Israeli Jews Not Nearly As Sick As USA Jews: Poll

Must be something in the water, or maybe it’s something about your kid having to clean up after Obama’s mistakes.

JPost, 5/27/2011

Poll: 12% of Israeli Jews consider Obama to be pro-Israel

Despite AIPAC speech intended to correct impressions that he was hostile toward Israel, 40% of 600 Jewish Israelis deem US administration pro-Palestinian in Smith Research poll sponsored by ‘The Jerusalem Post.’

US President Barack Obama’s attempt to portray himself as pro-Israel in a high-profile speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on Sunday did not succeed, according to a Smith Research poll sponsored by The Jerusalem Post.

The speech was intended to correct impressions that he was hostile toward Israel, which may have been reinforced by a landmark address about the Middle East that he delivered at the State Department last Thursday, and by a tense press conference at the White House on Friday with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

In the AIPAC speech, Obama chose not to specifically rule out the “return” to Israel of millions of descendants of Palestinian refugees, and did not announce his first visit to Israel as president, as many hoped he would. But he did insist that Israel must remain the Jewish “homeland,” indicating opposition to the Palestinian demand for refugees’ “return, spoke about Jews’ yearning for Israel through the centuries, listed many ways in which his administration was helping Israel and clarified his position on creating a Palestinian state based on the pre-1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps.

When asked in the poll whether they saw Obama’s administration as more pro-Israel, more pro-Palestinian or neutral, just 12 percent of Israeli Jews surveyed said more pro-Israel, while 40% said more pro-Palestinian, 34% said neutral and 13% did not express an opinion.

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