French president Emmanuel Macron recently announced that his country will soon be recognizing Palestine as a country in the United Nations, and the question arises whether other members of the Security Council and other European neighbors will follow suit. According to Wikipedia, Ireland and Spain are the only western European countries that currently recognize the Palestinian state.
On one hand, recognizing Palestine seems like a big leap politically, so maybe France will stand alone in the Security Council. On the other hand, Israel is becoming increasingly unpopular around the world. For example, a quick search turns up this article about Israel’s declining popularity in Europe: “Net favourability towards Israel in Germany (-44), France (-48), and Denmark (-54) has reached its lowest level since YouGov started tracking in 2016, while public sentiment in Italy (-52) and Spain (-55) are likewise at their lowest or joint lowest levels.”
When asked about the response to the Hamas attacks in 2023, a plurality of European respondents chose the option, “Israel were right to send troops into Gaza, but have gone too far and caused too many civilian casualties,” a smaller percentage chose, “Israel were wrong to send troops into Gaza or use military force against Hamas,” and even fewer said, “Israel were right to send troops into Gaza and have generally responded in a proportionate way to the Hamas attacks.” For example, these three proportions were 31%, 18%, and 16% in France and 38%, 15%, and 12% in Britain.
The poll also reports, “Between 7% and 18% of European respondents say they sympathise most with the Israeli side, the lowest figure in most countries since the Hamas attacks. By contrast, between 18% and 33% say they sympathise more with the Palestinian side.”
A few months ago I referred to the concept of an opinion-field inversion, by analogy to the sort of temperature inversion that causes tornadoes: a warm air mass is on top of a cold air mass, which is unstable, but the warm air has to find some way down, as the air mixes, gravity and the spin of the earth create this swirling channel, a lot of potential energy is released, and pow!
John in comments points out that this is a ridiculously inaccurate description of temperature inversions and tornadoes, but let’s not worry about that here, since the point of this point is political, not meteorological, and what’s relevant here is the idea of a situation becoming unstable with no clear smooth way for it to be resolved.
I get the impression that something similar is happening regarding policy on Israel/Palestine. On one hand, this issue is considered a political “third rail” (another physics analogy, this time from certain electric trains: touch that third rail when you’re grounded and you get electrocuted, just like Robert Shaw in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three . . . ummmmm, spoiler alert, I guess). It’s an issue that mainstream politicians don’t want to touch, but politicians do want popular support, and that’s been trending toward the Palestinians. Hence the opinion-field inversion, with the opinion in favor of Palestine playing the role of the cold air mass that’s unstably sitting on top of the traditional political calculation that support for Israel is untouchable.
OK, it’s not as simple as all that. Public opinion isn’t the only game in town. For example, a couple years ago we discussed how internal politics within the Republican party have led to what might be considered politically gravity-defying positions on abortion. When it comes to Israel/Palestine, relevant political factors other than public opinion include international alliances, military concerns, political commitments, calculations about potential policy effects, internal politics, political ideology, the personal views of the politicians and diplomats discussing these decisions, political lobbying, and humanitarian concerns. Still, public opinion is part of the story. Whether the opinion-field inversion will cause a political tornado, I have no idea. I’ll defer to my colleagues in the political science department who study international relations and the national politics of the other countries in the U.S. Security Council.
Although for three years, way back in the early 1950s, I dutifully took (what was then called) “The Pelham Bay Local” from home to high school and back, until today I was totally unaware of the film, “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.” To make things stranger, there seem to be three versions of this. Again, it is amazing on what can be learned on this statistics blog.
Paul:
According to the movie, the trains are named based on the time of departure from the originating station. So the train Pelham One Two Three leaves Pelham station at 1:23. But they altered the route of the train to make the story work out better.
I must be dense this morning, but I don’t understand your point. Your definition of opinion-field inversion is: “an unstable pattern in which opinions among more informed people are different from those of the general public.” I’m not seeing where this applies to public opinion regarding the Israeli/Palestine situation. Who are the “more informed people?”
My question relates to another reaction I have to this post. Like yesterday’s post, public opinion is portrayed as some sort of exogenous force. The role of the media seems confined to reporting this public opinion. But I increasingly see the media as shaping public opinion. In the case of the Palestinian crisis, I am finding it hard to know what is true – I don’t trust Hamas or the Palestinian health authority, I don’t trust the Israeli government, I don’t trust the US government, I don’t trust the UN (to a lesser extent), and I don’t trust the media reports – at least the US media, who are increasingly besieged by political forces. To the extent that European and American views on the crisis differ, I think much can be attributed to the reporting we see and our trust (or lack thereof) of these reports. Where is the “political opinion-field inversion?”
Minor point: having worked for a UN technical agency (and a little bit for a second), I would urge you to trust the UN on non-general assembly/security council matters. Not always and not 100%, but the default should be trust. These are very well-trained, competent people with an international civil service perspective. I say this even though I’ve tussled with them from time to time.
I did say “to a lesser extent.” I have generally believed UN agency reports, but my belief was shaken by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) possible links to HAMAS. I have no direct knowledge about that, but there is enough there to make me less trustful. My general philosophy is that, while it is safe to assume that nobody can be trusted, I prefer to start by trusting until given a reason not to. Reputation matters, and when someone earns distrust, I switch to a distrust default. Unfortunately, that now applies to almost every US politician, most foreign politicians, most corporate entities, almost all of the media, many entertainers and sports figures, much of the judicial system, much of academia,…. The collapse of reputation has been shockingly pronounced in the past 20 years (during which I’ve aged 20 years).
Funny you would be swayed by this charge. Hamas is the Palestinian franchise of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is fairly widespread in the region. No doubt its members in a place like Gaza don’t walk around with signs on their chest saying that’s who they are. UNRWA employed a large number of locals in various capacities, and it would be surprising if none of them were affiliated with Hamas. But little evidence has emerged in any case. In retrospect it is clear that Israel wanted to eliminate all sources of aid it didn’t control, with the results we’re now seeing.
As far as I know, no one has credibly argued that UNRWA used its aid for political purposes. Do you know of any examples?
More generally, there is a general problem faced by UN agencies operating in authoritarian or corrupt environments. To get their work done they often have to look the other way. This was a huge, almost terminal issue for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. They operated in the middle of deeply corrupt networks in several countries. This was much worse than anything UNRWA was accused of — payoffs to local bosses, etc. But none of this impugns the character of UN staff or the credibility of the purely technical data they report.
UNRWA employed 12,521 people in Gaza in various capacities, and it would be surprising if less than 1,462 (12%) were affiliated with Hamas or other designated terrorist organizations.
Dale:
In my earlier post, I referred to an opinion-field inversion as a disparity between informed and less-informed people. In this post, I’m using the term differently, just to refer to an unstable situation in which what seems like a politically safe position (always siding with Israel) becomes in conflict with public opinion.
With your clarification, I remain puzzled about its application to this situation. Many “politically safe” positions come into conflict with public opinion when the details emerge. For example, it is relatively safe to oppose “waste, fraud, and abuse” but then find that the implementation conflicts with public opinion. It is safe to oppose “violent illegal immigrants” but then find conflicts with the way deportation is carried out. In such cases, I think there is always a divergence of public opinion (especially now that everything has become polarized). So, I’m not sure what is different about the Israeli/Palestinian situation than any other policy issue. I might suggest that all politically safe positions become unstable when looking at the details – which always end up in conflict with public opinion. The only thing different here seems to be the strength of the public opinion as indicated by the numbers you cite. But aren’t these from countries where the “politically safe position” was not so clear to begin with?
I don’t see evidence “things have become polarized”. Just look at Republicans and Democrats work together to help wars and cover up Epstein.
That “polarization” term has always seemed a purposeful narrative to me. Like when suddenly “the west” started being used everywhere a few years ago. Sure enough the need to fight wars followed soon after.
Anon:
There is much more partisan polarization in public opinion than in the past 150 years or so in the U.S. The fact that the government sometimes does things you don’t like doesn’t make this untrue.
“I’m not sure what is different about the Israeli/Palestinian situation than any other policy issue.”
One difference is the implicit expectations that people seem to have for Palestinian self-governance. Where else do we expect a proud nation of people to accept appeasement of a foreign power hell-bent on taking all of their territory? This is what people are implying when they say Hamas is a terrorist organization that must be destroyed. Hamas is the elected government of Palestine, and it is bravely fighting for the self-determination of the people it represents. The fact that this fight is asymmetrical is certainly not because the Palestinians wish it to be so, they would much rather be attacking military bases than music concerts.
Also, look at the campus free-speech stuff in Texas. A couple years ago Greg Abbott made a big deal about rightwing speech being discouraged on university campuses. It was all great fun, pretending to be supporting free speech while poking the libs. Then those same rights were used to advocate for Palestine, and suddenly many of those laws were terminated and the advocates were arrested.
This all falls under the general heading of “the Palestine exception,” which is the argument that the Palestine situation is indeed different.
Dale:
I’m not saying that this sort of opinion-field inversion is unique to the Israel-Palestine issue. It just seems to be a good fit to this situation where, on one hand, sticking with Israel seems like the safe political course and recognizing Palestine seems risky, while, on the other hand, public opinion on Israel-Palestine now strongly favors Palestine.
Your “waste, fraud, and abuse” thing seems different in that there’s a disjunction between rhetoric and how a policy will be carried out. Israel/Palestine seems different in that it’s more specific.
Andrew, what do you think about the take that it’s not actually polarization but rather sorting by party?
https://stanfordmag.org/contents/polarization-is-not-the-problem
Anon:
I pretty much agree with Fiorina’s take on political polarization, as for example explained in the linked article. Delia Baldassarri and I in our 2008 paper, Partisans without Constraint: Political
Polarization and Trends in American Public Opinion, where we write:
I think it’s still fair to call this “partisan polarization.”
> Hamas is the elected government of Palestine
Maybe, but it only “governs” 40% of the population and 6% of the territory.
Dale,
It seems to me that there is an intensity of feelings on the Israel/Palestine issues that your other examples lack. The only thing like it in that regard that I can remember is the war in Vietnam.
Matt,
Hamas may be elected, but since it’s founding in 1987 it blows up civilians, shoots missiles into civilian areas, takes hostages and massacres, rapes and decapitates people. Furthermore it is willing to let tens of thousands of it’s people die. I think that’s why people call Hamas terrorist, not because they oppose Israeli oppression.
Huan:
Yes, both the Israeli government and Hamas do things that would be characterized as war crimes.
Dale –
How do you get a handle on the direction of causality? My sense is that it’s bidirectional but the dominant flow is where the media give people what they want. Public opinion, or more specifically audience, drives the decisions that media make about what to cover and how. Perhaps the best illustration of this is the podcast world, where there iaant even a pretense of covering issues objectively, or from multiple angles.
But wait! A temperature inversion is when warm air sits on top of cold air, so that as air in the cooler air warms and loses density relative to the surrounding air, it rises until it hits the warmer (and so even less dense air) above. Then, it stops rising. For example, where I live in coastal California, air cooled by the ocean often gets trapped under warmer air, which can be made visible by the top of the fog layer. The same kind of inversion is involved with tornados (see https://www.meteo.psu.edu/wjs1/Meteo3/Html/tornado.htm). My impression is that with tornados, the air rising in the cooler air has enough lift to punch through the inversion and keep rising, and this sets up a complicated process that produces the tornado.
Oof! My ignorance of physics reveals itself yet again. My understanding of temperature inversion is based on vague memories of some sort of Kid’s Book of Hurricanes and Tornadoes that I read when I was 8 years old. I’ll fix the above post.
Lesson: Politics is the appropriate realm for ridiculously inaccurate descriptions.
John:
I think my descriptions of politics are accurate. My descriptions of meteorology, not so much.
t mean in this case to recognize a Palestinian state? The NYT story has this line “Nor was it clear what territory France would recognize as comprising a Palestinian state.” I understand that a state is generally associated with a particular geographic region, but it is also associated with a political power structure that rules over that geographic area. I saw that Spain, Norway, and Ireland had also recognized a Palestinian state using some defined region. But it’s not clear to me that the political powers in the West Bank or in Gaza have a defined region in mind that they would consider “Palestine”. I imagine Hamas also has a different definition of what Palestine should be relative to what the Palestinian National Authority. I guess with most issues in this region, it seems a bit of a mess.
That should start “What does it…”
For what it’s worth, Macron’s letter to Abbas says: “In the same spirit, I will pay particular attention to the implementation of the ceasefire in Gaza, the release of hostages still held by Hamas, the disarmament of the latter, and the consolidation of the Palestinian Authority over all Palestinian territories.”
I’d also be interesting in knowing the borders intended for this country. It seems to me that the Gaza Strip itself is pretty small to be a full-fledged country on its own. Not that it’s impossible, but it’d be down there on the list of microcountries which are little islands. Are they including the West Bank? In terms of facts on the ground, that’s turning into “greater Israel”. I’m very sadly coming to the view that the fabled “Two State Solution” is just not feasible anymore.
The cynical but effective “facts on the ground” policy has worked for Israel in the West Bank, although perhaps it’s not too late to displace the settlers (or ‘invaders’). Otherwise…well, as you say, there are countries like Grenada that are smaller than Gaza, but not many.
I don’t think you need to define exact borders for that, after all Israel is also a recognized state without defined borders (for reasons that are of course directly linked to it being difficult to do the same for a Palestinian state).
And while it may be no longer realistic the “default” is still the Green Line, with any changes only when negotiated as per binding UN Security Council Resolution 242.
I don’t think it works the same way in practice, since there’s already a country of Israel. Even if its borders are indeterminate, there’s a major area which isn’t in dispute. And already existing is a big difference. If there’s a proposal for recognizing a Palestinian country, one of the first logical questions for the proposal itself, is where is that located? It’s kind of problem to say, let’s recognize a new country, but we have absolutely no idea of where it is – somewhere around Israel, that’s the best we can do.
Without relitigating the whole I/P history, the question I’m raising here, is narrowly, how does this even work in the current day? Gaza-only? That’s very small, and giving Hamas an actual country seems like an extremely bad idea (reply it won’t be Hamas – dream on). Add in the West Bank, that’s a major problem, since Israel isn’t going to give it up, there’s too many settlers there now.
The more I think about it, the more it seems to me this is a bluff, and the players involved know it is a bluff.
Gaza has become an issue in local elections in the UK – but there is no need to hypothesize anything as sophisticated as a political opinion-field inversion; the areas where this is an issue are those with large numbers of Muslims who continue to follow traditions originating from outside the UK. Since this also describes parts of France, I would be surprised if the same mechanism was not also at work there.
Matt Skaggs said:
“I’m not sure what is different about the Israeli/Palestinian situation than any other policy issue.”
Why indeed?
There are several ongoing conflicts with terrible casualty numbers. Reports indicate, for example, that Yemen is enduring one of the world’s most severe humanitarian crises, with an estimated 85,000 children under five having died from starvation and malnutrition since the civil war began in 2014. See for example https://apnews.com/article/un-yemen-houthis-humanitarian-hunger-crisis-war-104a7b25d84a601e530fe7b8371a5b71 . Any mention of that at Columbia???
The Palestinian case seems to have mobilized masses in unprecedented numbers. It probably taps on prejudice and benefits from impressive organization and funding, over many years.
The inversion discussed here is just symptomatic. Answering the why question is a challenging research task. How would you approach it????
Ron:
The post discusses the French decision to recognize the Palestinian state. I don’t know if there are comparable issues regarding France’s policy in Yemen.
In response to your question if there is any mention of the Yemen crisis at Columbia: I did a quick google search and found The Yemen War Accountability Project at Columbia law school.
I agree with you that the Israel/Palestine conflict has received lots more attention, organization, funding, etc. over the years than the conflict in Yemen. I’m not sure how I’d study this; I guess I’d recommend that some larger collection of regional conflicts be studied, rather than just comparing these two.
Yes – a wide angle prism is needed. The point is to widen the scope of conflict resolution studies and expand the impact to civil impact, globally. Not just two case studies.
Such studies need to account for time gap effects. We currently observe events with filtered and manipulated information. Do we understand what is going on? short term? long term? Probably not….
Opinion-field inversion is a symptom related observation. France’s case study needs a wider perspective accounting for demographics and political forces. I do not think it can be discussed at the symptom level.
It is ridiculous how people putting the blame on an organization that was created in 1987 without mentioning the root cause of the problem which the Balfour organization which was in 1917 (70 years before the creation of Hamas),the absurdities related to the UN181 resolution and the European settlers who settled in Palestine to kick out/kill the indigenous population.