Wartime leaders usually get a popularity bump. Israel’s hasn’t

AT THE START of wars or national-security crises, democratic leaders usually enjoy a surge in popular support. In the two weeks after the attacks of September 11th 2001 George W. Bush’s approval rating rose from 51% to 90%. Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, has seen no such bump. The first polls taken since Hamas, a Palestinian militant group, killed over 1,400 people on October 7th suggest that rather than rallying around the flag, Israelis are turning on their government.

On October 11th Camil Fuchs, a statistician at Tel Aviv University, released a survey of 620 Jewish Israelis, in which 95% of respondents expressing an opinion said that Hamas’s raid represented a failure by Mr Netanyahu’s government. Even among those who had voted for parties in his right-wing coalition, this share was 93%. By nearly as large a margin respondents said that the authorities’ lapse was even more serious than that at the start of the Yom Kippur war of 1973, when Israel failed to anticipate simultaneous surprise attacks by Egypt and Syria. The poll did not ask whether Mr Netanyahu should resign immediately but three-quarters of those with opinions said that the prime minister should step down once hostilities end.

Two days later Maariv, an Israeli newspaper, released its first poll of voting intentions since the Hamas attack. It found that if elections were held today, a centrist alliance of opposition parties led by Benny Gantz, a former defence minister who recently agreed to join an emergency war cabinet, would secure a majority with 78 seats while the governing coalition would win just 42. Respondents also said they would prefer Mr Gantz as prime minister to Mr Netanyahu by a margin of 48% to 29%.

Facing such grim numbers at home, Mr Netanyahu might find some solace abroad. In an online survey in France conducted in May by YouGov, respondents who were asked if they sympathised more with the Israeli or Palestinian side of the conflict preferred the Palestinians by 22% to 13%. Last week that ratio had reversed, as 29% of French participants leaned towards the Israelis, compared with 14% for the Palestinians. YouGov’s polls in America show a similar pattern. From July 2014 to this March, Israel’s lead over the Palestinians in support from Americans shrank from 27 percentage points to 18. Last week it bounced back to 33 points: 42% of respondents backed Israel, and just 9% supported the Palestinians. A survey by CNN on October 12th and 13th found that 90% of Americans expressing an opinion thought that Israel’s military response to the attacks was at least partially justified.

As Israel’s assault on Gaza gathers pace, however, things may change yet again. In YouGov’s poll both sides gained around seven percentage points of support, compared with March among American participants aged 18-29—already the age group least friendly to Israel. In contrast, the share of respondents who were unsure or felt equal sympathy for both sides fell sharply. In other words, Hamas’s attack has pushed undecided young Americans to pick a side; for each former waverer who chose the Israelis, another opted for the Palestinians. As international attention turns from Hamas’s atrocities to the human cost of Israel’s retaliatory air strikes in the Gaza Strip, support for Israel may once again ebb away. ■