Does J Street Speak for Israelis?
- 04.16.2008 - 1:32 PMA final thought on J Street: during the call yesterday, one of the organization’s leaders defended J Street’s advocacy of Israeli negotiations with Hamas by citing the fact that 64 percent of Israelis favor the same thing. Do they? Take it away, Gideon Lichfield:
Three weeks ago Ha’aretz’s pollster, Camil Fuchs, published a poll showing that 64% of Israelis favour holding talks with Hamas in order to get a ceasefire and release Gilad Shalit, the captured soldier. Today [March 18th] the Tami Steinmetz Centre has issued the latest monthly Peace Index. It says that only 25% of Israelis and just 17% of Israeli Jews favour negotiating with Hamas. …
The Ha’aretz poll asked people if they supported talks with Hamas: yes or no. The Steinmetz poll asked them the best way for Israel to deal with the Qassam rockets from Gaza: (1) talks with Hamas; (2) a relatively restrained military response . . . (3) a bigger but still limited response (ie, like the ground incursion that killed 110 people or so earlier this month); (4) a massive ground operation to reoccupy Gaza; (5) another option of your choice; (6) don’t know.
When you put the question like this, more Israeli Jews support reoccupying Gaza than talking to Hamas.
It seems to me that the J Streeters are never going to be able to escape the fact that, sitting in Washington, they are advocating policies for Israel that are overwhelmingly unpopular among Israelis — and attempting to brand this paternalism as “pro-Israel.”
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April 16th, 2008 at 9:12 PM
The most interesting part of the 64% number is that the advocates of negotiations never mention Shalit when they refer to the number i.e. they are deliberately taking it out of context to make their point.
April 16th, 2008 at 11:12 PM
Actually, J-Streeters are worse than paternalistic.
1. The J-Streeters are anti-democratic, even Stalinist, seeking to use an outside power (the USA) to coerce the decisions of the democratically-elected government of Israel. That government should ideally be responsible ONLY to its own electorate.
2. The J-Streeters have/will have Israeli blood on their hands, for the increased US pressure they seek will further hamstring Israel’s ability to counter the neo-imperialism of Iran, Hizbullah, and Hamas.
April 17th, 2008 at 12:33 AM
Do Likud, AIPAC, Heritage, AEI, and Commentary speak for all Israelis?
April 17th, 2008 at 6:57 PM
[…] Noah Pollak at Commentary’s blog turns to me to help diss the J Street Project, the new “liberal” Israel lobby. His […]
April 19th, 2008 at 4:55 AM
Well, this is easy to understand and old polster trick. Talking to Hamas is only one of six options, three others being military. If they asked the question like …
(1) Military action
(2) Talk to Hamas once a week
(3) Talk to Hamas twice a week
(4) Talk to Hamas three times a week
(5) other
(6) Don’t know
… can you imagine the answers?
April 19th, 2008 at 5:02 AM
Mark, you forgot ADL, CAMERA and friends…
April 19th, 2008 at 9:16 AM
well, looks like the days of AIPAC will soon be counted, then. nice to know !!