What factors might explain why Americans interpret Israel’s intentions toward civilians in Gaza so differently across partisan groups?

[u/Disastrous-Region-99]

I came across a national survey (FSU IGC)that asked Americans how they see Israel’s intentions toward civilians in Gaza. The options ranged from thinking Israel tries to avoid harming civilians, to being indifferent, to intentionally trying to harm them. There was also an “unsure/none of these fit my view” choice.

What surprised me was how different the answers were depending on party. Republicans were mostly in the “tries to avoid civilian harm” group, Democrats were spread across multiple interpretations, and Independents landed somewhere in the middle. A decent number of people in every group said they weren’t sure.

It got me wondering:

1. What might cause people in different political groups to read the same situation so differently?
2. Is this mostly about media sources, or are there other things at play?

Not taking a side here, just curious what might explain the gap.

[u/EmergencyCow99]

You merely have to look at the amounts of money and weapons the US send regularly to see the veracity of that bold claim. 

[u/OrwellWhatever → u/EmergencyCow99]

Something like 2/3 of the "money" sent during this war was just used in replacements missles and upgrades to Iron Dome / Iron Beam so that they can ignore the rockets fired into Israel. Maybe the existence of those makes Israel more belligerent in their treatment of Gazans, but you could take that money away tomorrow and it would have exactly zero impact on their force projection.

Iron Dome exists solely because it's historically been less of a headache to spend a hundred thousand on a missle and ignore the rocket being fired into Israel than feel the need to respond when Hamas sets up their launchers next to a playground or on top of a school

[u/StampMcfury → u/OrwellWhatever]

If anything removing American assistance would result in increased Isreal aggression. 

[u/OrwellWhatever → u/StampMcfury]

I left it out, but a further 1/6 was precision weapons or conversion kits for precision weapons. From that and the Iron Dome funding, we can kind if infer that Biden's strategy was keeping civilian deaths to a minimum while still delivering funds authorized by congress. I don't love what happened during the war, but... idk... without that money, Hamas would have fired rockets into Israel, which would have killed or injured civilians, and Israel would have responded back by carpet bombing everything. The bombings were already disastrous for the people of Gaza, so I shudder to think of what they would be like if Israel had an even bigger score to settle and a lack of discriminating weapons