These days, the pro-Palestinian population in the streets of the Western capitals go beyond the limits of the most optimistic estimates, and actually they are not less, if not more, than the gatherings in the Arab and Muslim countries. The latest example is the Saturday London rally that, media said, despite restrictions, was spontaneously attended by over 500,000 people and made the British capital united in support of Palestine.
The importance of this event, especially in Western countries, is better understood when we think of decades of Zionist lobby’s media work and huge spending to instill a reverse and distorted narrative in societies and to paint the Israeli occupation rightful and legitimate and the Palestinian pro-liberation struggle illegal and terrorist.
For decades, by hiding behind the veil of a narrative that paints them historical victims of racism and hundreds of years of displacement and killing and also victims of Nazism in the so-called Holocaust in the World War II, the Israelis not only have the full support of all Western governments, but also penetrated the Western societies with various promotional methods, especially arts and cinema.
However, these days more than any other time we can see end of the Zionism honeymoon in the Western societies, to an extent that especially after the assumption of power by the hardliners in Tel Aviv under Netanyahu government, it can be claimed that the perception of the Western public opinion of the Israeli regime shifted from a democracy leading technological advances in the heart of the Middle East to an imperialist, discriminatory, and undemocratic regime.
The results of an Ipsos poll of 1,439 American respondents from June 21-27, 2023, found that most respondents said they had a negative view when asked about their opinion of Zionism and movement to create a Jewish state in what is now Israel.
In general, 30 percent of the respondents viewed Zionism negatively and 20 percent viewed it positively. Meanwhile, most of those who have a positive view of Zionism, 21 percent, are from the Republican Party, and most of those who have a negative view of Zionism, 36 percent, are Democratic. The existence of higher support for Zionism among the Republicans, which include the right-wing and the majority of evangelical Christians or Christian Zionists, is not far from expected, but these figures are definitely a big change for a society that has a powerful Zionist lobby with full media, such as the Murdoch media empire, and political, like AIPAC, and financial tools that for decades promoted a singular voice concerning the Palestinians developments.
Even the Brookings Institution in analyzing the results of this poll has described the 58-percent support of democracy over Judaism in Israel as a sign of a decrease in support for Zionism in the American society. The connection between these two responses and the decline in support for Zionism becomes apparent when we look at the results of another poll conducted between March and April 2023, according to which Americans increasingly describe Israel as less of a democracy. In the poll, conducted jointly by University of Maryland and Ipsos, when voters were asked to describe what Israel looks like, only 9 percent of respondents chose a “dynamic democracy,” a common description of Israel among American officials. The rest chose “a flawed democracy”, 13 percent, “a government with limited minority rights”, 7 percent, and “a regime of apartheid-like segregation”, 13 percent. About 56 percent said “I don’t know.” Professor Shibley Telhami, a Middle East expert at the University of Maryland who conducted the survey, believes the high percentage of “ I don’t know” responses was surprising, indicating that respondents were either unsure or worried about answering.
In fact, this concern is never surprising and in a society with laws strongly supporting Zionism and criminalizing criticism of Israel, it is obvious that the discontented respondents are uncertain about a clear response.
In December 2018, Professor Marc Lamont Hill was fired from CNN for a pro-Palestinian speech at a UN event commemorating the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, sparking heated debate about legitimate criticism against Israel. A recent University of Maryland public opinion poll shows that many aspects of Hill’s views are widely shared by the American public, and that these views do not reflect anti-Semitic attitudes, contrary to the mainstream narrative promoted by statesmen and lobbies and the Zionist-controlled media, rather, it is a revolt against the suppressing political system that the Israeli regime has established against the Palestinians.
The situation is similar in other Western countries, but for the Israelis nowhere matters like the US to block spread of negative view against Israel or disallow enlightenment regarding the Palestinian developments. Despite the fact that the public opinion do not always shape Washington’s foreign policy, the pro-Palestinian rallies across the country display a gap in views of the people and government’s foreign policy and this sounds the death knell for the occupational existence of Israel that owes its continuation to the Western and, specifically, American support.
But what factors have been effective in occurrence of this stunning change? We can find the answer in Gaza developments in the past few weeks, with the most important development being in the area of media. The media revolution of recent years in the age of the Internet and social networks, which has led to the emergence of a new space in the field of information and has challenged the monopoly of mainstream media and satellite channels, has played an important role in enlightenment and provision of less censored news. Now the appalling crimes of this child-killing regime, despite all the systemic restrictions on the free circulation of information imposed by the West, are openly published on social platforms. Despite the watertight siege of Gaza and the deliberate killing of journalists to silence their voice, the residents of Gaza themselves are the main actors disseminating the news of Gaza developments to the world.
The failure of the mainstream media and the policy of Western
governments to divert the public opinion from the realities of Gaza war
showed itself in weight of popular presence in two simultaneously
organized rallies in London: One a state-arranged royal memorial for the
Israelis killed in recent war and the second one was a spontaneous
pro-Palestinian rally. The first one was limited and held under tight
security arrangements and the second one was a unique rally the
Londoners themselves do remember to have seen in recent years. One a
displaying a total defeat for the Israeli regime and the other a major
victory for Palestine and Gaza in the heart of Europe.
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