Palestinian Poll
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Polls in unfree societies need to be taken with a grain of salt, as they measure the effectiveness of government propaganda and fear as much as genuine attitudes. Still, even discounting for that, the results of one poll of the Palestinian Arabs released this week are disheartening.
The poll was conducted by the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion, which does work for the American Department of State and Gallup International. The method was face-to-face surveys of 607 Palestinian Arabs. The work was overseen by Public Opinion Research of Israel, another respected polling organization that has done work for the State Department, the Pew Research Center, Boeing, and IBM.
Of those Palestinian Arabs polled, a total of 74% said they supported Saddam Hussein in the war between him and America. About 22% viewed those who flew planes into the World Trade Center as “martyrs,” 14% as “freedom fighters.” Only 13% describe Hamas — which is a blood-drenched terrorist group — as a terrorist group, while 67% strongly disagree and 14% somewhat disagree with that definition. Eighty-two percent described Hamas as freedom fighters.
The Palestinian Arabs were asked,”Last year the Tulkarm Shahids Memorial Soccer Championship for Children was named after Abd-al-al Baset Odeh, who killed 30 Israelis in a suicide bombing. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?” Seventy-one percent called it a good thing. Of the Palestinian Arabs, 79% said they did not consider Palestinian bombings of Israeli buses and restaurants to be acts of terrorism.
Well, this may explain the Palestinian leadership’s failure to crack down on terrorism and terrorists — many Palestinians don’t define bombings of restaurants and buses as terrorism, and they don’t define Hamas as terrorists.
These opinions, to the extent that they are accurately measured, may change over time if a responsible Palestinian Arab leadership emerges that stops inciting hatred of Jews. America can do its part by demanding such a leadership as a precondition for further aid to the Palestinian Authority.
