America takes side of Israel

Boston Globe ^ | March 26, 2006 | Jeff Jacoby

[West Coast Conservative]

A GALLUP POLL released last month puts American support for Israel at near-record levels. When asked for their views on the Middle East, 59 percent of Americans say they sympathize with the Israelis, while just 15 percent favor the Palestinians. Pro-Israel sentiment rises with increased knowledge -- 66 percent of those who follow international affairs ''very closely" support Israel, compared with 52 percent of those who don't pay close attention to foreign news.

Other findings are comparable. More than two-thirds of Americans say their overall view of Israel is favorable. Only 11 percent, by contrast, have a favorable opinion of the Palestinian Authority. While 22 percent of the public wants Washington to conduct diplomatic relations with the Hamas-controlled Palestinian government even if it refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist as a sovereign state, 44 percent say recognition of Israel must be a precondition to relations with the United States. Another 25 percent -- one American in four -- oppose any US dealings with Hamas at all.

Staunch American support for Israel is nothing new. In February 2005, Gallup reported similarly lopsided findings -- 69 percent of the public viewed Israel favorably, 25 percent unfavorably. In 2004, when Israel was being denounced in Europe and the United Nations for its assassination of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the leader of Hamas, 61 percent of Americans said Israel was justified in killing him. In 2002, when a CBS News poll asked whether Israel's actions against Yasser Arafat and his forces were equivalent to US actions against Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, 59 percent agreed that they were.

In short, solidarity with Israel is an abiding feature of American public opinion. Because the American people are pro-Israel, the American government is pro-Israel.

[FreedomPoster]

The average American better-understands what Israel has been going through, all these years, in the post-9/11 world.

[Echo Talon]

I like Israel until they start selling things to China then i get upset.

[jocon307]

I hope America will always support Israel staunchly.

[backhoe]

That's encouraging- somewhere between the 1967 and 1973 wars, the media in this country turned on Israel, going from from devotion, to loathing.

It appears that once again, the average citizen is more right than the elites.

[ThreePuttinDude]

With this news item Zogby will be putting out a poll,
claiming the American public sympathizes with the
Israelis, and is clearly Anti-Muslim.......

I can see this coming

[ABG(anybody but Gore)]

I'd suspect a lot of it comes from the fact that Israel is still the only true democracy in the Middle East. The Afghans are still somewhat under the thumb of Islamofacsist clerics, judging from this mess about one single Christian convert. Once Iraq gets a functional government that represents all interests(and is tolerant of other religions than the religion of peace) there and proves it can hold peaceful elections and have a stable and nonviolent change of power from one party to another, that will change, but until then, Israel is the only game in town.

[rightwingcrazy]

Because the American people are pro-Israel, the American government is pro-Israel.

We have met the Zionist lobby and it is us.

[familyop]

That's good news! Here's an excerpt from an older report.

Most Americans Support Right of Jews to Live and Build in Judea-Samaria
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/927783/posts
June 10, 2003
"By a margin of nearly five to one, Americans oppose the Bush administration's demand to halt all further Jewish construction in Judea-Samaria (the West Bank) and Gaza . . . The poll, carried out by John McLaughlin & Associates, surveyed a scientific sample of 1,000 American adults on May 21, 2003."

[hershey]

In the eyes of the rest of the world, Americans are the new Jews. Well, that's okay. Now they have someone new to blame for everything that goes wrong with their lives.

[vlad335]

Pray for the peace of Israel.

[SkyPilot]

Jerusalem is mentioned over 800 times in the Bible, and not once in the Koran.

Baruch haba b'Shem Adonai.

[dennisw]

The crazier and more violent the Muslims behave, the better the Jews look. Look at stupid European history. 6 million Jews are killed then in later decades 30 million Muslims are invited to immigrate. Jews are a much better deal plus they do tons of good science and win lots of Nobel prizes. Israel has a lot more Nobel prizes than all Muslim nations put together

[dennisw]

Been there. Right there at the center of the world

[Beckwith]

They knew Jerusalem was there.

In 632 A.D. Mohammed died.

Within a year Arab Muslim armies had attacked Persia (Iran) and had taken the cities of Jerusalem, Antioch and Alexandria.

Muslim armies had begun their jihad to conquer the known world.

That march continues.

[Joe Boucher]

even when they spy on us? Even when they shoot the hell out of a U.S. Navel vessel? Even when they sell American technology to the Chi-coms?
I support Israel too but at times DAMN.

[backhoe]

With this news item Zogby will be putting out a poll, claiming the American public sympathizes with the Israelis, and is clearly Anti-Muslim.... I can see this coming

Yep, then the Tired Old Media will write a story about the poll results, take a poll about the story, write a story about that, take another poll...

[Izzy Dunne]

59 percent of Americans say they sympathize with the Israelis, while just 15 percent favor the Palestinians.

... and 26 percent said "shut the heck up and get off the phone, I'm watching "Survivor"!

[SkyPilot]

The Global Islamic population is approximately 1,200,000,000, or 20% of the world population.

They received the following Nobel Prizes:

Literature
1988 - Najib Mahfooz.

Peace:
1978 - Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat
1994 - Yaser Arafat

Physics:
1990 - Elias James Corey
1999 - Ahmed Zewail

Medicine:
1960 - Peter Brian Medawar
1998 - Ferid Mourad

_________________________________________________________________________________________

The Global Jewish population is aproximately 14,000,000 or about 0.02% of the world population.

They received the following Nobel Prizes:

Literature:
1910 - Paul Heyse
1927 - Henri Bergson
1958 - Boris Pasternak
1966 - Shmuel Yosef Agnon
1966 - Nelly Sachs
1976 - Saul Bellow
1978 - Isaac Bashevis Singer
1981 - Elias Canetti
1987 - Joseph Brodsky
1991 - Nadine Gordimer World

Peace:
1911 - Alfred Fried
1911 - Tobias Michael Carel Asser
1968 - Rene Cassin
1973 - Henry Kissinger
1978 - Menachem Begin
1986 - Elie Wiesel
1994 - Shimon Peres
1994 - Yitzhak Rabin

Chemistry:
1905 - Adolph Von Baeyer
1906 - Henri Moissan
1910 - Otto Wallach
1915 - Richard Willstaetter
1918 - Fritz Haber
1943 - George Charles de Hevesy
1961 - Melvin Calvin
1962 - Max Ferdinand Perutz
1972 - William Howard Stein
1977 - Ilya Prigogine
1979 - Herbert Charle s Brown
1980 - Paul Berg
1980 - Walter Gilbert
1981 - Roald Hoffmann
1982 - Aaron Klug
1985 - Albert A. Hauptman
1985 - Jerome Karle
1986 - Dudley R. Herschbach
1988 - Robert Huber
1989 - Sidney Altman
1992 - Rudolph Marcus
2000 - Alan J. Heeger
2004 - Aaron Ciechanover
2004 - Avram Hershko

Economics:
1970 - Paul Anthony Samuelson
1971 - Simon Kuznets
1972 - Kenneth Joseph Arrow
1975 - Leonid Kantorovich
1976 - Milton Friedman
1978 - Herbert A. Simon
1980 - Lawrence Robert Klein
1985 - Franco Modigliani
1987 - Robert M. Solow
1990 - Harry Markowitz
1990 - Merton Miller
1992 - Gary Becker
1993 - Robert Fogel

Medicine:
1908 - Elie Metchnikoff
1908 - Paul Erlich
1914 - Robert Barany
1922 - Otto Meyerhof
1930 - Karl Landsteiner
1931 - Otto Warburg
1936 - Otto Loewi
1944 - Joseph Erlanger
1944 - Herbert Spencer Gasser
1945 - Ernst Boris Chain
1946 - Hermann Joseph Muller
1950 - Tadeus Reichstein
1952 - Selman Abraham Waksman
1953 - Hans Krebs
1953 - Fritz Albert Lipmann
1958 - Joshua Lederberg
1959 - Arthur Kornberg
1964 - Konrad Bloch
1965 - Francois Jacob
1965 - Andre Lwoff
1967 - George Wald
1968 - Marshall W. Nirenberg
1969 - Salvador Luria
1970 - Julius Axelrod
1970 - Sir Bernard Katz
1972 - Gerald Maurice Edelman
1975 - Howard Martin Temin
1976 - Baruch S. Blumberg
1977 - Roselyn Sussman Yalow
1978 - Daniel Nathans
1980 - Baruj Benacerraf
1984 - Cesar Milstein
1985 - Michael Stuart Brown
1985 - Joseph L. Goldstein
1986 - Stanley Cohen [& Rita Levi-Montalcini]
1988 - Gertrude Elion
1989 - Harold Varmus
1991 - Erwin Neher
1991 - Bert Sakmann
1993 - Richard J. Roberts
1993 - Phillip Sharp
1994 - Alfred Gilman
1995 - Edward B. Lewis

Physics:
1907 - Albert Abraham Michelson
1908 - Gabriel Lippmann
1921 - Albert Einstein
1922 - Niels Bohr
1925 - James Franck
1925 - Gustav Hertz
1943 - Gustav Stern
1944 - Isidor Issac Rabi
1952 - Felix Bloch
1954 - Max Born
1958 - Igor Tamm
1959 - Emilio Segre
1960 - Donald A. Glaser
1961 - Robert Hofstadter
1962 - Lev Davidovich Landau
1965 - Richard Phillips Feynman
1965 - Julian Schwinger
1969 - Murray Gell-Mann
1971 - Dennis Gabor
1973 - Brian David Josephson
1975 - Benjamin Mottleson
1976 - Burton Richter
1978 - Arno Allan Penzias
1978 - Peter L Kapitza
1979 - Stephen Weinberg
1979 - Sheldon Glashow
1988 - Leon Lederman
1988 - Melvin Schwartz
1988 - Jack Steinberger
1990 - Jerome Friedman
1995 - Martin Perl

[Star Traveler]

You said -- "Jerusalem is mentioned over 800 times in the Bible, and not once in the Koran."

And the most important one -- that they did *not* poll -- is the God if Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. His opinion outweighs all the 6+ billion opinions in the world. It's His that counts.

And He's definitely pro-Israel and pro-Jerusalem.

Regards,
Star Traveler