Americans largely in dark about who occupies whom in Palestine

A new poll published by the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, shows that a plurality of Americans misunderstand a fundamental fact about the Middle East.

Specifically, a statistically representative sample of Americans and three other nationalities were asked a simple question about Israel and Palestine.

The wording of the question and the results are shown above.

Note that respondents were allowed to give their own custom response as well; those that did are included within the Other category.

As you can see, the American responses differ significantly from the other countries’.

America is unfortunately unique in having a plurality of Americans, 49.2%, who answered the question wrong, believing that Palestinians occupy Israeli land.

In reality, the Israelis occupy Palestinian territories and have an ongoing blockade of a Palestinian ladn known as the Gaza Strip.

In the nearly 5 decades since, Israelis have gradually “settled” on some of the occupied territory, formally displacing the original owners and claiming parcels of land as their own.