Well Purim's over, I guess that means it's back to reality. Although in the Middle East, it's more like sur-reality...
Shmuel Rosner over at the Jerusalem Post has an interesting take on a recent Gallup survey about Israel:
Support for Israel among Americans is at a 19-year high, a February Gallup survey of American attitudes toward international affairs has found.
That's good...
The percent favoring Israel is the highest since 1991, when 64% said they supported Israel shortly after it was hit by Iraqi Scud missiles during the Gulf War.
Also good...
Well - not all Americans. While the upward trend is likely to encourage Israelis, there are also more worrisome signs in this poll. Republicans become more supportive of Israel, but with Democrats the picture is less rosy.
Uh oh...
the gap between Republican and Democratic support is higher than ever (37%!)
That's not good...
Two years ago, I wrote about another poll in which the difference was "significant": it was a mare 20%.
I wrote about this a few years ago too...when I did an overview of which party is favored by more anti-Israel groups. Guess who "won" that contest? I'll give you a hint, it wasn't the Republicans.
But back to Rosner. He gives us this chart breakdown (compiled by the same Gallup poll) by party of what countries they support:
Ok...so if I'm reading this right, Democrats as a whole support the following countries more than Israel:
France
Egypt
Russia
India
Mexico
Let's say France fine, Mexico, fine...after all who doesn't love croissants and drunken Spring Breaks, right? Ignoring for a minute my criticisms of those two countries...India, Russia and EGYPT are all more favored by Democrats than Israel.
This is the same Egypt, by the way that not even a year ago slaughtered 300,000 pigs in order to combat H1N1 flu, which at the time was still being referred to as "swine" flu. It's the same Egypt that puts its own citizens in jail when the government doesn't like what they say. The same Egypt that regularly jails the opposition every time another rigged, mockery of an election is about to take place. The same site of sectarian violence and discrimination against the native non-Muslim, Coptic Egyptians. And this is without even mentioning their treatment of Jews and Palestinians over the years. Ok, good call Democrats.
Next up, Russia.
You may remember a little issue between Russia and their neighbor Georgia from 2008 that left a few thousand people killed or injured and a hundred thousand or so people displaced in just over a week. Or maybe the First Chechen War that resulted in tens of thousands of dead and hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians. Not enough? How about the Second Chechen War (still unresolved by the way) instead? And I'm sure you already know about President/Prime Minister-for-life Putin's Stalin-emulating purges and ownership of the media, right? By the way, take a look at this before and after picture of Grozny from the FIRST Chechnya war. And by the way, the only country to offer any tangible aid to Georgia in defending itself from Russia was...you guessed it, Israel. Great job Russians. Great job Democrats.
"Oh, but Mr. Mossad," you'll cry out, "it's not the same because none of these countries are SUPPOSED to be liberal democracies like Israel is. It's not their FAULT, they just don't know any better!"
As absurd as that pathetic, apologist line of thinking is, it falls apart completely when you look at India.
Now me personally, I have a lot of respect for India. Located in a part of the world only slightly more stable than the Middle East...India is surrounded by hostile, autocratic neighbors - much in the way Israel is. India also has a very serious Islamic extremism issue, much in the way that Israel does. India has the added problems of a massive population and poverty that most Westerners just cannot even comprehend.
But let's be fair...Indians have killed more Muslims over their own version of the West Bank and Gaza in the 63 years since it became free of British rule than Israel will in 63 THOUSAND years. In fact, an overall estimate of over 500,000 killed and 14 million evicted is attributed to just the two year time-period when Pakistan was carved out of western India.
Still better than Israel, though...right Democrats? It's hardly surprising though since all the politically-correct appeasement talk has been coming out of the Left for years. What SHOULD be surprising (but unfortunately is not) is that this utter hypocrisy isn't recognized by Jews for what it is.
I swear, sometimes I feel like Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest...
...trying to get a bunch of lunatics to agree to watching the World Series on TV.
It can't just be me though, right? There have to be other people who realize how insane this all is. How is it, that not only don't Jews question these disturbing trends - they actually EMBRACE them and try to act as if it's all part of being pro-Israel in some very cleverly intellectual way that us knuckle-dragging "neo-cons" just would never understand.
And then just to add insult to insanity we end off with this:
Americans are no more optimistic today than they were last year that peace can be reached between Israel and the Palestinians -- and they are, in fact, less optimistic than they were toward the end of the Bush administration.
There's your hope and change nonsense. Is it time to start admitting that maybe just voting the party line in the last election wasn't the best thing for Israel and Jews? Or are we, as Jews, finally ready to admit that we have a highly disturbing 2,000 year old tendency to act against our interests? It's one or the other. It can't be both, it can't be neither.
You'd have to be CRAZY to think otherwise. Right?
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