Israel Matzav

Read the survey!

A survey of 'foreign policy elites' that shows that 14% (15 out of 108) name Israel as the "ally that least serves American foreign policy interests" has upset a lot of people here in Israel (see chart at top left). Frankly, the only thing that surprises me about this survey is that Egypt is at the bottom. I cannot think of an 'ally' that serves US interests less than Egypt unless it's France under Chirac.

When given a list of US allies and asked to choose the one country that least serves US national security interests, 14 percent of the respondents picked Israel. Russia led the list, with 34% saying it least served US interests, followed by 22% who said Pakistan, 17% who selected Saudi Arabia, and 5% each for Egypt and Mexico.

The journal billed the respondents, whose names were not supplied, as America's "top foreign-policy experts." Forty-five of the respondents described themselves as Democrats, 24 as Republicans, and the rest as Independents.

One diplomatic official in Jerusalem, while acknowledging that 14% is a considerable minority, said he was still worried by the trend.

"Considering the closeness and importance of our ties with Washington, this is something we need to watch," he said.

Someone did a poor job of looking, because the list of 'experts' is right on the survey's home page. And a quick review of the list of experts shows several who would obviously vote against Israel.

Among those I would expect to automatically name Israel as America's least valuable ally are John Esposito, Fawaz Gerges, Robert Malley, Stephen Walt and Jim Zogby.

I named five - I'm sure that others with a greater knowledge of the American foreign policy establishment than I have can figure out the other ten.

I'm more concerned with a different part of this item that has gotten less play:

The official also expressed concern that more US policy elites were buying into the notion that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the source of Islamic terrorism and anti-Americanism around the world.

The Foreign Policy survey bore this out, with 51% of the respondents saying that creating peace between Israel and the Palestinians would be "very important" to "addressing the threat of Islamist terrorism worldwide." Another 24% said solving the conflict with the Palestinians would be "somewhat important," and only 25% said it would have little or no impact on Islamic terrorism worldwide.

I blame the Israeli left for this result; the left continues to pretend that our conflict with the Arabs is not a religious conflict. And then there's this indication of the Ostrich Syndrome:

The respondents' replies to a question about what Iran would do with a nuclear capability were also somewhat surprising. Sixty-seven percent said it was either "somewhat unlikely" or "very unlikely" that Iran would build weapons to "wipe Israel off the map."

Somehow, the more Ahmadinejad says it, the less he is believed.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:58 AM