Monday, October 23, 2006
Only 81%? This isn't a border dispute. It's a Jihad. Wake up folks.
Poll: 81% of U.S. Jews believe Arabs want to destroy Israel
WASHINGTON - Eighty-one percent of American Jews believe that the real goal of the Arabs is the destruction of Israel and not the return of occupied land, according to the annual survey of the American Jewish Committee(AJC) on various issues.
While 54 percent said they supported the establishment of a Palestinian state, only 38 percent said Israel and the Arabs could solve the conflict peacefully. Another 56 percent said they believed the conflict could not be resolved.
According to the survey, a slim majority of American Jews do not believe that the United States should act militarily to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Fifty-four percent opposed such action and 38 percent supported it. However, 57 percent said Israel would be justified in taking military action against Iran, while 35 percent were opposed...
Is it meaningful to talk about "the real goal of the Arabs"? This is a huge population, dispersed among many countries over thousands of square miles from Morocco to Iraq. It seems presumptuous to assume that they monolithically share any particular goal.
It's a fair point, Ron, but the fact is that Arab government, popular, and organized opinion is overwhelmingly in favor of dismantling that state. The venom spit in its direction has had its effect. Let's not kid ourselves.
Solomon,
If so many American Jews believe this, then why are so many of them Democrats?
Man, that's the $10,000 question isn't it? There are a lot of answers. Among them the fact that Israel isn't their only issue, leftist politics have become a sub for religion, fear of Christians, and they labor under the illusion that the Dems are just as good on national defense and Israel as the Repubs (to be honest, so far the Dems have been good on Israel -- there's very little difference in the mainstream of both parties..but it's slipping.)
Here's a Link to the Republican Jewish Coalition
"The Democratic Party has changed... It's not my party anymore."
http://www.rjchq.org/
One term president Democrat Jimma Carter has "nice" things to say about Israel.
I wonder what he has to say about Saudi Arabia, that wonderful country that bans all Churches and Crucifixes within its boundaries.
John D and Solomon:
If you've read Sam Harris's "End of Faith" you may recall his own disconnect when booking accommodations for a vacation in Paris.
For safety's sake, he wanted to be no where near the US Embassy, but when the only decent available accommodations turned out to have a nice view of the gardens around the Embassy,he and his fiance took it.
What it boils down to is the phenom that Paul Berman wrote about in Terror and Liberalism. The liberal mind just has a very difficult time comprehending the existence of the nihilistic mindset of religious extremists, particularly religious extremists of a more exotic origin. This meltdown is probably what produced the moral equivalencies of Noam Chomsky et al.
As for Ron Newman's objection to treating Arab opinion as monolithic, when it comes to Israel's existence, we don't just have about 20 Muslim-Arab governments representing 300 million Arabs pretty well on the same page, we've got 57 member nations of the Organization of Islamic Countries on the same page. True that not all are as openly beligerent as the Islamic Republic of Iran, but we've only got a handful that begrudginly "recognize" Israel to the extent that they negotiated for the return of land captured either in 1967 or '73, and maybe two others that have trade agreements.
I can't speak for any other American Jew, but I'm a Democrat because I consider the Democratic Party on average much closer to my value system than the Republican Party. The Democrats at least try to help the poor, sick, and downtrodden, which I consider to be a Jewish value. The Republicans mainly stand for corporate greed.
Ron, following your logic the Democrats are for Government Greed. No?