> If you compare opinions on Israel among Jews and non-Jewish whites of the
> same income group, though, my hypothesis is that Jews will prove to be
> less Zionist and pro-Israel than non-Jewish whites. Maybe, I ought to
> raise money in order to hire a pollster to conduct a survey to test this
> hypothesis.
>
> Yoshie Furuhashi
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Hard to know, isn't it? In the absence of reliable polling data, all we have
are our impressions. Mine is that while support for Israel and Zionism is an
integral part of North American culture, most Jews still have a deeper
personal attachment because they believe Israel represents a potential
refuge for them and, after centuries of passive victimhood, they are
intoxicated by its military power. This is perhaps less true of
college-educated Jews, where until recently they were a disproportionate
part of the liberal and radical left, and therefore more inclined toward
left- or anti-Zionist positions. But the great majority of non-college
educated Jews I've known have strongly identified with Israel, while most
non-Jewish workers were pretty indifferent though, if pressed, they too were
conditioned to support it.
But I think the North American romance with Israel, dating back to Paul Newman, Exodus, and the 1967 war, has been fading since the intifada. The US involvement in Iraq, in which Jewish conservatives have been prominent, has accelerated the process. While many Western Jews have also been alienated by Israel's brutal occupation, its increasing right-wing and religious character, and the Islamist terrorist backlash US/Israeli policies have provoked, I suspect not to the same degree as in the larger society. Cindy Sheehan seems to me to be a good register of that changing mood. Another barometer of the erosion of support for Israel is the heightened defensiveness within the Jewish community, including the Jewish left, reflected in the hysterical accusations of anti-semitism directed against critics of Israeli policy, including, as you know, within the antiwar movement.
MG