Israel Matzav

Obama 'polls' Israelis

It was a tall order for Brookings' Shibley Telhami. Telhami needed to come up with a poll of 'representative Israelis' that opposed a unilateral attack on Iran, wasn't particularly excited about any strike on Iran, and showed Israelis supporting Hussein Obama over any of his rivals. And then, Telhami had to get one of Israel's mainstream media to publish it. By golly he succeeded.

The newly Leftist JPost publishes Telhami's poll, which shows a paltry 19% of Israelis favoring a unilateral strike on Iran, less than a majority favoring a strike at all, and Obama leading every one of his Republican rivals among 'Israeli Jews.' You've got to be kidding.

Only 19 percent of Israelis support an attack against Iran without the backing of the United States, a new poll released on Wednesday found.

In the poll conducted by Shibley Telhami, Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellow and the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, 42 % of respondents said they support a strike against Iran only if there is US support for the move. Nearly a third (32%) of those polled oppose an attack regardless of US support.

According to the poll, 38 % of Israelis believe the US would support Israel diplomatically if the Jewish State carried out a unilateral strike against Iran, whereas 27 % of respondents think Washington would join in militarily to support Israel even if it struck the Islamic Republic without US approval.

The survey also polled Jewish Israelis' feelings on the US presidential race, with respondents preferring US president Barack Obama to all his potential Republican rivals.

Overall, among Israeli Jews, Obama led Santorum 34% to 21%, Gingrich 31% to 27%, Paul 34% to 24%, and Romney 32% to 29%.

The poll's conductor Telhami concluded that "the Israeli public is neither enthusiastic about the prospect of war with Iran nor swayed by the seeming embrace of Israel by our presidential candidates.” He added: “They have to live with the consequences of war, and they appear to take the American assessment of these consequences seriously.”

Find me a pollster with a different agenda, and I will guarantee you a completely different result. No, this poll is just spin.

Labels: Campaign 2012, Iranian nuclear threat, Israeli attack on Iran

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:35 PM