Haaretz Poll: Most Israelis see Obama as fair and friendly

[oberliner]

U.S. President Barack Obama's popularity may be declining in American public opinion, but a sweeping majority of Israelis think his treatment of this country is friendly and fair, according to a Haaretz-Dialog poll conducted this week.

The poll also found that most Israelis don't believe politicians who call Obama anti-Semitic or hostile to Israel, or who say he is "striving to topple Netanyahu."

The poll, which was conducted Tuesday and Wednesday and supervised by Professor Camil Fuchs, comes after reports of a crisis in diplomatic relations due to Israel's announcement during a visit by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden that it will build 1,600 housing units in East Jerusalem.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's aides said they had hoped the public would rally around him and see him as a victim of overly strict treatment by the Obama administration.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1157483.html

[DesertFlower]

1. i'm glad to hear that. nt

[Pirate Smile]

5. Me too.

[DFLforever]

2. That's gong to disappoint some.

[miscsoc]

3. disappoints me

the israelis have quite different interests from those of the united states. if they have a positive view of him it's probably because he needs to be harder on them and put his country first.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

4. This surprises me, to put it mildly.

The last I heard, Obama's approval rating in Israel was somewhere in the region of 4-6%. My suspicion is that this poll was in some way leading, although I may be wrong.

[Jefferson23]

6. Or perhaps they are confident that in the long run, the U.S.has

never before placed demands on them and this is just a rift that will end soon...so why worry.

[oberliner]

7. JPost: 'Haaretz fiddled with Obama poll'

Haaretz misled readers to give the impression that an overwhelming majority of Israelis see US President Barack Obama as “fair and friendly” toward the country, the newspaper’s pollster, Tel Aviv University professor Camil Fuchs, said on Sunday.

Both the English and Hebrew editions of Friday’s Haaretz led with the headline “Poll: Most Israelis see Obama as fair, friendly toward Israel.”

The English edition elaborated near a picture of Obama that “69% say Obama is fair and friendly.”

The story itself gives no numbers, but the lead says “A sweeping majority of Israelis think his treatment of this country is friendly and fair.”

The English edition contains no graphic distributing the actual numbers, either online or in print.

The print and online versions of the newspaper’s Hebrew edition included a graphic indicating that just 18 percent of respondents considered Obama “friendly” towardIsrael, 3 percentage points fewer than the 21% who called the president “hostile” to the Jewish state.

Ten percent did not know, and 51% defined Obama’s approach to Israel using the Hebrew word “inyani,” which can be translated as “matter-of-fact” or “businesslike,” but not as fair.

http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=171506

[oberliner]

8. Story appears to have vanished

The link now goes to this article:

Haaretz poll: 27% of Israelis think Obama is anti-Semitic

Some 27 percent of Israelis believe that U.S. President Barack Obama is anti-Semitic, according to a Haaretz-Dialog poll conducted this week.

Another 56 percent questioned said they don't believe politicians who call Obama anti-Semitic or hostile to Israel, nor those who say he is "striving to topple Netanyahu."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1157483.html (same as OP link)

Bizarre to say the least - JPost has accused Ha'aretz of fiddling with the poll results in its original article (see my reponse above).

[Donald Ian Rankin]

9. Apparently it was "fair *or* friendly"

http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/rosner/entry/is_obama_fair_and_friendly says that 51% said fair, 21% unfriendly, 18% friendly, 10% uncertain, and the "fair and friendly" number was arrived at by adding the 51 to the 18.

Also, this poll included both Arabs and Jews - separate polls for each might well give very different results.

[oberliner]

10. Post poll: Obama still in single digits

Just 9 percent of Jewish Israelis think US President Barack Obama’s administration is more pro-Israel than pro-Palestinian, according to a Smith Research poll taken this week on behalf of The Jerusalem Post.

Forty-eight percent said that the Obama presidency favored the Palestinian side, 30% said his administration was neutral and 13% chose not to express an opinion for the survey, which has a margin of error of 4.5 percentage points.

http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=171849