British Public Understanding Surveyed

A survey of students in higher education set out by Greg Philo & Mike Berry in 2002 in  ‘More bad news from Israel’ found that only 8% knew that the refugees had been forced from their homes on the formation of Israel . A further 22% believed that the refugees had somehow lost their homes because of Israel  in some way. Philo & Berry write “Most of the participants of the  research had little idea of the history or origins of the conflict”.

Then the researchers gave an extremely brief account of 1948 and 1967. Philo & Berry commentated that it had  a “very dramatic effect on the understanding of group members”.

In  answer to the question would it help to know the history when watching the news , the students responded strongly yes and their remarks included Yes it would, Yes absolutely, Yes a lot more , if they did refer more to history the whole thing would mean a lot more for a lot of people.

Occupation , settlements and public confusion.

Since 1967, Israel has occupied the West Bank including East Jerusalem and Gaza, the last 22% of Palestine not in the Israeli state , robbing the Palestinians there of their land and colonising intensely the area with soldiers, settlers, settlements and associated infrastructure.

In 2009 two thirds of the 'Bad News from Israel' student sample still did not know who was occupying whom in the occupied territories and there was little understanding of how such the occupation actually affected the lives of Palestinians.(Philo and Berry).

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