Foreign cues and public views on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict
| Author | Matthew Leep,Jeremy Pressman |
| DOI | 10.1177/1369148118809807 |
| Published date | 01 February 2019 |
| Date | 01 February 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148118809807
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2019, Vol. 21(1) 169 –188
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1369148118809807
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Foreign cues and public views
on the Israeli–Palestinian
conflict
Matthew Leep1 and Jeremy Pressman2
Abstract
As foreign sources in the news might help the public assess their home country’s foreign policies,
scholars have recently turned attention to the effects of foreign source cues on domestic public
opinion. Using original survey experiments, we explore the effects of domestic (United States)
and foreign (Israeli, British, and Palestinian) criticism of Israel’s military actions and settlements
on US attitudes towards the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. We find that foreign cues by government
officials and non-governmental organisations have modest effects, and are generally not more
influential than domestic cues. We also show that individuals might discount foreign criticism
of Israel in the context of US bipartisan support for Israel. While our experiments reveal some
heterogeneous effects related to partisanship, we are sceptical of significant movement in
opinion in response to foreign cues. These findings provide insights into foreign source cue
effects beyond the context of the use of military force.
Keywords
foreign cues, foreign policy, human rights, Israeli–Palestinian conflict, public opinion, survey
experiment
Introduction
How do individuals (re)evaluate their perspectives on foreign policy issues when they
are exposed to foreign sources in the news? For example, do Israeli or British sources
help (re)shape American attitudes on foreign policy issues? With many domestic and
foreign sources of information available, the public is potentially exposed to a wide
range of conflicting information and opinions on any given issue. As individuals pro-
cess these myriad sources, do they give certain cues more weight than others? This
question becomes especially salient on highly controversial political issues like the
Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Israeli, Palestinian, and other government officials as well
as non-governmental organisation (NGO) representatives appear in media outlets and
present a multitude of (often) strongly contrasting viewpoints. How do these sources
1Political Science, Western Governors University, Salt Lake City, UT, USA
2Political Science, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA
Corresponding author:
Matthew Leep, Western Governors University, 4001 S 700 East, #700, Salt Lake City, UT 84107, USA.
Email: matthew.leep@wgu.edu
809807BPI0010.1177/1369148118809807The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsLeep and Pressman
research-article2018
Original Article
170 The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 21(1)
influence American attitudes on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict? How might diverging
foreign and domestic sources affect opinion?
In this article, we used two survey experiments to understand how the geographic
origin of the source, personality type, and a domestic elite consensus affected individ-
ual opinions about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. In particular, we examined US view-
points on Israeli settlement expansion and on the conduct of the Israel Defense Forces
(IDF) towards Palestinians. First, as part of an early effort to understand how Americans
hear foreign cues, we looked at whether comments from foreign sources had a different
impact than that of a domestic expert. Because foreign sources come in different types,
we included those who are direct parties to the conflict (Israeli and Palestinian) and one
example of those who are not (British). Second, we considered whether different per-
sonality types might be more or less receptive to a foreign critique. Third, we explored
whether bipartisan elite support for Israel affected public perspectives. Overall, we are
sceptical of substantial opinion change about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in response
to foreign cues.
In an experiment that included human rights NGO criticism of the Israeli military’s
conduct, we found that the effects of foreign sources were sensitive to the type of outcome
measure. Both foreign (Israeli or British) and domestic (United States) NGO criticism had
a negative (but modest) impact on sympathy for Israel and moderately negative impact on
support for Israel’s actions towards the Palestinians. Palestinian criticism had a negative
effect only on the question about whether Israel’s military actions against the Palestinians
are justified. Foreign source criticism did not change opinion on questions about the effec-
tiveness of Israel’s military actions or the US role in mediating the Israeli–Palestinian
conflict. We also investigated how support for Israel varies depending on party identifica-
tion. We found heterogeneous effects of party identification on opinion about Israel’s mili-
tary actions towards the Palestinians and also on opinion about sympathy for Israel. Israeli
cues had the strongest effect on Republicans, American cues had the strongest effect on
Independents, and British cues had a reductive effect on Democrats. For other dependent
measures, partisanship does not appear to moderate the effects of the source cues. This
experiment therefore suggests some sensitivity to criticism of Israel, manifesting in chang-
ing opinion about sympathy for Israel and the justification of Israeli use of force.
In a second survey experiment focusing on foreign criticism of Israeli settlement
expansion and designed to assess whether the introduction of a bipartisan consensus can
influence support for Israel, we again find some sensitivity to the type of outcome meas-
ure. Regarding sympathy for Israel, foreign criticism produced a slight decrease in sym-
pathy – the differences between the control and treatment groups were close to statistical
significance. Regarding support for settlements, only Israeli criticism lessened support
for the settlements themselves. We found no effect on other dependent measures. We also
found that when individuals were exposed to both foreign criticism and bipartisan elite
US support for Israel, the modest reduction in sympathy and support for settlements was
mitigated. In other words, presentation of a domestic consensus among US elites that sup-
ports Israel alongside a critical Israeli or British official negates the minor impact of the
latter, critical viewpoint. We did not find strong evidence that partisan affiliations moder-
ate the effects of the foreign cues in this experiment.
These findings provide leverage on the question of how attitudes towards the Israeli–
Palestinian conflict might be influenced by domestic and foreign source cues, and how
views on this issue emerge in the context of diverging perspectives of the conflict within
the media. They also provide evidence about effects of foreign source cues on domestic
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