Kesher Talk

American Jewish opinions on Israel: The American Jewish Committee has a poll out on American Jewish attitudes. "Jewish support for Israel is rock solid," said Stanely B. Greenberg of Quinlan Research. "The overall number who say they feel close to Israel has jumped 14 points to 86 percent. The proportion feeling 'very close' has jumped from 29 to 48 percent. This is a unified community, and the seriousness of the current conflict has only intensified their commitment."

Eighty-five percent of American Jews supports Israel in the ongoing conflict (64 percent strongly support, and 21 percent support Israel), one percent supports the Palestinians, while four percent doesn't support either side and 9 percent supports both sides equally.

Notwithstanding the continuing violence, 63 percent of American Jews favors the eventual establishment of a Palestinian state, while 33 percent are opposed. In the earlier AJC survey 53 percent of American Jews favored establishing a Palestinian state and 39 percent were opposed.

Fully eight of ten American Jews (80 percent) expressed concern that the U.S. will pressure Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians in order to keep the Arab countries in the anti-terrorist coalition, while only 18 percent are not concerned at all. The 80 percent figure is unchanged from the AJC poll conducted last fall.

When asked what policy the United States should have regarding Israel, the poll found a strong 45 percent of American Jews want the U.S. to allow Israel to do what it needs to do to defend its citizens, and 25 percent want America to support Israel's diplomatic and military positions. At the same time, 18 percent of American Jews say the U.S. should pressure Israel to negotiate for peace, and 6 percent say the U.S. should stay out of the conflict all together.

See more about this interesting (but small sample) poll.

posted by Howard @ 8/07/2002 12:41:36 PM