The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claimed Thursday to have found documentary evidence in Gaza that Hamas is gaming polls of Palestinians to inflate support for the terror group, for its leaders, for the October 7 attack, and for the war.
The affected polls were conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR), which have been widely cited as showing strong support by Palestinians for the October 7 attack, for Hamas, and for continued war.
The reality may be dramatically different.
Translated documents indicate that Hamas had “corrected” the results of surveys performed by independent research groups. For example, while less than 31% of respondents agreed with the decision to conduct the October 7 attack, that result was “corrected” to report that over 71% of respondents supported the attack.
Support for armed conflict was “corrected” upward from 28% to 39%, while support for political negotiations and “non-violent popular resistance” was “corrected” downward from a combined 70.3% to barely 50%, below a majority.
Satisfaction with Hamas leader Yayha Sinwar was “corrected” upward dramatically, from 22.1% to 52% — from failure to success, essentially.
The IDF said in a statement:
The IDF reveals documents from Hamas’ General Security mechanism, which were found by IDF troops operating in the Gaza Strip. The documents prove a widespread effort by the terrorist organization to falsify the results of surveys conducted by the “PSR” institute, in order to create a false impression of public support for the terrorist organization, especially after the October 7th massacre.
These documents are part of a systematic process aimed at concealing the collapse of the organization and the decline in public support for it. The documents highlight the importance that the terrorist organization Hamas places on survey results to falsify Palestinian support and to influence the Palestinian public as well as Arab and international public opinion.
These documents include the results of surveys from the “PSR” polling institute from March 2024, both before and after Hamas’ falsification. The documents show the falsification of true results to favor the organization and its leaders, with a focus on Yahya Sinwar. Additionally, the falsification efforts aimed to create a false impression of widespread support for the October 7 massacre and terrorist activities.
The documents provide no evidence of any cooperation between the polling institute and the organization’s activities; instead, they detail covert measures taken by Hamas to influence the results deceitfully by affecting local factors on the ground.
It is not entirely clear exactly how Hamas “corrected” the result — whether by controlling the respondents to the survey, for example, or tampering with the data once it had been collected by pollsters in the field (or both).
Still, the revelations about Hamas’s effort to tamper with polls could encourage analysts to reconsider whether Palestinians really support terror — and could lead to improved prospects for peace in the long run.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of “”The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days,” available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of “The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency,” now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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