Israel Matzav

J Street smears Avigdor Lieberman; distorts his positions in poll

The enemy within continues to attempt to destroy the State of Israel. YNet reports on a poll released on Monday by the pro-withdrawal J Street organization, which 'found' that 32% of American Jews will feel less of a bond with Israel as a result of Yisrael Beiteinu's Avigdor Lieberman being named foreign minister.

According to a poll conducted by liberal American lobby group 'J Street,' 32% of American Jews say that the appointment of Yisrael Beiteinu Chairman Avigdor Lieberman as a cabinet minister will weaken their ties with Israel.

...

Jim Gerstein, who conducted the study on behalf of J Street, ... noted that amongst young people below the age of 30, that statistic rises to 40% because of the anti-democratic nature of Lieberman's statements.

Gerstein said statistics clearly showed that Lieberman is not very popular amongst American Jews.

The poll showed that 60% of respondents knew who Lieberman is, and 69% of them are opposed to the positions he took during the elections campaign. Despite the fact that many said that Lieberman's appointment as a cabinet minister would put a damper on their connection with Israel, 58% said that it would not change their relationship with the country. Ten percent said that it would actually strengthen their connection with the Jewish state.

But J Street seriously distorted Lieberman's positions in the poll question about him according to IMRA's Aaron Lerner:

"As you may know, Israel had an election earlier this month. The party receiving the third largest number of seats is led by Avigdor Lieberman who has previously called for the execution of Arab members of Israel's parliament who met with Hamas and whose main campaign message called for Arab citizens of Israel to sign a loyalty oath to the Jewish state in order to prevent their citizenship from being revoked. Do you support or oppose these positions?"

Lieberman never called for anyone's execution and his campaign had many other messages aside from a loyalty oath to the Jewish state. In fact, in all of the coalition negotiations that have taken place over the last month and a half, I have heard no mention of a 'loyalty oath.' If the 'loyalty oath' was Lieberman's main message (and I have already gone on record saying that there was nothing improper about it if it was), he's not done a very good job of getting it incorporated into the coalition agreement.

According to YNet, the J Street poll also 'found' that in a confrontation between Israel and the Obama administration, most American Jews would support Obama.

But what the poll 'found' was what it set out to find. As Lerner points out, the poll questions were designed to put many punitive measures against Israel - that have never been discussed by the Obama administration or any other American administration - in the minds of American Jews. Here are some of those ideas:

Jewish organizations that lobby Congress to support every Israeli government policy are not helping Israel's security

Using incentives such as economic aid, military assistance, and support in international institutions, the United States has the leverage to impose a peace agreement on the Israelis and Palestinians.

I am concerned that other Americans will end up resenting American Jews because of America's perceived favoritism toward Israel under all circumstances.

With Hamas launching rockets into southern Israel that killed many Israeli civilians and Israel launching air and ground strikes that killed many Palestinian civilians, neither side has a monopoly on who is right and who is wrong.

With hundreds of Palestinian civilian deaths and a humanitarian crisis resulting from a month of no electricity and clean water throughout Gaza, Israel's response to Hamas' attacks was disproportionate.

Israeli military actions that target terrorists, but kill Palestinian civilians create more terrorism instead of preventing terrorism.

Israel has the right to defend itself, but it must also take into account humanitarian considerations and avoid collective punishment of the entire Palestinian population by closing the borders and causing major civilian hardship.

Finally, you will note that I referred to J Street above as being not pro-Israel but 'pro-withdrawal.' I borrowed that appellation from Dr. Lerner. Here is how he explains it.

The group is a "withdrawal advocacy group" rather than a "peace" group because there is no discernable connection between the policies that they advocate - withdrawal - and true peace.

Hereafter, I will refer to J Street as a 'withdrawal advocacy group' or as a 'pro-withdrawal group.' I urge all Right wing bloggers to do the same. The terms of debate are framed by the words we choose.

Read both the YNet article and IMRA's comments. For those who wish to see it, the full J Street survey is here.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:57 AM