New Poll Illustrates It's Not Netanyahu Who Is Right Wing -- It's Israel (Thank Goodness!)

Polls are convenient fodder for proving a point -- who can forget Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's famous poll proving that Palestinian Arabs just wanted peace:

Well, you can look at any opinion poll in the Palestinian territories and 70 percent of the people will say they’re perfectly ready to live side by side with Israel because they just want to live in peace.

Too bad that no one -- Rice included -- was ever able to produce that poll.

On the other hand, an actual poll that came out this month is useful for illustrating a very different point.


When the media reports on Israel, you can almost sense the visceral delight with which journalists will describe Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu as a right-winger -- and a hard line right winger at that!

This despite Netanyahu's publicly agreeing with the principle of a Palestinian state, agreeing to meet Abbas face to face to negotiate peace those few times Abbas was ready to talk -- and agreeing to unilateral concessions such as settlement freezes to cajole Abbas back to the table when he was not.

Some right wing hardliner.

This has moved David Horowitz to note the coming wave of real Israeli right-wingers:

It’s rather ironic: the international community is bitterly ramping up its criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu the builder of settlements — Security Council condemnations, European castigations, American criticisms, et al. But Benjamin Netanyahu the non-builder of settlements is hemorrhaging support to the party on his right.

A recent poll indicates what should be obvious, but is ignored by the media: to the extent the Israeli government is "right wing" and is likely to become more so, is a direct result of the will of the Israeli people in reaction to Palestinian terrorism and refusal to negotiate peace in good faith.

Here is a summary of some key findings of the poll.

Views of the Israeli Public on Israeli Security
and Resolution of the Arab-Israeli Conflict

Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs /
Dahaf Institute SurveyDecember 2012

• 76% of Israelis (83% of Jews) believe that a withdrawal to the 1967 lines and a division of Jerusalem would not bring about an end of the conflict.
  
  
• 61% of the Jewish population believes that defensible borders are more important than peace for assuring Israel's security (up from 49% in 2005).
  
  
• 78% of Jews indicated they would change their vote if the party they intended to support indicated that it was prepared to relinquish sovereignty in east Jerusalem. 59% of Jews said the same about the Jordan Valley.

Below are the complete results of the poll.

While the liberal media -- both in Israel and abroad -- may lecture Israel in the need not to antagonize the Arabs and to bend over backwards to accommodate their demands in the interests of peace, Israels have been noticing that those very same Arabs, and their leaders, have refused to recognize Israel, have insisted on deliberately attacking civilians, have incited hatred of Israel and violated agreements in order to avoid negotiating peace.

Bottom line, with the refusal of the Abbas regime to negotiate peace, if Israel will not look after its security needs, no one else will.

Maybe it's time for the media to notice this as well.

Views of the Israeli Public on Israeli Securityand Resolution of the Arab-Israeli Conflict


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