AP (“General strike in Israel over hostages leads to uneven disruptions, reflecting political divisions“):
A rare call for a general strike in Israel to protest the failure to return hostages held in Gaza led to closures and other disruptions around the country on Monday, including at its main international airport. But it was ignored in some areas, reflecting deep political divisions.
Hundreds of thousands of Israelis had poured into the streets late Sunday in grief and anger after six hostages were found dead in Gaza. The families and much of the public blamed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying they could have been returned alive in a deal with Hamas to end the nearly 11-month-old war.
But others support Netanyahu’s strategy of maintaining relentless military pressure on Hamas, whose Oct. 7 attack into Israel triggered the war. They say it will eventually force the militants to give in to Israeli demands, potentially facilitate rescue operations and ultimately annihilate the group.
Israel’s largest trade union, the Histadrut, called for a general strike on Monday, the first since the start of the war. It aims to shut down or disrupt major sectors of the economy, including banking, health care and the country’s main airport.
[…]
Municipalities in Israel’s populated central area, including Tel Aviv, were participating in the strike, leading to shortened school hours and cancellations for public day cares and kindergartens.
Many municipalities, however, including Jerusalem, were not participating. Israeli media reported that the state appealed to a labor court to cancel the strike, saying it was politically motivated.
The demonstrations on Sunday appeared to be the largest since the start of the war, with organizers estimating that up to 500,000 people joined nationwide events and the main rally held in Tel Aviv. Israeli media estimated that 200,000 to 400,000 took part.
They are demanding that Netanyahu reach a deal to return the remaining roughly 100 hostages held in Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead, even if it means leaving a battered Hamas intact and withdrawing from the territory. Many Israelis support this position, but others prioritize the destruction of the militant group over freedom for the hostages.
Netanyahu has pledged “total victory” over Hamas and blames it for the failure of the negotiations, which have dragged on for much of this year.
A NYT live blog (“Live Updates: Workers Strike as Israelis Seethe Over Hostage Killings“) notes that
An Israeli judge ruled Monday afternoon that the strike must end by 2:30 p.m. (7:30 a.m. Eastern time), saying the main labor union had not given enough notice before announcing the work stoppage the day before.
and that
The labor union that called for the strike in Israel on Monday, Histadrut, has played a key role in recent Israeli politics. Most notably, it led strikes last year that challenged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, forcing him to back off a contentious judicial plan.
Histadrut, or the General Organization of Workers in Israel, was also pivotal to the founding of the State of Israel. It was set up in 1920, at a time when trade unions were a critical vector of political and economic influence in many countries.
I’m never quite sure what to make of mass protests, let alone in countries where I’m only somewhat tuned in to local politics. Even at the low end, 200,000 people taking to the streets in a country of 9.6 million is significant. Clearly, a large number of Israelis are angry that the Netanyahu government hasn’t struck a deal to get the hostages back.
Taking a larger view, though, support for the compromises necessary to actually accomplish that feat is not strong. Polling on Israeli public opinion on the war effort, at least available in English, is scant and much of what’s available in the Israeli papers whose names I recognize is paywalled.
An interview published August 30 in +972 Magazine (“‘Israelis are frustrated, but do they want to stop the war? Not exactly’“) summarizes much of the recent polling.
Nearly a year on from the deadliest attack in Israel’s history, the Israeli army continues to wage a devastating war in the Gaza Strip with no apparent end in sight. There is now abundant evidence that senior political and security figures failed to heed warnings in the lead-up to the Hamas-led October 7 attack, and the army has acknowledged that it was too slow to respond. Investigations have confirmed that senior commanders employed the infamous “Hannibal directive,” permitting Israeli forces to endanger the lives of hostages in order to prevent them from being kidnapped alive.
Since then, more hostages have returned in body bags than have been freed by the military operation in Gaza, and a soldier has been killed in the fighting at a rate of more than one per day since the start of the ground invasion. Tens of thousands of Israelis are still displaced from communities near the Lebanon border and in the “Gaza Envelope.” Israel stands accused of genocide and war crimes — with the possibility of arrest warrants for its leaders — in The Hague, and the country’s credit rating has been downgraded by two major U.S. agencies.
I’m only slightly familiar with +972, which I don’t recall having encountered before the war, but that’s a scathing indictment of the Netanyahu-led government as a setup for this:
And yet, polls show that Israelis still overwhelmingly support the war, albeit with caveats — and are even coming back around to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
To try to make sense of the war’s popularity in Israel and understand the mood among the public, +972 Magazine sat down with one of its founders, Dahlia Scheindlin — a political consultant, public opinion analyst, and author of “The Crooked Timber of Democracy in Israel.”
What follows are some excerpts from that interview, all from Scheindlin:
What we would expect to see in wartime is the “rally around the flag” effect, and among Israeli Jews we did see just that: very high and sweeping support for the war. Palestinian citizens of Israel, it should be noted, have consistently displayed much lower levels of support for the army’s offensive.
We’ve also seen the popularization among Israeli Jews of some very extreme positions regarding the war, including opposing humanitarian aid and complete justification of almost all military actions. Commonly held opinions also include the argument that Israel should strike Hezbollah and Lebanon hard, and that Israel should occupy Gaza and rebuild Jewish settlements there.
Meanwhile, backing for a two-state solution fell to an all-time low. Overall support for it dropped to around 40 percent, and among Israeli Jews only it fell even lower — to around 30-35 percent.
Whereas in other countries with a “rally around the flag” effect you tend to see strong support for the leadership, in Israel we saw the opposite. Support for the leadership among Israeli Jews plunged to its lowest levels ever, which is very unusual in the first months during wartime. This trend has been very consistent.
[…]
[W]e’re seeing trust in the government recover pretty consistently across all surveys — starting in April [when Israel assassinated an Iranian Quds Force commander in Damascus, and Iran responded with a missile attack]. A series of polls in recent weeks have shown that Likud would win the most votes if elections were held today, and Netanyahu himself is once again coming out on top in head-to-head surveys against opposition leader Benny Gantz. He’s not in a stellar position, but he is more or less where he was before the war.
This recovery is linked to the new threats from Iran and Hezbollah following Israel’s assassinations in Beirut and Tehran. This has strengthened the sense among Israeli Jews that Israel is constantly surrounded by enemies.
[…]
There is always a majority or plurality that supports a deal for the return of hostages. Even when a complete ceasefire is proposed, you have a majority who prefer to pay the price. The fact is that there is no hostage deal without a permanent ceasefire, withdrawal of Israeli forces, Palestinians going back to northern Gaza, and the release of high-level Palestinian prisoners.
[…]
The polls show considerable frustration: the Jewish-Israeli public doesn’t believe that the government is prosecuting the war for the right reasons. Pretty much all Israeli Jews want to “destroy Hamas,” but more than half of Israelis believe Netanyahu is prolonging the military campaign to keep himself in power. Does that mean they actually want to stop the war? Not exactly.
A Pew survey (“Israeli Views of the Israel-Hamas War“) published May 30 showed overwhelming support for the war effort and war aims:
A new Pew Research Center survey finds that 39% of Israelis say Israel’s military response against Hamas in Gaza has been about right, while 34% say it has not gone far enough and 19% think it has gone too far.
According to the survey, conducted in March and early April, roughly two-thirds of Israelis are also confident that Israel will either probably (27%) or definitely (40%) achieve its goals in the war against Hamas. Still, majorities of Israeli adults are worried about aspects of the ongoing war:
- 61% say they are extremely or very concerned about the war expanding into other countries in the region.
- 68% say they are extremely or very concerned about the war going on for a long time.
When it comes to what should happen after the war, there is less consensus. A 40% plurality of Israelis think Israel should govern the Gaza Strip. Smaller shares think Gazans should decide who governs (14%) or would like to see a Palestinian Authority national unity government either with (6%) or without (12%) President Mahmoud Abbas (also known as Abu Mazen) in leadership.
Separately, 26% of Israelis think a way can be found for Israel and an independent Palestinian state to coexist peacefully with each other – down from 35% who said the same last year, prior to the war, and about half as many as took that position when the question was first asked in 2013.
And this actually wildly understates the support of Israeli Jews, the only constituency that likely matters to Netanyahu and other senior leaders.
- Arab Israelis are less likely than Jewish Israelis to think Israel will succeed in achieving its war aims (38% vs. 76%) and less optimistic when thinking about the future of the country’s national security (21% vs. 63%).
- Israeli Arabs are much more likely than Jews to say the country’s military response has gone too far (74% vs. 4%).
- Almost no Israeli Arabs (3%) want Israel to govern the Gaza Strip after the war, while half of Israeli Jews think it should do so. A plurality of Arabs would like the people who live in Gaza to decide who governs (37%), while only 8% of Jews prefer this outcome.
- Arab Israelis have much less favorable views of the U.S. than Jewish Israelis do (29% vs. 90%), as well as less confidence in Biden (21% vs. 66%). They are also much more likely to disapprove of Biden’s handling of the war (86% vs. 53%) and to think he favors Israelis too much (86% vs. 11%).
- Although a majority of Arabs (63%) want the U.S. to play a major role in diplomatically resolving the war between Israel and Hamas, an even greater share of Jewish Israelis (74%) want this. And roughly two-thirds of Arabs are open to Qatar and Egypt playing a major role, while only about four-in-ten Jews or fewer say the same.
- Roughly nine-in-ten Arabs (92%) have a negative view of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, compared with around half of Jews (48%). Views of the two other war cabinet members, Benny Gantz and Yoav Gallant, are also divided along ethnic lines. (The survey was conducted before Gantz threatened to leave the war cabinet.)
lt’s possible, of course, that seeing the bodies of six hostages killed as a direct result of an IDF raid has radically changed Jewish public opinion. I’m highly skeptical of that, though.
