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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 1, 2024

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The statistics in the linked poll seem to me to indicate that a plurality of Australians don't know about and probably don't care that much about this specific issue, with smaller camps that are either pro-Palestine or pro-Israel, though the intensity of each camp remains unclear.

Anecdotally - as an Australian who unfortunately comes into contact with activist groups, and who has links to both local Jewish and Islamic communities - my sense is that only small, loud minorities have strong opinions on Israel/Palestine either way, and that those minorities are disproportionately dominated by the relevant religious groups and by immigrants. Jews are smaller in number but generally have been in Australia longer, are richer, and have more access to existing institutions of power; Muslims are greater in number (about six times as many), but are more recently come to Australia and are less embedded in civic and political institutions. The anti-colonial left, significantly influenced by American cultural and political exports, also tends to be very pro-Palestine, but more seasoned politicians tend to be more sympathetic to Israel. So the result is what we see here - an insurgent youth politician and Muslim defecting from her party and likely self-destructing, but representing a change or potential risk that the Labor party will have to deal with.

At any rate, I notice you're being quite vague - 'the donors', 'Israeli lobbying money', and so on. I'm not sure that's helpful. I think you're trying to paint a picture where the Australian public as a whole is pro-Palestine and it's shadowy Jewish influence that subverts this. That doesn't seem to track with other figures. Sky in 2023 have a figure suggesting 31% support for Israel versus 7% for Palestine, which seems to fit with the majority of Australians not caring very much, but there being division between the combatants. (I grant that Sky, a conservative channel, likely have a pro-Israel bias.) Roy Morgan, also in 2023, shows similar divisions - 49% say we shouldn't take sides, 17% say we should help Israel more, and 19% say we should help Palestine more. Oxfam via the Canberra Times says that most support a ceasefire, but that's woolly enough that I'm not sure how to interpret it. For what it's worth, data from before October 7 generally seems similar - this report from 2021 suggests that most Australians are ignorant of the conflict, and most (62%) say that their sympathies are equally with both parties, with only 19% favouring Palestine and 11% favouring Israel.

My sense from on the ground is that this is probably correct. Most Australians don't care, and those who do vaguely want everybody in the region to live in peace and security and wish the violence would stop without taking a partisan perspective. When Palestinians do something awful (e.g. October 7), there's a bump in support for Israel and decline in support for Palestine, and when Israelis do something awful (e.g. much of the subsequent bombing), there's a bump in support for Israel and decline for Palestine. I would guess that these are likely to return to the average over time, as people forget or as different atrocities fall out of the forefront of people's minds. The most reliable partisans one way or the other are Jews and Muslims, for obvious reasons, but I think the bulk of Australians aren't strongly exercised about it.