JTA: “J Street to ADL: Let’s do a poll”

Aaron Keyak — February 3, 2009 – 5:44 pm | Israel | Polls | Terrorism Comments (0) Add a comment

From JTA:

J Street executive director Jeremy Ben-Ami says he has a proposal for the Anti-Defamation League.

He wants to team up with the organization for a “serious poll” that explores American Jewish opinion on Israel and the Middle East, as opposed to the survey which the ADL released last week and which ADL national director Abraham Foxman said strongly contradicts “those who disagreed with Israel’s actions against Hamas and claimed there was a sharp division in the American Jewish community.”

Ben-Ami believes Foxman was referring to his organization—neither Foxman nor the poll mentioned any specific group—but  said, “I don’t think the poll is at all relevant to what we were saying.”

The poll asked whether American Jews favored Israel or Hamas in the conflict—with overwhelming numbers favoring Israel—and found that 79 percent of American Jews felt Israel’s response to Hamas rocket attacks was “appropriate,” with just 17 judging them “excessive.”

But Ben-Ami responded that it was no surprise that the vast majority of American Jews favored Israel over Hamas, and that while the latter finding was interesting, his organization didn’t take a position on that issue. Instead, J Street was questioning whether “these types of actions” in Gaza “make Israel more secure” in the long run and “enhance the prospect of achieving peace and security.” And he said that ADL didn’t ask that question in its poll.

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