Save your final judgments for later
The first public opinion poll was held twice, three thousand years ago. The first time occurred after a victorious war. The crowds rejoiced, "Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands." Some time later, when King David salvaged the ark of God from the Philistines and led many in a triumphant dance, his wife Michal stood observing him through the window. She "despised him in her heart." Following the Bathsheba incident and the Absalom rebellion, all fondness for King David went up in smoke. He was forced to flee his palace.
I have pored endlessly over the opinion polls concerning our current politicians, and I have recalled Michal, daughter of Saul, King David's wife, at every opportunity. Opinion polls almost always predicted a Shimon Peres victory over Yitzhak Rabin, and yet it wasn't so; over Menachem Begin, and it didn't happen. They said Peres would overcome Moshe Katsav, and yet it wasn't so, either. The polls indicated Ariel Sharon would rout his Likud rivals, and alas, no. And the current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the polls said, would score a decisive victory on election day after agreeing to pay the forbidden price for returning Gilad Schalit from his captivity. But that didn't happen, either.
And now, we have the polls of Operation Protective Edge.
The 82 percent that supported Netanyahu at the start of the war is meaningless. Why, you ask? After all, his every utterance had reverberated around the heart of all Israelis. That was clear enough. But what the wider public failed to do was actually hear out what Netanyahu, Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon and IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz were promising. The public failed to discern their true desire to evade this war, their predilection toward narrow objectives. Hence, the public's ineluctable disappointment.
Eventually, the amount of damage inflicted on Hamas and the price Israel will have to pay in international politics will both be up for discussion, as will the mistakes that were made, the failures that occurred. But this war has been fought on two battlefronts. On one, how battle would shape the future, which will only be known down the line. On the other, in the war of images the results are immediate, modern, like the iPhone or the Internet, and in that realm, the apparent defeat is inevitable.
No resident of Gaza would dare apprise Al Jazeera of his desire to flee his home or his contempt for the Hamas that executes suspected Israel collaborators in public squares. However -- and this is to Israel's credit -- residents of the South who choose to leave their homes (their right, understandably) have the freedom to do so while simultaneously casting the blame squarely on the military and the government, as if the military and the government were behind forcing residents to abandon their homes for the country's center.
But this war will come to a close. Once that happens, Israel will take stock concerning what Hamas achieved and whether, from Hamas' perspective, it was worth it to launch the war that Netanyahu and Ya'alon had been trying so earnestly to avoid; as well as what Israel lost compared to what it gained. Then and only then, as politics -- an inextricable part of this war -- allows the dust settle, as sentiments relax and judgment is released from its overwhelming paralysis, will it be possible to determine what actually transpired, and to what extent.
And what of the eighty-two-percent public support when the war broke out? Or the 38 percent figures on Channel 2 just before it has reached its end? A responsible doctor doesn't randomly check a pneumonia patient's health and recuperation on any old weekday, and the same goes for a nation at war.
טעינו? נתקן! אם מצאתם טעות בכתבה, נשמח שתשתפו אותנו