COVID Polling Ahead Of Israel Police

Opinion of the police deteriorated from at or slightly better than opinion of COVID in April to demonstrably worse at present.

Tel Aviv, October 8 – A deadly pandemic ravaging the globe garners a more favorable opinion among Israel’s public than does the country’s chief law enforcement body, a new survey has found.

Polling agency Geocartographia published results Thursday demonstrating that nineteen out of every twenty Israelis hold an “unfavorable” or “very unfavorable” opinion of SARS-CoV-2, as compared with twenty-four out of twenty-five holding such views of the Israel Police.

Pollsters surveyed just over two thousand Israelis, and asked them to rate their opinions on a range of institutions and phenomena, including the police and the coronavirus, the latter of which has infected more than a quarter of a million Israelis and killed nearly eighteen hundred. Worldwide, the pathogen has killed more than a million.

Responses 1 and 2 represented “very unfavorable” and “unfavorable,” respectively, with 3 representing “no opinion,” 4 reflecting “favorable,” and 5 “very favorable.” 1,213 respondents rated COVID very unfavorable, in addition to 689 who graded it the milder “unfavorable,” and the remainder expressing a neutral opinion. In contrast, the police received only 75 neutral votes, plus 1,420 “very unfavorable” scores and 505 merely “unfavorable.” The poll had a at ±2% margin of error.

Results of the survey indicated that public opinion of COVID has held steady over the last six months, whereas opinion of the police has only declined. An identically-phrased survey conducted in early April of this year, and again in August, showed the same 95% unfavorable of very unfavorable outcome for the disease, but opinion of the police deteriorated from at or slightly better than opinion of COVID in April to demonstrably worse at present. Experts suggested several factors behind the worsening opinion of the police, among them arbitrary enforcement of lockdown restrictions, discriminatory treatment of different populations in enforcing those restrictions, and continually-emerging reports of corruption and of politics interfering with investigations at the highest levels of the organization.

“Respect for the police in Israel has never exactly been stellar,” acknowledged security analyst Rodney King. “Start with the fact that the police are viewed as an inferior entity, in terms of public confidence and importance, relative to the military. It therefore attracts a poorer pool of recruits, and the negative effects multiply from there. Add to it a too-cozy relationship between senior police officials and their ideological allies in the State Prosecutor’s Office, and, well, it’s no real wonder we are where we are today.”

Police officials vowed to combat these developments by beating into submission anyone who cites them.

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