Anti-Israel Protests Make the Case for Israel
The case for Israel is now playing out on the streets of Paris.Poll: 73% say Israel more successful than Hamas in Gaza op
Over the weekend, pro-Palestinian rioters marched into a Jewish suburb in the French capital to break Jewish things. They torched cars, lobbed firebombs into a synagogue, and burnt Jewish-owned stores to the ground. One group of men reportedly spoke loudly of “hunting Jews and killing them.” That followed last weekend’s attempt to storm two other Parisian synagogues to a chorus of “Death to Jews!” and “Hitler was right!” They were only held in check by Jewish vigilantes who took up arms to defend those trapped inside.
The case for Israel is now unfolding in the heart of Berlin.
This past Friday, an imam was filmed delivering a Friday sermon beseeching Allah to destroy the Zionist Jews. “Count them and kill them to the very last one,” he prayed. A day before, an angry mob gathered to demand the same thing. “Jude, Jude feiges Schwein! Komm heraus und kampf allein!” it bellowed in unison—“Jew, Jew, cowardly swine, come out and fight on your own!”
The case for Israel is now parading through London.
British Jews have experienced a doubling of anti-Semitic incidents over the last several weeks, from verbal abuse to attacks on buildings and people. One woman was reportedly assaulted by a breakaway group of 50 pro-Palestinian protesters who heard her discussing the Gaza conflict on her cell phone. They cried out “get her” and surrounded her, pushing and calling her a Jew, Zionist, murderer, and thief.
When asked if they supported or opposed Israel's ground incursion into Gaza, 80 percent of respondents replied that they supported it, 12 percent said they opposed it and 8 percent said they didn't know. When asked if Israel should expand its current ground operation, 71 percent of respondents said yes, 17 percent said no and 12 percent were undecided.Democrats losing moral clarity on Israel
An overwhelming 94 percent of respondents said they were satisfied with the Israel Defense Forces' performance thus far into the operation, with only 3 percent saying they were dissatisfied with how the army was handing the mission.
To the question "Should Israel make toppling the Hamas regime in Gaza a goal of Operation Protective Edge?" 65 percent of people polled replied yes, 22 percent said no and 13 percent said they didn't know. (h/t Elder of Lobby)
The Pew Research Center last week released a new survey of American attitudes in the Middle East. The results weren’t surprising. In the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, 51 percent of Americans say they sympathize more with Israel. Only 14 percent feel greater affinity for the Palestinians.
Pew’s findings demonstrate the strength of pro-Israel feeling in the United States. The poll was conducted amid the current fighting with Hamas, but the bottom line hardly changed from Pew’s last survey in April, when it reported that in the 36 years it has been sampling public opinion, “sympathy toward Israel has never been higher.”
But below the surface, America’s Israel-friendly consensus is splitting along the same left-vs.-right fault line that has polarized so many other issues. While support for Israel is overwhelming among Republicans and conservatives, it has been shrinking among Democrats and liberals. “The partisan gap in Mideast sympathies has never been wider,” reports Pew, with 73 percent of Republicans sympathetic to Israel in the ongoing conflict, but just 44 percent of Democrats. Respondents identifying as liberal Democrats were five times as likely as conservative Republicans to sympathize more with the Palestinians.
Thus is the Democratic Party losing its way on one of the great moral issues of our time.