I’m from Bristol. Haven’t seen a single Israeli flag or show of support for Israel in this conflict, but I have seen loads of Palestinian flags waved around, and even witnessed a march last week.
I think public opinion has drastically changed in favour of Palestine.
That’s not the reason.
The reason is because Israel decided to squander any good-will they had by launching a massively disproportionate attack. Public sympathy was with them for while.
You are getting downvoted but you are objectively correct. It only took a few days for Israel to squander any goodwill they had after the attack. And they’ve been squandering good will for decades. I grew up in a Jewish community and it’s amazing to see how fast they destroy sympathy for their cause, if I didn’t know any better I would think it’s self sabotage.
My experience is the opposite.
I have a lot of Jewish friends and live in a place with a lot of Jewish people, and I see plenty who support Israel and have no problem being loud about their unequivocal support for Israels response. While the comments from my Jewish friends who don’t support the response have been much more muted. Except for one girl who is pretty pissed that her suffering from the attacks is being used to justify what she calls is atrocities against the civilians of Gaza. My neighbor even told me over drinks this weekend that he keeps his mouth shut about it because he fears the retaliation (primarily social) from his Jewish community about the fact that he strongly disagrees with Israel’s response.
Bristol has a very left wing lean, I’ve seen the graffiti around. It’s a vocal minority. Public opinion is mainly indifference but condemnation of both sides, maybe a bit on Israel’s side right now. The way Hamas has conducted themselves I would argue has seriously damaged the perception of the Palestinian cause.
I’d say we’re looking at a generalized propaganda failure here all across Europe and most of the world - ten years ago you were banned off any sizable English-language forum for calling Israel genocidal… that’s simply not the case any longer.
I’d say that’s a big factor to it, yes. And it’s not just in regards to Israel - the people at the top had the information tap perfectly in hand until the internet came around to spoil all that. That’s why you see so many attempts to clamp down on the internet - everything from AI surveillance to Phony Stark taking a $44 billion hit to “fix” sites like Twitter.
Genuine question: How many, in term of proportion, if you can estimate, of the protesters are non-Muslim, or simply say white people/Chinese etc? I am saying this because they’re a lot of Muslims living near cities, especially London, Manchester and Birmingham. Having many muslims protesting for the Palestinians is no brainer, as they share the same values. It’s much more impactful if the protesters are consisted of many different religious demographics.
I think a large part of the issue is that the settlements themselves are actually a reflection of Israel failing to develop vertically. Even without picking a side, even if we ignore the ridiculous hypocrisy of Israel for selling literal spyware tools like Pegasus for the Saudis and other dictators to use on their own citizens and commit murder, the reality is that Israel’s current problem with terrorism is entirely of their own making, because they’ve funded settlements and wasted time and money when they’ve had more than 20 years since the Nakba, Fatah and had millions of dollars of US funding and done fuck all. Mate, you could be a hardcore Zionist and supporter of the state of Israel, and still think that they’ve done a shit job.
Israel has the support of powerful governments the world over, it doesn’t need the support of a hundred thousand marchers. This is why they get away with what they’ve done for decades.
Fact that it’s even that close when there’s a lot of Western bias towards Israel and with how Muslims are often painted as terrorists by the media is a testament to how badly Israel fucked up.
