The majority of Germans are very worried about the situation in the Middle East – that’s evident ARD-GermanyTrend. Israel’s military response to the Hamas attack is assessed differently.
It has been almost four weeks since the Islamist terrorist organization Hamas attacked Israel. More than 1,400 people were killed and more than 240 hostages were taken to the Gaza Strip. How concerned are the Germans by the situation on site?
Almost three quarters (74 percent) say that current events in the Middle East affect them very strongly or greatly; 22 percent say it moves them less or not at all. A clear majority of respondents are also very worried: about the kidnapped hostages (81 percent), about the Palestinian civilian population (72 percent) and also about the Israeli civilian population (65 percent). At the same time, 78 percent fear that the conflict will spread to neighboring countries in the region.
This was the result of a representative survey by infratest dimap among 1,314 eligible voters ARD-GermanyTrend from Monday to Wednesday of this week. The people we are interviewing are German citizens. The measured opinion may well differ from that of the overall population in Germany.
Israeli reaction provokes divided opinion
After Israel was invaded by Hamas, Israel has set itself the goal of completely destroying the Islamist terrorist organization – both through attacks from the air and with ground troops. The Israeli army says it has attacked more than 12,000 targets in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war.
35 percent of German voters rate Israel’s military response to the terrorist attacks as appropriate; Eight percent say the response does not go far enough. This means that 43 percent of German citizens consider the actions of the Israeli army to be appropriate or not sufficient, while 41 percent say that the Israeli army’s counterattack goes too far.
Several heads of state and government are urging that proportionality must be maintained in the fight against Hamas. The Ministry of Health, which is controlled by the militant Islamist Hamas, puts the number of Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip at 9,061 to date. Israel is faced with the dilemma that it is at war with a terrorist group that consciously lives with and among the Palestinian civilian population and also appears to abuse them as human shields.
Are Israel’s military actions against Hamas justified even if the civilian population is also affected? Among German voters, a quarter (25 percent) of those surveyed answered yes to this question. But 61 percent believe that such attacks are not justified.
International law says at this point: If civilians are deliberately placed next to military targets in order to deter the enemy from attacking, then this is a war crime on the part of Hamas. For Israel, this means that military targets can only be fought with the greatest possible protection for the civilian population. So in every situation there must be a balance between so-called collateral damage (to civilians) and military necessity.
Investigation facility
Population: Eligible voters in Germany
Collection method: Random-based telephone and online survey (of which 60 percent landline, 40 percent mobile)
Survey period: October 30th to November 1st, 2023
Number of cases: 1,314 respondents (783 telephone interviews and 531 online interviews)
Weighting: according to sociodemographic characteristics and recall of voting behavior
Range of fluctuation: 2 percentage points for a share value of 10 percent
3 percentage points for a share value of 50 percent
Implementing institute: infratest dimap
Results are rounded to whole percentages to avoid false expectations of precision. For all representative surveys, fluctuation ranges must be taken into account. In the case of a survey with 1,000 respondents, these amount to around three percentage points for large parties and around one point for smaller parties. In addition, the rounding error is significant for small parties. For these reasons, no party is shown below three percent in the Sunday question.
Germans see Hamas as primarily responsible for situation in Gaza
German citizens are currently absolving neither Israel nor Hamas of responsibility for the current difficult situation of the civilian population in the Gaza Strip. Regarding the terrorist organization Hamas, 45 percent of those surveyed say that it is “fully” responsible for the conditions on site; 32 percent say she is “somewhat” responsible. Taken together, three quarters of those eligible to vote (77 percent) see Hamas fully or somewhat responsible.
With regard to Israel, 15 percent of those surveyed say that the country is “fully” responsible for the situation of the Palestinian civilian population in the Gaza Strip; 42 percent see Israel as “somewhat” responsible – a total of 57 percent.
The majority sees anti-Semitism spreading in Germany
Since the attack on Israel on October 7th, significantly more anti-Semitic incidents have been recorded by reporting centers in Germany. A good half of German citizens currently share the perception that anti-Semitism is spreading in the Federal Republic (52 percent; -7 as of October 2019), four out of ten (37 percent; +2) do not share this view.
The feeling of increasing anti-Semitism in German society is therefore not as pronounced as it was four years ago – and therefore immediately after the right-wing extremist attack on the synagogue in Halle, in which two people were killed. But the majority sees increasing anti-Semitism, across party camps: supporters of the Greens (71 percent), supporters of the SPD (64 percent), supporters of the Union and the Left Party (56 percent each). A different picture only emerges among AfD supporters: 40 percent think that anti-Semitism is spreading in Germany, while 46 percent say no.
Planned Wagenknecht party: A good one in three rate it favorably
A few days ago, Sahra Wagenknecht announced that she wanted to found a new party next year. A good one in three (36 percent) think that such a new party would be positive for politics in Germany. Half (51 percent) take the opposite view. For almost three out of ten (29 percent), voting for a party would be an option, while for 61 percent this would not be an option.
Eligible voters in the east of the republic (39 percent) are more receptive to voting for a Wagenknecht party than citizens in the west (26 percent). AfD supporters in particular (55 percent) express above-average openness to possible support for the party – and supporters of parties not currently represented in the Bundestag also express above-average support (38 percent).
In addition, people who are skeptical about the federal government’s current work show greater sympathy for the desired new party formation (32 percent). This means that sympathy is significantly higher than among supporters of the traffic light coalition (18 percent).
When asked openly about the reasons for a possible election, the first thing respondents mentioned was general disappointment with other parties (40 percent). Thematically, migration policy is very important (25 percent), followed by economic and social policy (18 percent) and foreign and Ukraine policy issues (11 percent).
For almost three out of ten (28 percent), Wagenknecht himself is a central argument. One in nine (11 percent) explains their sympathies for the party project with new impulses for politics.