According to a new Harvard/Harris poll, only the police and military are more respected than Israel. It’s heartening that Americans overwhelmingly support civilization over the Islamofascists of Gaza and Iran.
Then again, “Palestinian Authority” gets 17 percent support, and Hamas has a 14 percent positive rating — which is to say, 14 percent of your neighbors have taken the side of a medieval religious cult that’s vicious enough to cut Jewish babies out of mothers before beheading them. If 14 percent of Americans supported ISIS or al Qaeda or the Nazi Party, we would probably be concerned.
Anyway, those numbers seem far too small to me. I think there’s a good reason why. For one thing, many of those who claim to be “supporters” of the Jewish State are not. The Barack Obama types, who do the perfunctory throat-clearing about Israel’s right to exist before going into the usual reasons it should not. This faction — let’s be generous and call them “both-siders” — is a growing concern in the Democratic Party and on the fringes of the right.
According to the Harvard poll crosstabs, 36 percent of “liberals” of all ages agreed that the Hamas attack on civilians was justified. 15 percent of “conservatives.” While antisemitism isn’t the exclusive domain of left or right, full-blown Hamas apologists are now deeply embedded in left-wing institutions such as universities, major newspapers, cable news, progressive politics, think tanks, and the State Department. They have the kind of disproportionate reach and institutional respect that cosplaying
