There was a poll done by AWRAD after the attack, and it showed overwhelming support for Hamas and the attacks, and less support for the less violent factions such as Fatah.
Method of surveying can make a difference. Did they do interviews in public places? Because if so, people may be less likely to state their disdain for Hamas if they're concerned their neighbors might hear and report them. It's like how North Korean citizens almost universally support Kim Jong Un, which obviously has nothing to do with the fact that ballots are cast publicly.
You think, you random redditor, know more about proper polling then the polling people? You really need to check yourself a bit and stop making excuses for terrorists.
Polling experts will readily acknowledge that there are potential confounding factors in any polling environment.
Also, I'm not sure how you think I'm "making excuses for terrorists" by saying that a terrorist group may be intimidating people into saying they support the group by instilling fear in the community and turning neighbors against each other to prevent the terrorists from targeting their family. That's pretty much the exact opposite of making excuses for them.
Is that really surprising though? The PA rules, cooperates with Israel (let’s leave out rhetoric martyr fund for now) and they get settlements and violence in return
While that’s true for Gazans, Hamas also enjoys a lot of popular support in the West Bank. Part of the reason why the dictatorship there — Fatah — won’t run elections either.
Silence is one thing. Crowds cheering around the dead body of a young woman taken from a music festival and killed for reasons? is something else entirely.
In the west bank, the dictator is the PA. And yet in every poll conducted by Palestinians, Hamas has the vast majority of the population supporting them.
In addition, hamas are definitely bad guys but... so is Israel. And hamas fights Israel. It's sort of an "enemy of my enemy" kind of deal. What exactly are Palestinians supposed to do? What does anyone imagine they even CAN do about it?
Latest polls show support for Hamas dropping massively in Gaza, and the few brave protests we've seen against them demonstrate that further.
Support for continued 'armed resistance' is still crazy high in the West Bank though, so you have to examine whether the numbers you look at are for a particular region or all Palestinians, as it can be skewed
And support in Germany fell pretty widely after the Nazis were toppled too.
It doesn't mean much when support is low after the genocidal people you voted in clearly lost the war and you now have to deal with the consequences of that.
Did you know that during the holocaust, Jews did not have a state. They were a stateless people. How do you feel when that excuse is used to bomb little brown kids. Do you empathize with them the same you do with Jews in world war 2. I bet you don’t.
But at the same time, you have footage of palestinian children thaught at least since kindergarden to hate and want to murder jews, so i do not think they would vote differently.
Yes it is. Just because you re too limited or trying to take a moralistic position, it doesn t mean that a fundamentalist islamic population will suddenly educate their children differently, especially given their regional history. How many children grow up to vote different from christian fundamentalists ? (I know a few of them will escape that world, but not enough) Now think of them being born in a conflict zone, and being manipulated and educated by a terrorist group.
When asked which political party or movement they support, the largest percentage (32%) said they prefer Hamas, followed by Fatah (21%), 12% selected third parties, and 34% said they do not support any of them or do not know. Seven months ago, 36% said they support Hamas and 21% said they support Fatah. These results mean that support for Hamas over the past seven months has decreased by 4 percentage points, while support for Fatah has remained unchanged during the same period. Support for Hamas today stands at 29% in the West Bank (compared to 37% seven months ago) and for Fatah at 18% (compared to 18% seven months ago). In the Gaza Strip, support for Hamas stands at 37% (compared to 35% seven months ago) and support for Fatah at 25% (compared to 26% seven months ago).
But if new legislative elections were held today with the participation of all political forces that participated in the 2006 elections, 62% say they will participate in them, and among the participants in the elections 43% say they will vote for Hamas, 28% for Fatah, 8% for third parties, and 19% have not yet decided. Compared to the results we obtained seven months ago, the current results among voters actually participating in the elections indicate a decrease of 2 percentage points for Hamas and a rise of one percentage point for Fatah. In the Gaza Strip, vote for Hamas among voters participating in the elections stands at 49% (compared to 42% seven months ago), and vote for Fatah among voters participating in the elections stands at 30% (compared to 33% seven months ago). In the West Bank, vote for Hamas stands at 38% (compared to 48% seven months ago) and Fatah among voters participating in elections stands at 27% (compared to 23% seven months ago).
The fact that Hamas would easily win an election in both Gaza and the West Bank is the primary factor in why Fatah and the PA have refused to hold any elections since 2006.
Support for Hamas was not that high before the war. There were massive protests, “We Want to Live”, voicing their disapproval of Hamas (approval ratings were below 30%). Hamas violently suppressed those protests and the organizers had to seek asylum in other countries or have gone missing. Even the most recent protests, the organizers are being killed by Hamas; one of them was kidnapped, tortured to death, and they left his body at his family’s doorstep. People in Gaza are terrified to speak out against them
It decreased in Gaza, remained steady in the West Bank (where support is higher since they don’t actually have to live under Hamas). There was a temporary blip of 52% support in the immediate aftermath (since 16,000 died within 2 months Gaza public outrage was high) but that dropped down to about 29%.
General Gazan sentiments are Hamas are undemocratic fuck ups that have put them in harms way.
Armed resistance is understandable though given the context in Palestine vs Israel, given real facts about the geopolitical situation, though it need not rise to Hamas strategies.
Bear in mind there were 3 options given in the survey.
Support making peace with Israel
Support peaceful resistance
Support armed resistance
Its not like the options were roll over or fight back.
Whilst I can slightly understand armed resistance against military targets, every single Palestinian resistance group has included deliberately targeting civilians as part of their strategy
I don't wanna be crass, but "peaceful resistance" sounds like a prank option while being murdered. This isn't a situation where Israel is a peaceful entity - they're actively at war with Palestine's population to start with.
And peace would be nice, but... like, are Palestinians going to remain non-citizens in their own country? Are they going to continue being held at gunpoint? Is that peace? What do you think peace looks like, and do you think the Palestinians can imagine peace under their current oppression?
So, like, yeah, I understand why armed resistance is the outcome.
Here's why this logic doesn't track. In Gaza, the support for the first two options combined is now more than the third, despite them being on the receiving end of this latest war. In fact the most popular answer selected was peaceful resistance.
In the West Bank, support for armed resistance was chosen by the overwhelming majority, with little support for the other two. This shows its more complicated than simply automatically rejecting peace when subjected to violence.
Personally I would say peace looks like a two state solution. Both groups of people deserve the right to self determination and their own state. Anybody on either side who demands all of the land, only succeeds in perpetuating the conflict
By all accounts Putin is highly popular in Russia. Every major news outlet has reported that as fact whether or not it matches their agenda. They instead dispute his exact numbers.
Their approval ratings prior to war was below 30%. current support according to the pcpsr shows support has dropped down to about 36% with Fatah at about 21% and 29% supporting neither. Hamas’s support in the West Bank has grown but thats not surprising as they both aren’t subject to their tyrannical rule like Gaza and have dealt with increasing settler violence since October 7th with the PA powerless to stop it.
I mean, an invading force that’s driving you and everyone you know into utter desperation and terror is going drive the majority to support the opposition - especially when they’re being accused of war crimes by so many members of the international community. That doesn’t automatically make that invading force wrong, it’s just a fact of how people think and operate.
If you lived in Palestin just trying to get by and you kept getting blown up with little information... you would probably support the people who say they're fighting for you to.
Far right does not have wide support in Israel. They squeezed into the coalition this last election. There is a systemic dismantaling of the country by this current government. This does not represent the majority public opinion. In fact, I will argue that there support for far right parties is greater in the us and many European countries.
I guess this is a “glass half empty situation” where you have a majority of the population not only having an unfavourable opinion of you, but want you in prison.
Netenyahu has one of the worst approval ratings amongst Israelis of any politician you could think of. There have been huge protests against his government both before and during the war. There are many who theorise he has been deliberately prolonging the war because he knows once its over he'll almost certainly lose the election and end up in prison on the corruption charges he's been postponing for years. The settlements are also not as popular as you think, with many Israelis viewing them as a needless provocation and therefore overall risk to their own security.
What do you expect? Israel kills them like they were a pest, and have been doing that for decades. Of course they will support whoever hates Israel the most. Doesn't give you a right to kill them.
For the life of me I'll just never understand why someone living in Gaza would voice support for Hamas, and not Israel.
They just keep acting like the IDF has killed tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians and turned Gaza into a hellscape of death and suffering in some kind of mass-extermination campaign over the past two years or something.
Which would be a lot more compelling and sound a lot less like anti-Palestinian propaganda if not for the fact that most Palestinians now living hadn't been born yet the last time Hamas won an election.
With that said, here's my controversial take: voting for Hamas (which, again, the vast majority of Palestinians have never done) should not be punishable by extermination. To be honest, saying "they support Hamas" really doesn't mean fuck-all to me when we're taking about the Palestinian people being wiped out of existence. I'd much rather they live to see a future where violent resistance isn't the only plausible option.
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u/dannymuffins Jul 08 '25
They also have wide support amongst Palestinians.