from the Strip.
A poll taken by YouGov two days after the attack found that Hamas’ actions did little to sway Labour voter views on the conflict. Sympathy for the Israeli side fell by only 2% (from 11% to 9%) over the week, suggesting that Labour voters are more strident in their opinions than other voters. In the same two polls, there was a seven percentage point rise among Tory voters in favour of Israel, with an equal point shift in the opposite direction for Lib Dem voters.
The Labour leader’s outspoken support for Israel has already exacerbated divisions within the party. During the weekend’s protests over the conflict, an email was sent by the leadership warning MPs against attending out of fears that colleagues may risk sharing a platform with “individuals that threaten to undermine the values and principles of the Labour Party”. One Labour member responded by describing these efforts as a “shocking mindset”.
Other Labour figures have gone further. Over the last week, a trickle of Labour councillors resigned from the party, denouncing Starmer over his support for Israel. Following the resignation of two Oxford councillors last week, Manchester councillor Amna Abdullatif announced that she too would be leaving the party. On X, Abdullatif posted that she had been left “no choice other than to resign the Labour whip and resign from the Labour party due to Keir Starmer and a number of his senior frontbench making horrifying comments about Israel…effectively endorsing a war crime”.
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SubscribeThat’s terrifying. Mind you, their grandparents thought Stalin was cool (30 million dead) and the working class should be sterilised, and their parents ran around waving Mao’s (70 million dead) Little Red Book (John McDonnell’s still doing that in the HoC). So it’s not hugely surprising really, is it?
Only a tiny, albeit vocal, minority of young people then supported those things, certainly in the West. But nowadays leftist extremism is mainstream. Increasingly every old person who dies and every kid who turns 18 (soon 16) tilts the electorate a little further to the left.
At my university in the early ‘eighties pretty well everyone professed to be a Marxist – though I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who managed to wade all the way through the old fool’s ludicrous and turgid ‘masterpiece’.
the other way to look at this, we are an aging society. People tend to move to the right as they age. You could therefore it’s evitable that societies will trend that way.
The people who are in their 60’s where probably out there protesting against the Vietnam war, people change.
The problem is that this attitude is mostly confined to the so called educated young and not so young middle class. Which is why our universities are rotten to the core now.
I do not mix except by chance with these people. Once in a while when visiting family I run up against them and find them poor weak specimens of humanity male and female both. I live and work with what is called the old British working class and those I speak to are nothing like this. They understand what evil is without qualification and I have not heard a word of sympathy for hamas .
Maybe the current labour party is no longer representing the old labour voting class but these new zealots in universities. Or maybe it is just very simple. Ordinary so called men and women know when evil is abroad in the world without having to think about it.
“Maybe the current labour party is no longer representing the old labour voting class”
It’s been at least 30 years since that was the case. Blair started the move ‘upwards’, so now it’s an entirely middle class, woke, ‘let them eat cake’ party who use working class slogans merely to get voted in.
It is what is in vogue. Identity politics. It is going to topple the West.
There is no more perfect example of identity politics than Zionism. And the West, you say? The Al-Ahli Arabi Hospital in Gaza was founded by the Church Mission Society in 1882, run by the Southern Baptists from 1954 to 1982, and then taken over by the local Anglican diocese. Impeccable Anglo-American Evangelical credentials, and links to the Church of England. That is what has just been bombed.
Yep. The fact that even now, some 1-2% of the population of the West Bank are Palestinian Christians and that there are some 20,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip (and about 500 US nationals) just does not seem to compute for them. The American colonists kicked off a full-scale violent rebellion against their lawful sovereign King George, killing tends of thousands of British and Hanoverian troops over a mere tax on tea, with major pogroms the large loyalist minority. What, I wonder, would they have done if he’d driven them off their farms, herded then and their descendants into open air prisons and blockaded them there in dusty and increasing misery for 56 years or so?
They did, people went to Canada.
Look, we don’t want any inconvenient facts here; or balance or fairmindedness either thank you! ..or Christian values, or historical comparisons..
All we want is free rein to murder as many innocent Parlestinians as possible for the heinous crimes of Hamas (who were set up by Israel and who also oppress ordinary peace loving Palestinians).
That kind of mindless revenge is our thing! After Egyptians and Saudis killed 3,000 Americans we attacked totally innocent Iraq in revenge and killed off half a million of their children. That’s how we roll ’round ‘ere mate –
murder innocents in revenge for the crimes of others!
And now you want to spoil it for us!
Let’s not forget America’s glorious revenge against terrorism in Afghanistan!
Very good Liam, I hope your irony isn’t wasted here…
the majority of Palestinians support HAMAS, how can they be peace loving as you say
Hamas hold sway not by their ideology or good governance but rather through intimidation and threats. There us also the fact that no one else protects Gazans from murdetous IDF attacks. That is how the IRA hot support in NI.. everyone else abandoned ordinary peace loving Irish people and when the police (Specials) began murdering innocent people and burning their homes they turned to the only ones left to protect them from slaughter.. the IRA.
That is what happens when the authorities, instead of protecting people, attack them and oppress them. When those with all the power turn against you what other option do you have if you want to survive?
Why did the Palestinians not rise up against the Ottoman Turks or at least fight with Allenby in WW1? When Allenby entered Jerusalem were there more Jewish or Arab soldiers in his army ?Why did Arabs sell land to Jewish settlers from19th century onwards ? Why did the Arabs not develop the land the way Jewish settlers did after late `19th century? Citrus fruits were one of the most profitable crops from the late 19 th century?
Who knows but I suspect being keep down meant the fruit was not very edible (wild citrus fruit isn’t what Tescos sell). A simpler, more self-sufficient lifestyle is not how Westerners like to live but it’s a lot more sustainable, isn’t it?
I suspect the Ottoman Turks treated Palestinians a lot better (less badly) than Israelis do – look up “Drying out” and “Mowing the lawn” (heatstroke / dehydration; and random culling of children).. and a 96:4 murder score in favour of the Zionists and you’ll begin to get an idea of what conditions are like for the indigenous people.. think of Gaza as a Concentration Camp and the West Bank as a shooting gallery..
The Ottomans killed people by impalement.
Impalement – Wikipedia
It seems everyone is opposed to barbaric, close up btutal murder (me too) but AOK with blowing children to bits from the safety of 5,000 feet up (not me)..
The bombs cause beheading, de-limbing, and I dare say impaling as buildings collapse with families in them. It’s the result not the method that counts..
▪︎Indescribable suffering
▪︎Unimaginable pain
▪︎Devasting fear and agony
▪︎Appalling loss and grief
Of course the IDF pilots and cruise missile guys enjoy it as they do when “dryin’ ’em out” and “mowing the lawn” and the usual target practice if course.
There is strong video and audio evidence that it was a failed missle launch by Islamic Jihad that fell on the hospital and exploded.
That means that one bomb out of hundreds wasn’t an Israeli war crime.. so what? The IDF indiscriminately bomb schools and mosques and homes.. so let’s focus on this one exception is your point is it?
Remember the murder of the Al Jazeera journalist? That was definitely not the IDF, until it was.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the IDF mocked up a device to simulate a failed PIJ rocket.. it’s the kind of thing they do.
And before you start I’m no apologist for ANY terrorists be they IDF, PIJ, Hamas or any other (that includes IRA terrorists before you start down that road)
HAMAS should stop using civilians as human shields, or course they won’t , the more civilians dead they more the outrage.
the true enemy of the Palestians is HAMAS
You are correct on both points but Hamas is not “The real” enemy of Palestine: it is AN enemy of Palestine. To confirm who the real enemy is you need only look at the death count by Hamas on Palestinians (and even on Israelis for that matter) and compare it to deaths inflicted on them by Israel.. the latter outnumber the former by 19 to 1 FGS! The numbers don’t lie!
The reason terrorists use human shields is because they know civilized humans will not fire on and bomb innocent people. That after all is the whole point of the cowardly act. Sadly, the IDF are neither civilized nor are they fully human; hence the huge number of deaths of totally innocent civilians in Gaza. I find it astonishing that do called Christians think this is okay??
I heard the opposite, what is your source?
This is now debunked.. apparently the rocket and the bomb/missile were two separate events, cleverly juxtaposed by the IDF.. typical!
“That is what has just been”… destroyed by a Palestinian rocket gone wrong. Do keep up DL.
Absolutely nobody believes that. A handful of people are pretending to. But no one really does.
‘Bombed’, by the looks of it, by another branch of the Islamist death-cultists that run Palestine ….
Don’t be silly.
That may be correct? Personally I’m not convinced either way.. but it foes distract from the hundreds of other IDF bombs and missiles.. Qui Bono?
If you bring you information up-to-date you’ll find, as so often before, this is yet another lie to cover up yet another IDF atrocity..
Bombed by islamists.
Nope, latest analysis shows the rocket that exploded in the air had no connection. Ot was an IDF targeted attack, yet another war crime, it seems. Results are mot 100% confirmed yet but do point in that direction.
By who ? You conveniently forgot to mention.
No one has said it plainer or better than Douglas Murray: https://youtu.be/QCUfNLENLZg?si=NxOytQVpYHT6kVnE
Supporters of Palestine / Hamas are worse than dupes; they are complicit, just as ordinary Germans were in 1939 – 1945. They turned a blind eye to butchery in order to endorse their ideological fantasy. This is mass insanity. Mob mentality. Sick and extremely dangerous.
“Alice laughed. ‘There’s no use trying,’ she said. ‘One can’t believe impossible things.’
I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
― Lewis Carroll
I don’t think that’s quite fair. There are decent Palestinians out there (I’ve met some) who yearn for peace with dignity.
Then there are those, like Hamas, who prey on the Palestinians for their own murky ends.
And there are those in the West who turn up for these protest marches and boycotts, but they couldn’t give a flying proverbial about the Palestinians. They are motivated by antisemitism, and use Palestine as a smokescreen. Tuvia Tenenbom presents a picture of them in Britain, in his book ‘The Taming of the Jew.’ The book manages to be both light-hearted and terrifying.
Palestinians ARE a Semitic people, far more than Israeli Jews who are largely Russian, Polish, German and American etc. So opposing Palestinians is antisemitic and supporting them is pro Semitic.
That old card, like the promised land story has been overplayed to the point of utter incredulity!
Very instructive watching you in action on these threads. Anti-semitic bingo card filled every single time.
FYI information my favourite guy of all time was a Jew.. born a Jew, lived a Jew, died a Jew.. even preached in the synagogues.
I have Jewish friends who, like me abhor what their fellow religionists are doing and indeed are outspoken again the evils of Zionism in all its forms. Put me down as anti Zionist by all means but I am no anti Semite, not even close.
The main reason I’m anti Zionist is that I’m anti evil, anti terrorist (including state terror), anti murder, anti land theft, anti oppression and anti hatred.
As a Christian I am pro peace and reconciliation (anti revenge), pro love (anti hate) and pro justice (anti apartheid)..
I call out all evildoers irrespective of who the are, IRA included wherever I see them. It is my Christian duty to do so. Notwithstanding, I also understand that humans, subjected to such evil will themselves become evil as it is a natural response. But it is not the moral response nor is it a productive response.
Hamas oppresses the ordinary people of Palestine. Israelis mock, taunt, torture, shoot and bomb innocent Palestinians, steal their land and jail their children without charge subjecting them to appalling abuse.. That tends to not endear Israelis to Palestinians, oddly?
I agree with you but you’ll have to first reverse the roles.. you have the right story but you have confused the characters.. Those turning s blind eye to butchery – and oppression, snd land theft, torturing and jailing children, “mowing the lawn” (look it up), drying them out (look that up too) and using them for target practice when they aren’t bombing their schools, homes and mosques – have been doing it for 70 years.
I don’t get it. I’m totally out of touch I guess. I certainly have empathy for Palestinian civilians, but Hamas is a terrorist group gripped by hatred of Jews. If Hamas laid down its weapons tomorrow, there would be peace. If Israel laid down its weapons tomorrow, they would be wiped off the map.
If Hamas laid down their weapons would Israel grant the Palestinians their own sovereign country? If the answer is no (and I believe it is) then the conflict is existential for those people as well surely?
Palestinians have repeatedly rejected proposals to create their own sovereign state! Arafat reneged on the Oslo Accords & then rejected Ehud Barak’s offer of a 2 state solution. Abbas rejected the same offer from Olmert.
Gaza’s occupation was ended by Israel in 2005. Hamas didn’t made a sovereign state there, they made it into a platform for continuing the conflict.
That’s one view, replete with lies, exaggeration and omissions..
I suggest you listen to Americas foremost authority on the subject. He’s Jewish. His name is Noam Chomsky.. try Gabor Mate as well, also Jewish. Try B’tselem, a Jewish human rights organisation in Israel, subject to regular death threats of course like all truth tellers.
With a continuous blockade of land and water?
The Palestinians, or at least those who purport to represent them, have twice been offered their own state. They are not interested in a two state solution.
Not true. Hamas is not interested. The vast majority ARE.
Support for the IRA was almost zero until the UVF, UDA and B Specials (later backed by the British Army, esp the Paras and even the RUC) began their brutal repression and murder campaign. When all the authorities are against you you WILL turn to anyone who will protect you, yes, even terrorists.
I guarantee it!
You’re 100% correct. When there was no Hamas the moderate PLO sought a two state solution so Israel set up Hamas to…
A) topple the PLO and intimidate ordinary Gazans and
B) to justify their genocide which Zionists term “mowing the lawn” ie murdering children to reduce the Palestinian population! Check it out if you don’t believe me.
Obviously you don’t believe me AND you haven’t checked the facts.. the only other alternative is you must be, how shall I put it? ..not very nice people.
Eh, no.
If Hamas laid down it’s weapons there would be genocide as there has always been.. Hamas (set up by Israel for that very purpose) is the excuse to refuse a two state solution and commit the genocide. The genocide started decades before Hamas was formed starting with the Nakba.. please look it up!
You’re missing the forest through the trees. It’s fair to critique Israel, rebuke them for awful behaviour and hold them accountable. But there is only one actor in this drama that supports democracy, freedom and human rights – and it ain’t Hamas. It’s fair to say that Israel has failed miserably at these ideals in the past, but Israel respects those ideals. Somehow we have lost perspective in the west. We are so repulsed by individual actions and policies that we fail to appreciate the core values that have made the west the most desireable place to live in the history of the world. No one is breaking down the doors to move to China, or Russia, or Qatar, or Saudia Arabia. They want in the west for a reason.
I’m sorry but there are NO actors promoting either democracy or human rights in this cauldron of hell. Israel runs an apartheid state and oppresses 25% of the population (just like in NI). The kill rate is in favour of Israel, not by 2:1 but by 24:1!
How can those facts engender in your mind two diametrically opposite concepts of democracy human rights? You might as well describe hell as cool with lots of ice cream!
The Arab nations requested via radio the Arabs leave their homes in 1948 so to better exterminate the Israelis. If the Arab nations had served in the Allied Armies, apart from Jordan rather than working for the Nazis , they would have been better soldiers. Orde Wingate trained the SNS and produced leaders of the calibre of Moshe Dayan and many Israelis had served in Commando/Parachute/Special Forces in WW2. Hamas was set up the Muslim Brotherhood.
If one starts a fight, do not whine if one loses. The only Arab leader prepred to negotiate with the Israelis was King Abdullah who was the only one to defeat them.
You’re missing many facts in your narrow, biased interpretation. Israel USED the Muslim Brotherhood extremists to form Hamas just as the US used the Mujahadeen to form Al Qaida and Islamic Jihad to form ISIS. This is copybook stuff (or playbook as it us now termed)..
My enemy’s enemy is my patsy and can be used to promote my ends.. It happens all over the world, including Ukraine where neo NaZ¡s were recruited as proxies to further NATO expansion. It’s really very obvious if you step back, weigh up the issues, see who is really in control and who benefits.. Cicero’s rhetoric still stands: Qui Bono?
The wonderful fighters you laud were terrorists of the worst kind with British soldiers among their savagely murdered victims.
I think you’ll find Israel has far more collaborative Arab nations who walk a thin line in order to..
▪︎Avert Israeli (ie US) aggression
▪︎Benefit (personally) like any tyrant
▪︎Keep it’s Islamic population from rebelling
The majority of Israeli (ie US) “allies” are that out of fear and greed, not ideology. When an alternative appears, eg BRICS the fear/greed game is over.. and that is a very large part of what this is all about.. as always, the innocent die like flies while the elite gain.
And Zionists are (75%) a group gripped by hatred of Palestinians.. their chants of hatred are never reported, unlike the corollary..
This confirms a view I’ve had for quite some time. It’s a question of prisms. My generation (65+) views Israel through the prism of the Holocaust. Accordingly, we have been willing to give Israel a lot more latitude in its policies than we would to other countries.
Younger generations see Israel through the prism of Palestine. The gradient between the generations is relatively gentle, until we get to Generation Alpha.
My gut instinct is that Western perceptions of Israel will get progressively worse as time goes on, as my fellow Boomers and I die off and Gen Alpha becomes more dominant in our societies. So time is not on Israel’s side.
That is a reversion to the norm. Until the veterans of the Mandate began to retire and then to die out, as they have still not quite done, Zionism in Britain was mostly confined to a small ethnic minority, which was then almost entirely of recent immigrant origin. There was never any shift in attitudes to Britain on the other side. Those who had blown up Our Boys, or who had photographed them hanged with barbed wire, went on to arm Argentina during the Falklands War.
Quite. The self-styled UK right has memory-holed the murderous atrocities of the Stern Gang during the second world war and Mandate period – and the fact that Israel demonstrated its revulsion for terror tactics by, er, electing two of its senior members, Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, as Prime Ministers. And yes, Shamir did everything he could, which thankfully wasn’t much, to help arm the Argentine junta in 1982.
I sincerely hope so.. this Boomer is in the Alpha corner and has always been!
All those hundreds of thousands out on the streets of Europe screaming for jews’ extinction – I wish you and your young the best of luck!
In the name of Allah, I wonder why that is!
I suspect it’s because of the murder rate: 96 innocent Palestinian children for every 4 innocent Israeli children.. Also the starvation, denial of water, bombing of their electricity power plant, bombing of escape crossing point into Egypt, bombing of schools, mosques, homes and now hospitals might have influenced them.. that sort of thing apparently does influence some people I’m told! Amazing isn’t it?
Reds and Greens – a fatal love match.
Sympathising with the plight of the Palestinians in Israel is not the same as excusing Hamas.
This is a major problem in the rhetoric around the whole subject. Too many seem to imply that criticism of Israeli actions means you’re either anti semitic or pro Hamas, which of course most people aren’t. They just recognise that killing 500 people by bombing a hospital full of displaced refugees is as abhorrent as anything committed by the terrorists in Hamas.
Except that Israel claims that they didn’t and that it was a stray rocket fired from within Gaza itself. Best to wait and see the outcome of things like this.
There are both video and audio evidence that supports Isreal’s claim.
There is ALWAYS evidence to back up Israeli claims.. If you were evil enough and had the expertise etc might you mock up a rocket to mimic a Jihadi rocket?
Would this be the first time the IDF did something heinous? eh, no.
Would it be the first time ghey blamed PIJ or Hamas fir their own evil deeds? eh, no.
Have the IDF claimed innocence for atrocities before only to be found out? eh, yes!
Has anyone ever believed Israeli denials? eh, yes.
Has anyone ever believed anything said by terrorists? eh, no.
Can we believe the experts? Anyone remember Covid? How about WMD in Iraq? The days when inspectors, analysts, reporters, scientists etc are to be believed are gone, sadly. We can only hope that one or two are righteous (there’s an out of date term), honest and brave enough to risk being murdered themselves! Oramus.
Come up to date.. latest analysis suggests the rocket exploding in the air was mot connected in any way to the hospital explosion. Check it out..
Israel has pin-point weapons technology. Hamas doesn’t.
So it’s unlikely that they would hit a hospital (and they are not going to do so intentionally)
America also had pinpoint weapons technology and regularly hit civilian targets in Afghanistan. The hi tech weapons systems are only as good as the intelligence that is telling what to hit
From what I gather, Hamas often uses civilian locations as cover, but Israel gives evacuation warnings before it chooses to target such a place.
Also no tech is 100% accurate, but something like 20-30% of rockets fired by Hamas fall short and land in their own territory.
Don’t waste your time with CNN viewers and NYT readers. It’s impossible.
I suggest one examines the crater. Size will indicate size of warhead and height of explosion. Chemistry can determine nature of explosives and type of metal.
The crater looks small which suggests warhead exploded above the ground which would have resulted in high death rate.
If Hamas do not want to undertake a forensice investigation, it suggests they wish to hide the truth.Even the BBC is stating there is a lack of missile fragments.
Gaza hospital: What video, pictures and other evidence tell us about Al Ahli hospital blast – BBC News
Isn’t it odd that despite Israeli pinpoint accuracy and all the evacuation warnings (as opposed to indiscriminate Hamas atrocities) that the kill rate of innocent children is 96:4 in favour of the Israeli murder machine or as they call it “Mowing the Lawn”.
Eh, yes they are! They do so all the time.. targetting also schools and mosques, and homes.. also ambulances, doctors, medics and journalists.. Israelis are the vilest creatures on planet Earth while feigning decency.. how easily the gullible are fooled. A 96:4 ratio of innocents murdered is NOT the work of civilised people.. their weapons are accurate alright and hit their intended targets.. they call killing children “Mowing the Lawn” – check it out! ..and look up “Drying out” as well, and the child population of Israeli jails and vile torture that goes on there..
Of course they are.. they target schools and mosques and homes don’t they? It was an obvious target because so many had fled to the hospital grounds for safety.
The IDF also targeted the roads south to kill those obeying the Israeli order to evacuate and the Egyptian border crossing to prevent escape. This is grist to the mill for Zionism I’m afraid. You need to do some research.
Why would Israel bomb a hospital? Makes no sense. Why would Islamic Jihad? Makes perfect sense. Israel will get the blame.
Ah, you figured it out.. except you didn’t study the “form” did you? Israel bombs hospitals, schools, mosques, and homes with impunity and has been doing do for decades.. which explains their murder rate being 96:4.. odd isn’t it? You’re giving naivety a bad name!
At a certain point gullibility and anti-semitism become not so much indistinguishable as identical.
Can you explain the discrepancy in the murder rates for me? 96 innocent Palestinian children murdered for just 4 innocent Israeli children? It’s odd isn’t it? Given the murderous nature of Hamas and the law abiding, UN resolution following, respecters of Humanitarian law that Israelis are? I just can’t figure it out!
I’ll take that as a NO shall I?
You spoke a bit too soon. It looks like the hospital explosion may have been caused by a Hamas missile, and their claim of 500 dead also seems false.
It’s almost like you shouldn’t blindly accept the propaganda of a terrorist group.
Criticising Israel doesn’t in itself make you anti-semitic, it is just the case that anti-semitism is rampant in the English middle-class left, and this is why they protest far more when Israel does something bad than say, China, or Iran, or Pakistan.
..and the Hamas atrocity was a one off while Israeli atrocities are almost weekly.. its adds up to a 96:4 score in favour of Israeli murders of innocent Gazans and West Bank Palestinians with few if any Hamas terrorists among them! ..just like murdering half a million Iraqis in revenge for Egyptians and Saudis murdering 3,000 Americans.
Why not attack the guilty and spare the innocent instead of the other way ’round? The answer of course is that the West needs terrorists to justify genocide! That’s why Israel set up Hamas, the US set up Al Qaida and ISIS and, going back, the UK set up the Mowmow2 in Kenya..
It’s straightforward: just find the vilest thugs you can (they exist everywhere in small numbers) and ‘grow’ them with weapons and twisted propaganda.. divide and conquer.. it’s an old as the Roman Empire.. probably as old as evil, ie since Cane killed Abel!
Can’t stand the heat eh?
The problem is about 70% of Gazans both support Hamas and are in favor of removing and/or killing the Jews in order to take occupation of Isreal.
‘you know if I and my people suffered for the last 75 years under a murderous, vile and apartheid regime I’m not sure if I wouldn’t go the same way, God forgive me.
Seeing my wife and children, and friends blown to pieces, dried out, imprisonised, tortured and the subject of “Mowing the Lawn” (look it up) and random target practice, yes I think I might go the same way, God forgive me!
And if my land was stolen, my home bulldozed and I was kept in a concentration camp all my life, starved, denied water and electricity and endlessly bombed then yes, God forgive me I think I might go the same way.
I’d be interested to see how many respondents said “no one’s side”.
I think it is extremely easy to say whose “side” you are on in respect of the atrocities committed by Hamas last week.
But in terms of the Israel-Palestine conflict in a broader sense: how many people don’t know…or aren’t that bothered either way?
Or have conflicting views, like me.
I looked at all the YouGov data yesterday, and on some questions, the biggest answer is ‘don’t know’.
I’m not on anybody’s ‘side’. I sympathise with both the Israelis and the civilians of Gaza, and on the big picture, I am neutral. I’m not Israeli or Palestinian, Muslim or Jew. I want a peaceful and equitable solution.
There is far too much binary thinking going on about a very complex issue with a long history.
I have always been ambivalent but the Hamas attack changed that somewhat. Whilst I still see it as a foreign problem I have had enough of immigrants fighting their religious war on the streets of Europe.
..and English football hooligans too no doubt?
Anyone who doesn’t know the facts is an ignoramus and anyone who doesn’t care is an unfeeling brute! Probably about 80% I’d say taking both into account.
Wow. Staggering. The level of ignorance of history, geography, and world affairs is genuinely shocking. What on earth are they teaching in schools?
I have been in heated ‘discussion’ with a nephew (MSc) about Israel. He is clueless and seems to absorb all his ‘knowledge’ from Twitter. He’s bright, and not especially left wing, but immediately falls for the ‘oppressed victim’ narrative.
I think we are dealing with the ‘Disney generation’. They see goodies and baddies and a glorification of sentimentality and romantic idealism. It feels like a return to the ‘noble savage’ view of the world.
People no longer seem to ‘grow up’ and lose their youthful illusions about the innate ‘goodness’ of human beings. They visit foreign lands but remain within a privileged bubble where they fail to see the complete lack of human rights of people who wait on them there.
Muslim women in the UK go to University and walk the streets independently, presumably ignorant of the fact that they would be indoors and powerless under the regimes they profess to support.
Civilisation and democracy are rare and hard won privileges; they unfortunately seem to incubate astonishing naïveté and complacency.
Perfectly stated. Ironically, it’s the result of long-term peace.
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”-Hopf
You got a downtick for that, so I’ve countered it. But you do have to wonder who would object to that quote and why?
I think when it comes to ignorance of the salient facts you do very well yourself.. but to improve your expertise I suggest you look up, with the words Paelestinian, Zionist, IDF included:
Nakba
Kill rate of 96:4
No. of Gazan hospitals, schools, mosques and homes destroyed by the IDF.
No. of Palestinian children in Israeli jails: their torture and sexual abuse.
“Mowing the Lawn” – culling of children
“Drying out” – dehydration and heatstroke.
And you might find, toyour utter amazement, that you are the ignorant, uneducated, gullible, naive one rather than your nephew!
I’ve decided you are either demented, an incel, or an out of work terrorist. Your stats are totally unreliable, but then they come from Hamas.
I’ve been to Israel and the West Bank (not Gaza, but I can imagine). One culture seeks to build and provide for its citizens (Jew, Arab and Christian), the other is hellbent on destruction and would drag us back to medieval barbarism.
But then you might quite like that? I’m oddly attached to Western democracy, women’s rights, education for all, and health care – all the luxuries of civilisation denied to ‘Palestinians’ by their war lords and the mad mullahs in Iran.
Yes but we don’t have a ‘democracy Jane.
We are bullied and forced to accept America’s will as do our politicians. Asset managers and corporations run it all, we have a token democracy at best.
What you say is partially true but, I’m afraid very biased. Islamic women are in my experience (I do have a fair bit) are the main supporters of Islamic norms.. It is untrue that Israelis (apart from maybe 10% of them) want to build a state to incorporate Palestinians.. like Hamas most Zionists want all of the other side dead. I have friends in Gaza who: a) just want peace and a decent life and b) never spoke one word to me of hatred against anyone, unbelievably!! even with the bombing night after night!
FYI I’m a pacifist, with my 3rd wife and very much still have my marbles in working order. What is strange about me is that I am a practicing Christian in that I follow the words of Christ afa I can.. eg I’m opposed to the murder of innocent men, women and children in Gaza and Israel and I will denounce evil wherever I see it.
I believe in love not hate but it’s hard not to despise rank, putrid evil. To quote Maldela: The evil perpetrated by Zionists is affecting them as well as their victims: it is rotting their very souls (I paraphrase)..
Labour abandoned their working class base decades ago when they recognised a more fertile constituency in the newly arriving immigrants. They went on to cultivate that community despite the fact that, culturally and ideologically, it crossed the grain of several core tenet of left wing thinking.
In 1915, Gramsci, one of the most influential of marxist philosophers wrote this:
“Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity. … In the new order, Socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches and the media by transforming the consciousness of society.”
They don’t care how it is done but they will do it and will use any means or group available to advance their cause. Islam is mass submission to Allah, socialism/communism is mass submission to government decrees no matter how seemingly nonsensical and harmful those decrees might be.
They are using Muslims but eventually the Muslims will resent being exploited in order for Labour to advance and organise themselves.
If you fervently believe in Marxism or Catholicism then I guess you’ll do all those things you list to further your cause and replace the other. Why it should be so laudable for one and so reprehensible for the other I cannot see?
If you look at the Tories you’ll find just as many Muslims and Sikhs and Hindus and Buddhists there as in the Labour Party.. I think even Rishi Sunak and Cruella Braverman may be among that number..
I love your definitions …well no, not really. I mean they’re infantile aren’t they? You’re not by any chance a rac¡st are you? Surely not?
I’m sure they’ll be taking note in Israel, but will do what they think is in their best interests. Which is how it should be.
Genocide is the obvious answer, at least to the traditional Englishman. It worked fine during Empire days; and so I guess it’s Israel’s turn now. What’s your target? Israel kills Palestinians at the rate of 24 to 1 (96:4) so, given 1,500 Israelis murdered that works out at 36,000. Will that be enough for you? No? I see your point, there are 2,400,000 of them in Gaza so let’s make it 360,000 shall we? What? Still not enough? Oh, I see you want all 2.4 million exterminated.. we’re going to need some equipment to do that…
18-34 y/olds = dim ?
We were all 18-34 once Benedict, but not all prats like you.
So not really much movement from the Corbyn years then? Well, atleast they’re under new management, even if the ‘staff’ are the same.
Did Starmer condemn Labour’s antisemitism under Corbyn? I can find no reference that he did.
Israel is resourceful( make deserts bloom and high tech industry) and victorious in battle. Most Left Wing Middle Class White Collar Workers are neither and Israel shows up their inadequacy; consequently they are full of self- hatred, bitter resentment and spite. If the LWMCWCW wanted to improve the live of the poor in the devloping World they would be civil or agricultural engineers designing and building sewage and water treatment works, improving yields drought and disease resistance of crops and livestock.Take Norman Borlaug and Schumacher as examples.
If Hamas had wanted to improve the quality of lives of the Palestinians they would NOT have spent money on infrastructure to be used to attack Israel but water works, sewage treatment works, waste treatment works, intensive agriculture, developing a high tech industry for the Arabic World, translating works of literature into Arabic. CCC is a successful Palestinian Construction Company. The Palestinians could have taken the best of Israeli, India, Singapore and Netherlands ( agriculture ) technology and become the high tech centre Arabic World and Middle East.
Orwell said the Irish Working Class Catholics had a strong strain of anti-semitism in the 1930s and 1940s : is this still true ?
I find it regrettable that the poll doesn’t offer the middle option, of not sympathising with either side, since that’s my position.
This is, for me, is probably the most depressing ongoing conflict in the world, given the entrenched, myopic, hateful, vindictive and vengeful mindsets of both adversaries.
The Israelis don’t do the hateful speech as much, but their actions speak for themselves. They are denying Gaza essential supplies ( food, water, electricity etc) and appear intent on obliterating it).
This is what makes the issue so murky. Israel has certainly done some crappy things to Palestine and that needs to be reckoned with. Ultimately though, Hamas is a legit terrorist group that does not respect life, of its Palestinian brothers or Israel.
Or sympathising with both the people of Israel under attack from Hamas and the people of Gaza who have been and are about to be attacked by the Israeli army. No good outcomes for many on both sides of the boarder.
Sadly, very true.. you might however ask yourself threel questions:
1) How did it start, given Jews, Muslims and Christians lived side by side for centuries in Palestine?
2) How did it get so bad over the past 75 years?
3) Qui bono? Who benefits from perpetuating it?
The political right respect in-group sovereignty. Whilst the contemporary political left tend to identify disadvantaged sub-groups, which are supposedly oppressed by an oppressor, and support them.
I’ve read before (if I can find it I’ll add it to my comment later) that British views on the conflict roughly break down along the lines of
10% Pro Israeli
20% Pre Palestinian
20% Don’t know
50% Both as bad as each other (or words to that affect)
I must admit my views align with the 50%, the place is a quagmire that Britain should stay completely neutral on. I wouldn’t want to waste a litre of fuel sending a single soldier over there personally
David Aaronovitch has a Substack on that. And it rings true, doesn’t it? It sounds like Britain. Apart from the politicians and the media. They are just weird.
The politicians seem to to come down hard on the pro Israel side, the media is generally more pro Palestinian. Nobody else cares, and can’t really understand why that conflict seems to get much more attention than numerous others around Africa or the Middle East
I don’t know where those pro-Palestinian media are, but yes, there are numerous wars in the world. There are at least seven in India, which has the largest number of foreign nationals resident in the United Kingdom. Why do we never hear about those?
Why? Because those other conflicts don’t threaten to spill over into the UK; because the UK has been deeply involved in the area and its conflicts for over a century; because it’s a conflict with a nuclear power; because it’s a conflict between liberal democracy and iliberal theocracy; because it involves a group that Europeans tried to exterminate just 80 years ago; because it’s involved in a century long proxy war between the UK left and right, US vs Alternative (communism/Islam/dictatorships)….
Wow.. where is that again?
Wars? 7 in India? are you sure you don’t mean wires or wares or maybe you mean conflicts? I think you’ll find they exist everywhere! Stoked up by the gutter press to sell to the gullible victims of exaggeration, misinformation and clever propaganda!
Some people do care.
You confuse Palestinians with Hamas and the PIJ.. did you confuse Irish citizens with the IRA?
I think you’ll find there’s another category that infiltrates the ones you list, and accounts for probably 80% of the total! I speak of those who believe innocent people, whatever their gender, nationality, creed or colour should not be murdered by evil terrorists be they Hamas, PIJ or Zionist IDF terrorists. Peace loving Christian (et al) people. In my travels all over the world including several Islamic countries, that accounts for 80% of people everywhere myself included.
It does not hit 40 per cent of Tories, either. On Israel and Palestine, there are, in drastically reduced order of size from each to the next, four broad schools of thought in Britain: the indifferent, the profoundly ambivalent, the strongly pro-Palestinian, and the fiercely Zionist. Yet almost all politicians, and the entire media, belong to that tiny fourth faction, which barely featured in British public life until there was a Prime Minister whose constituency happened to have a wildly untypical ethnic profile, but which did not become anything like dominant even under her.
That dominance arose in a window of perhaps half a generation, between the retirements of the British Mandate veterans (although a few of those are still alive, such as my late father’s old Army comrade who went on to by my Senior Tutor when I was an undergraduate), and the emergence of the mass anti-war movement in relation to Afghanistan and, especially, Iraq. To this day, Israel is not a British ally. In what specific way is it? It simply is not. Yet we are expected to make Israel’s, often undeniably unpleasant, enemies our own.
Israel armed Argentina during the Falklands War as an act of anti-British revenge on the part of Menachem Begin. Even beyond that, what have the Israelis ever done for us? What would they? Why should they? They have everything that they could possibly need to defend themselves. We are irrelevant to them. Yet our politics revolve around them. Their Ambassador to London accompanies our Foreign Secretary when he visits her country. No one else, absolutely no one, gets that kind of treatment. And if it were to cause bombs to go off in Britain, well, somehow that would prove that it had been right all along. “Not just today, not just tomorrow, but always”? That is not the stuff of grownup relations with any foreign state. None, including that one, would say such a thing about Britain. Nor should it.
I was looking at all this data yesterday (https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/explore/issue/Israel_Palestine_Conflict?content=all)
There is a significant amount of ‘don’t knows’ in it all.
Are the survey results somewhat distorted by the lack of a ‘don’t know/not sure’ category? Suspect much of the country would be in that, even if political activists less so.
Anyhow shows Starmer quite prepared to push back against some of his activists which will only do him good.
Too funny.
https://babylonbee.com/news/hamas-disappointed-leftists-dont-believe-they-massacred-jews-after-they-went-to-all-the-trouble-to-livestream-it
I wish.
I sympathize with Midian. Will no one think of Midian?
“Over the last week, a trickle of Labour councillors resigned from the [Labour] party”
Of course it could be exactly what Starmer wants. If you think he was that devious…
It now seems that the strike on the hospital was indeed carried out by Israeli IDF forces after all. The rocket that exploded in the air was separate from the ground explosion according to recent forensic analysis. I don’t think it’s been definitely establish yet, beyond doubt but I would caution against believing anything that comes from either side.. both lie.
Don’t see what’s suprising about this to be honest. The headline could equally be only 6% of Tory voters sympathise more with Palestinians. Duh? Members of the Labour Party which is set up to champion the underdog, support the underdog. It’s pretty much what you’d expect to see.
Which is weird, given that Israel is surrounded by hostile states, and is, in any rational understanding, the underdog, and was championed as such by the Labour party until it started actually defeating its enemies.
Israel is a big success story. It has a GDP per capital higher than Britain, and it’s a nuclear armed technology powerhouse. It’s been a while since Israel was an underdog.
Starmer could hardly take any other position since his wife is Jewish
Ok but should that really influence his political views as he may become PM, remember Carrie Johnson?
Many Jews, ie the practicing ones,psupport Palestinian human rights and call out Israeli wickedness as vociferously as anyone, more even! Hasidic Jews among them who believe God banished the Israelites from the Holy Land because of their repeated wickedness (in the Diaspora) and Who hasn’t yet rescinded His decision.. and who’d blame Him!
If the murder rate is 96:4, which it is, and if Israel has all the power, which it does, and if Israel is the invader, apartheid oppressor and land thief then the Labour side seems spot on to me. I’m assuming we’re talking about overall and long-term and not just knee jerk reaction to one day’s atrocities rather than the 20,000 days of Israeli atrocities?
Check out two Zionist phrases:
DRYING OUT – it means IDF forcing innocent Palestinians (mainly male youths) to sit in the blazing sun (or even stand) until they “dry out”, ie collapse from dehydration and heat stroke.. just to show who’s boss and maybe have a laugh.
MOWING THE LAWN – it means culling the children of Palestine to reduce the population growth.. just as you might cull vermin in an area. It’s done by shooting them (target practice) or more effectively, using bombs (50.5% of deaths will be children, on average).. I’m not sure if they considered ZykloneB but it’s a fair bet they did.
IRA sympathiser by any chance?
The complete opposite.. I called out IRA vile atrocities from the beginning and do so again now. To assume Irish people in general support(ed) the IRA is the same ignorant mistake as assuming all Palestinians support Hamas. You’re gving simplistic, kindergarten stupidity a bad name!