One flag, two rallies: Mechanisms of public opinion in Israel during the 2014 Gaza war

Opposition in times of crisis: COVID-19 in parliamentary debates

“…A public opinion 'rally around the flag' is a common pattern during major international crises, such as the start of a war or large-scale terrorist attack. Such patterns have been shown to arise in political systems as disparate as the United States, Great Britain and Israel (Baum 2002;Brody and Shapiro 1989;Feinstein 2018;Hetherington and Nelson 2003;Lai and Reiter 2005;Mueller 1970). During such an event, public support for governments often, but certainly not always, increases (Mueller 1973).…”

Keep a Stiff Upper Lip or Wear Your Heart on Your Sleeve? Ethnic Identity and Emotion Management among Arab/Palestinians in Israel

“…Several studies have found that in the aftermath of Palestinian violent attacks and during large Israel Defence Forces (IDF) operations in the West Bank and Gaza, the atmosphere in ethnically mixed workplaces has become especially tense, causing members of both groups to avoid social interactions with members of the other group, increasing the tendency of Jewish managers, co-workers and clients to associate Arab/Palestinian workers with the Palestinian enemy, and strengthening the tendency of Arab/Palestinian workers to refrain from participating in conversations at work in order to avoid getting into trouble (Darr, 2017; Desivilya and Raz, 2015; Ramon et al, 2006). For example, during the 2014 war in Gaza (known as operation ‘Protective Edge’ in Israel), some Jewish employers fired Arab/Palestinian employees who used social media to challenge the justness of the war or express empathy for the civilian population of Gaza (Feinstein, 2017).…”

The ground operation sent citizens into a frenzy: the rally around the flag effect during operation protective edge

“…Much of the literature supports the mechanism by which military crises escalate, and the public perceives the threat, which, in turn, leads to public support of government leaders. Theories in which threat perceptions are linked to leader support include Nation-State chauvinism and Patriotism Perspective (Feinstein, 2018). According to studies by Lambert, who elucidates the causal mechanism of the rally from the standpoint of social psychology, social identity theory (SIT) forms the basis of the rally effect (Lambert et al, 2010(Lambert et al, , 2011.…”

“…6 Thus, the dataset allows us to examine the relationship between the rally effect and social identity, as well as changes in the rally around the flag effect as the intensity of war increases. It is well known that exposure to information about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict causes Jews to form aggressive attitudes towards their opponents by viewing Palestinians and Palestinians as 'out-groups attacking their own communities' (Feinstein, 2018;Gvirsman et al, 2016). Subsequently, what attitudes do Arabs with Israeli citizenship -Arab Israelis -form?…”

“…This phenomenon, referred to as the rally around the flag effect or rally effect, begs the question of why the majority of a country's citizens support a government's 'seemingly irrational' decisions to start wars. Research on the effects of rallying around the flag has accumulated primarily in the United States, but in recent years, research from the United Kingdom, (Feinstein, 2018;Lai & Reiter, 2005) Israel, (Hamanaka, 2018) and Japan (Kobayashi & Katagiri, 2018) has emerged. This is unsurprising, as the rally around the flag effect is not a phenomenon unique to the United States -a country that occupies a unique position in contemporary international politics -but is a universal phenomenon.…”