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Poll Shows Academics Fear Israel’s Power
If members on both sides of the House have been so seduced by AIPAC that they refuse to see how much U.S. policy in the Middle East is shaped by AIPAC they might be interested in a recent poll by Zogby International. The national survey showed that a large percentage of Americans believe the pro-Israel lobby was a significant influence on the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq and take a hard line on Iran.
The poll by Zogby, conducted on behalf of the Council for the National Interest Foundation, showed that 39% of Americans believe the Israel lobby was a powerful influence on U.S. Middle East policy while 40% disagreed and 20% were unsure.
When those figures were further broken down, it was clear that half of Democrats believed the Iraq war decision was influenced by the Israeli lobby, while only 45% of Republicans did.
Broken down by demographic, almost 77% of Jewish Americans disagreed that the lobby was a powerful factor in U.S. decision-making, whereas 55% of Hispanics took the opposite view.
One of the interesting findings of the survey was that more Americans in the 18 to 29 age group saw an Israeli hand in U.S. foreign policy.
In a more shocking national poll by Zogby, another study showed that a majority of academics believe the United States’ link to Israel is a serious threat to global peace and stability.
(Issue #46, November 13, 2006)
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