Famous ‘Pew Research Center’ helps promote Israel apartheid lie

Results of the latest Pew survey concerning Israel, conducted in March-April 2024, were published in a number of separate reports (‘How Israeli society has unified, and divided, in wartime,’ ‘Amid war in Gaza, 58% say their country is not respected internationally,’ ‘Israeli views of the Israel-Hamas war,’ with potentially more to come). Pew shows either a surprising misunderstanding about the country they have surveyed repeatedly over the years or clear anti-Israel bias. That is surprising given that they present themselves as providing “nonpartisan, nonadvocacy data and analysis.”

We find hints of either their bias or their ignorance in the description of the sampling methods for the latest (and other annual reports on Israel). They write:

The data is from a survey of 1,001 Israeli adults conducted face-to-face from March 3 to April 4, 2024. Interviews were conducted in Hebrew and Arabic, and the survey is representative of the adult population ages 18 and older, excluding those in East Jerusalem and non-sanctioned outposts. (The survey also did not cover the West Bank or Gaza.)

Some explanation is required here.

Firstly, ‘East’ Jerusalem refers to the part of the city that was occupied by Jordan between 1948 and 1967. In 1948, Jordan either killed or expelled all the Jews and annexed it. In 1967, when the area was liberated by Israel during the Six-Day War, it came under total Israeli control. Today, the neighborhoods comprising eastern Jerusalem are about 69% Arab and 31% Jews.

Did Pew not include the Jews of these neighborhoods in their survey or was it only the Arabs? Also, given that about 90% of the Arabs there have permanent resident status in Israel, meaning they have all the same rights as Israeli citizens aside from having an Israeli passport (they have Jordanian passports) and voting in national elections (they vote in municipal elections), the decision not to include them in this survey is curious. And this means they also excluded the 10% who applied for and received Israeli citizenship.

Secondly, ‘non-sanctioned outposts’ usually refers to the communities in Judea and Samaria that are not officially recognized by the Israeli government, the communities on hilltops populated by the controversial ‘hill-top youth.’ But does this category also pertain to the towns and communities that are officially recognized, such as the city of Ariel, with a population of over 20,000 and a university? All residents of recognized towns and communities are Israeli citizens fully participating in Israeli society. How does excluding them from the survey sample potentially affect the results of their study of Israeli attitudes?

Thirdly, by stipulating that the survey does not include the ‘West Bank’ or Gaza, they are implying that these two regions are part of Israel when they are, in fact, under the autonomous administration of the PA (dominated by the PLO in the former and Hamas in the latter). In this one short sentence, Pew provides ammunition for those believing that Israel is an apartheid state.

Furthermore, by referring to the political regions of Judea and Samaria as the geographic ‘west bank (of the Jordan River),’ they are Palestinian-washing what is part of historic Israel and currently a disputed (not occupied – disputed) territory.

A special text-box was added to two of the published reports. It noted that:

Pew Research Center has polled the Palestinian territories in previous years, but we were unable to conduct fieldwork in Gaza or the West Bank for our March/April 2024 survey due to security concerns.

It is perfectly sane that they did not try to interview Gazans during war and, understandably, the increased terror threats emanating from some Arab towns in the PA reduced their enthusiasm for interviewing the locals there.

However, they confuse ‘Palestinian territories’ for the PA, the governing body of the autonomous Arab pre-state entity created by the Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995. Furthermore, by suggesting that a survey of the populations in the two parts of the PA (in Judea-Samaria and Gaza) should be included in the survey of Israeli citizens, they are promoting the fallacy of Israeli apartheid, as discussed above.

Given that Pew writes in some places that these two regions were included in the 2013-14 study, that full report was examined for comparison. There we find:

Five groups were oversampled as part of the survey design [because the low relevant populations would render the survey data non-analyzable]: Jews living in the West Bank, Haredim, Christian Arabs, Arabs living in East Jerusalem and Druze.

Gaza is not mentioned at all. And we again see ‘the West Bank’ rather than Judea and Samaria. The Jews living there would never refer to their place of residence as the west bank, but would use the historic term for the region.

Similarly, they gave special attention to Arabs living in ‘East’ Jerusalem, where Arabs make up 69% of the population of the relevant neighborhoods. Did they not interview the Jews living in eastern Jerusalem? They likely did, but they probably included them in the general Jerusalem sample.

One must wonder why Pew consistently calls Judea and Samaria ‘the West Bank’ and refers to ‘East’ Jerusalem as if it is not part of Israel. Is this a political statement of bias against Israel on their part or do they really not understand the lay of the land?

Regardless of which it is, this is why I will never trust any poll that Pew published concerning Israel. If they can make these kinds of “errors” regarding Israel, which is, perhaps, one of the most written-about/researched spots in the world, then I do not trust them not to make mistakes when polling other countries.