Public Opinion in the Years Following the Foundation of the State of Israel

The early polls represent  the public's stances in the first years of the State, as is depicted in tables 1–3. The polls that examined the public's stances on government policy show that the public was not an "enlisted public," and often voiced opinions that were opposed to government policy, despite broad agreement on other issues. For example, in the first poll on Aliyah (immigration of Jews to Israel), 82% stated that immigration must be systematic and well-planned, i.e. limited and selective, as opposed to government policy at the time. Although the second poll on the same topic came to the opposite conclusion (75% against limiting Aliyah), it seems the questions in the second poll may have been "amended", so that the results would match government policy. On other issues, even though most of the public sanctioned government policy, many people opposed it. About one-third of the population saw no harm in partisanship in the military; 40% sanctioned factional education; only 60% approved of "The Austerity" policy; and 40% supported the demonstrations of the unemployed against the government. 
Notwithstanding all of the above, Israelis still maintained certain characteristics of a pioneering and enlisted society, which were in accordance with what may be termed "the national value-system," mainly in their attitude toward immigrants. Although most of the population resided in cities, a majority of them still opined that concentrating immigrants in cities was dangerous, and more than half were willing to act against immigrants who were unwilling to settle in villages.
Patterns of Israeli Public Opinion
An assessment of the early polls shows some patterns of Israeli public opinion that subsist:

• Israelis tend to back the government more on international policy issues than on national policy issues: In a poll dealing with international policy (see Table 1), 80% expressed approval of government policy at that time (joining the UN, accepting American loans, and the armistice agreement with Egypt).
  
  
• As for economic policy, the polls show that most of the population held socialist positions, and opined that the government must be involved in planning the economy. Surprisingly, even today, some 60% of the population prefers a socialist economy to a capitalist one (according to the 2007 Democracy Index). Despite this declaration, most of the public (73% in 2007) is against such measures as higher taxes and decreasing private spending in order to fund public expenditures and deal with economic or defense crises. This phenomenon is not new, and already in 1950, 48% were against lowering the raise given to union workers in order to match the rise in inflation.
  
  
• Stances on political issues vary by social group, according to family background, social status, and country of origin, as opposed to stances on non-political issues, where these differences do not exist. Already in the first poll, researches stated: "and this leads us to the first interesting fact. As opposed to other areas, the political realm shows major differences by background variables – family, social, national, etc. This phenomenon exists in the military as well. When soldiers were asked about the problems of living in the army, these kinds of differences among people of different backgrounds were non-existent. But soldiers also divided according to their backgrounds once the questions touched on political issues" (IIASR, publication 1 April 1949).
  A good example of a divide on political stances according to country of origin is the poll about Arab refugees (1949), which found that "73% are against allowing Arab refugees to return to Israel. Only 27% lean towards allowing them to return." An analysis of background variables shows differences of opinion among people from different countries, among people with different levels of education, between native Israelis and new immigrants, and between people with large families and people with small families. The most striking finding of the poll is that "the country of origin has the greatest effect of all variables on public opinion regarding the Arab refugee question." The largest gap was between German immigrants and Yemenite immigrants, "if German immigrants show the most support for allowing them to return (45%), Yemenite immigrants were unanimous in their opinion (100%) that Arab refugees should not be allowed to return to the state of Israel." An analysis of education levels shows that the rate of people with a low level of education (less than six years) who opposed the return of the refugees (83%) was higher than the average. This also shows that the correlation between dovish and hawkish opinions and background variables such as country of origin and education, which are still apparent today, already existed in Israel's early days.
  
  
• Another attribute of Israel's public opinion is that those who choose not to answer do not constitute a random group, since they have common characteristics.  In the early polls researchers found that "the percentage of people who did not respond was high amongst the uneducated. A similar finding, showing the correlation between education and understanding of the issue-at-hand, was discovered in other studies conducted by the Institute." A similar phenomenon is shown today: Certain social groups – mainly Arabs and Ultra-orthodox – often refuse to participate in the polls, or choose to provide non-binding replies such as "I don't know" to the questions asked. These social groups are therefore underrepresented in today's studies, a fact that limits the ability of polls to represent these groups' stances, which is especially meaningful in election polls.

* Wording of questions may be different from actual poll: Results are based on answers to several questions on the same topic. The tables present the question that best represents the poll. Moreover, some of the published results do not include exact quotes of the questions.
** Rates of agreement and disagreement do not always equal 100%, because of those who did not respond (the rate of those that did not respond in not presented in the table).
*** These polls represent Tel-Aviv residents only.

Blander, Dana, 2004. “Nation Building from the perspective of Public Opinion ”, Israeli Sociology 6 (1): 9–37. [Hebrew]

Gratch, Haya (ed.), 1973. Twenty-Five Years of Social Research in Israel, Jerusalem: Jerusalem Academic Press.

Stone, Russell A., and S. ilan Troen, 1995. 'Early Social Research in and on Israel', In: Troen and Noah Lucas (eds.), Israel: The First Decade of Independence, N.Y.: State University of New York Press: 375–399.