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Israel’s Favorability Among Americans

According to the annual February 2021 Gallup’s country favorability rating, Israel is the 7th most favorable country among Americans, enjoying a 75% very/mostly favorability rating.

Israel’s favorability of 75% – compared to 66% in 2013, 69% in 2019 and 74% in 2020 – is above its 65% average since 2001, and just shy of its exceptional 79% favorability recorded during the 1991 Gulf War, when the US public was exposed to Iraqi missiles hitting Israel.

According to Gallup, “In the latest poll, 85% of Republicans view it favorably, compared with 77% of independents and 64% of Democrats.”

Iran (13%) and the Palestinian Authority (30%) trail Cuba (45%), and are among the least favorable countries, along with North Korea (11%), China (20%), Iraq (21%), Afghanistan (21%) and Russia (22%).

Israel trails Canada (92% favorability), Great Britain (91%), France (87%), Japan (84%), Germany (84%) and India (77%).

However, unlike these countries, Israel’s 75% favorability is in defiance of systematic criticism (of Israel) by the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other key members of the US media establishment, as well as by State Department spokespersons and the United Nations.

Israel’s high favorability rating occurs despite the spike in anti-Israel activities on US campuses, as well as the recent erosion of Israel’s stature on Capitol Hill (especially on the House side), which has been Israel’s consistent ally since 1948.

For example, the incoming chairwomen of the two most critical House Appropriations Subcommittees on Defense (funding US-Israel defense cooperation projects) and Foreign Operations (funding foreign aid and multinational cooperation projects) are two of the most anti-Israel legislators, Congresswoman Betty McCullum (D-MN) and Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA) respectively. Both have repeatedly ignored Palestinian hate-education, the 70-year-old Palestinian inter-Arab terrorism (e.g., the murder of Jordan’s King Abdullah in 1951) and the 100-year-old anti-Jewish terrorism (e.g., the 1920 and 1929 pogroms), and the systematic association of the Palestinians with rivals and enemies of the US (e.g., Nazi Germany, the USSR, North Korea and Iran’s Ayatollahs). They have urged the Administration to precondition foreign aid to Israel upon Israeli concessions to the Palestinians.

Moreover, the incoming chairman of the Senate Full Appropriations Committee is the very powerful Senator (“Cardinal”) Pat Leahy (D-VT), an habitual, moderate critic of Israel.

Furthermore, the Democratic Congressional Progressive Caucus is chaired by the radical anti-Israel Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), and its whip is the vehemently anti-Israel Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN). The Caucus consists of 90 House Members – among them Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), the chairwoman of the Full Appropriations Committee and Adam Smith (D-WA), the chairman of the Armed Services Committee – compared to 68 in 2012 and 96 Members in 2018.

Still, consistent with the worldview of most Americans, 331 House Members signed an April 22, 2021 letter to the chairwoman and lead Republican of the Full Appropriations Committee, urging a fully-funded foreign aid package to Israel.  The letter was sponsored by Congressman Ted Deutsch (D-FL), the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Middle East Subcommittee, and Congressman Mike McCaul (R-FL), the lead Republican on the Foreign Affairs Committee.

The letter reads: “We urge you to support foreign assistance funding, including full funding for Israel’s security needs…. Our aid to Israel is vital and cost-effective expenditure, which advances important US national security interests in a highly challenging region. For decades, presidents of both parties have understood the strategic importance of providing Israel with security assistance.  As America’s closest Mideast ally, Israel regularly provides the US with unique intelligence information and advanced defensive weapons systems.  Israel is also actively engaged in supporting security partners like Jordan and Egypt, and its recent normalization agreements with the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco will help promote regional stability and deal with common challenges from Iran and its terrorist proxies…. Just as foreign assistance is an investment in advancing our values and furthering our global interests, security aid to Israel is a specific investment in the peace and prosperity of the entire Middle East.”

On February 4, 2021, the Senate reaffirmed the intrinsic identification, by most Americans, with Jerusalem as Israel’s undivided capital, when voting 97:3 in favor of an amendment to the COVID-19 budget resolution, which underscored the intention to keep the US Embassy in Jerusalem.

The amendment was introduced by Senators Jim Inhofe (R-OK) and Bill Hagerty (R-TN), and was opposed by Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Tom Carper (D-Del). In 1995 and 2017, the Senate voted 93:5 and 90:0 to place the US Embassy in Jerusalem.

Intel’s CEO, Pat Gelsinger, reflects the overall appreciation of Israel, by most constituents and legislators, as a most effective, reliable, democratic and innovative force-multiplier, benefitting the US, militarily and commercially: “I have been visiting Israel for 40 years and every time it excites me anew to see how Intel Israel has grown from 4 employees in 1974 to more than 14,000 today. I see in Intel Israel a microcosm of Intel worldwide, leading in innovation, research, development and production on an extensive scale, and we are investing accordingly. Our continued investment in expanding our existing research and development centers and enlarging production capacity in Israel, as well as the acquisitions we have conducted with (Israel’s) Mobileye, which leads the world in solutions to assist autonomous driving, (Israel’s) Moovit and (Israel’s) Habana Labs, which leads the world in Artificial Intelligence, promise an exciting future for Intel and Israel for decades to come.”

Support Appreciated

 

 




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US-sponsored anti-Israel UN Security Council statement – acumen

*The US’ co-sponsorship of an anti-Israel UN Security Council Statement reflects the return of the State Department’s worldview to the center stage of US foreign policy-making. This was the first time, in six years, that the US enabled the UN Security Council to act against Israel.

*This is not merely a worldview, which is highly critical of Israel, as has been the case since 1948, when Foggy Bottom led the charge against the re-establishment of the Jewish State.

This worldview has systematically undermined US interests, by subordinating the unilateral, independent US national security policy (on Iran’s Ayatollahs, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Palestinian issue, etc.) to a multilateral common denominator with the anti-US and anti-Israel UN and international organizations, as well as the vacillating and terrorists-appeasing Europe.

*It has sacrificed Middle East reality on the altar of wishful-thinking, assuming that the establishment of a Palestinian state would fulfill Palestinian aspirations, advance the cause of peace, reduce terrorism and regional instability; thus, enhancing US interests.

*However, the reality of the Middle East and Jordan and the rogue Palestinian track record lend credence to the assumption that a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River would doom the pro-US Hashemite regime east of the River, yielding traumatic ripple effects, regionally and globally:

^Replace the relatively-moderate Hashemite regime with either a rogue Palestinian regime, a Muslim Brotherhood regime, or other rogue regimes;
^Transform Jordan into a chaotic state, similar to Libya, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, which would be leveraged by Iran’s Ayatollahs to intensify their encirclement of the pro-US Saudi regime;
^Convert Jordan into a major arena of regional and global Islamic terrorism;
^Trigger a domino scenario into the Arabian Peninsula, which could topple all pro-US, oil-producing Arab regimes;
^Imperil the supply of Persian Gulf oil, which would be held hostage by anti-US entities, catapulting the price at the pump;
^Jeopardize major naval routes of global trade between Asia and Europe through the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea and the Suez Canal;
^Intensify epicenters of regional and global terrorism and drug trafficking;
^Generate a robust tailwind to US’ adversaries (Russia and China) and enemies (Iran’s Ayatollahs, the Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS) and a powerful headwind to US economic and national security interests.

*The State Department assumes that Palestinian terrorism – just like Islamic terrorism – is driven by despair, ignoring the fact that Palestinian terrorism has been driven (for the last 100 years) by the vision to erase the “infidel” Jewish entity from “the abode of Islam,” as stated by the charters of Fatah (1959) and the PLO (1964), 8 and 3 years before the Jewish State reunited Jerusalem and reasserted itself in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank).

*Aspiring for a Palestinian state, and viewing Israel’s control of Judea and Samaria as an obstacle to peace, ignores the Arab view of the Palestinians as a role model of intra-Arab subversion, terrorism, corruption and treachery. Moreover, the State Department has held the view that the Palestinian issue is the crux of the Arab-Israeli conflict and a central to Arab interests, which has been refuted by the Abraham Accords. The latter ignored the State Department, sidestepped the Palestinian issue and therefore came to fruition.

*The State Department overlooks the centrality of the Palestinian Authority’s hate education, which has become the most effective production-line of terrorists, and the most authentic reflection of the Palestinian Authority’s worldview and vision.

*The State Department has also taken lightly the Palestinian Authority’s mosque incitement, public glorification of terrorists and monthly allowances to families of terrorists, which have documented its rogue and terroristic nature (walk), notwithstanding its peaceful diplomatic rhetoric (talk).

*The State Department’s eagerness to welcome the Palestinian issue in a “red carpet” manner – contrary to the “shabby doormat” extended to Palestinians by Arabs – and its determination to promote the establishment of a Palestinian state, along with its embrace of Iran’s Ayatollahs and the Muslim Brotherhood, have been interpreted by rogue regimes and organizations as weakness.

Experience suggests that weakness invites the wolves, including wolves which aim to bring “The Great Satan” to submission throughout the world as well as the US mainland.

Support Appreciated

 




Videos

The post-1967 turning point of US-Israel cooperation

Israeli benefits to the US taxpayer exceed US foreign aid to Israel

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Exposing the myth of the Arab demographic time bomb