A Guardian Op-ed Gonker

One Benjamin Pogrund thinks he knows facts.

He writes in the UK Guardian today:

It is likely that Netanyahu will surmount the challenges. His coalition government is stable and no one wants to lose their cabinet seat. He probably also enjoys broad public support – surveys have shown that many Israelis dislike the West Bank settlements.

Well, Benjamin is a South African-born author currently living in Israel. He was a member of the Israeli delegation to the United Nations World Conference against Racism in Durban. So, that makes him, well, just a little worse than Richard Goldstone in terms of politics (did Lord Dick attend Durban? I don't think so).

Now, as for that use of "many" above.

Is it "many of my friends and radical ideological colleagues"?

Is it "many" as in 'almost a majority'?

What does he mean?

After all, the Jewish communities in Yesha have been around for over 42 years and have steadily grown and no government coalition has stopped their growth entirely and many (did you notice that? 'many') Israelis continue to move into them.

But what does this following June report mean?

Poll: 56% of Israelis back settlement construction

Nearly six of every 10 Israelis think Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should resist U.S. demands to completely freeze construction in Jewish West Bank settlements, according to a new poll released Friday.

The poll by the Maagar Mohot Polling Institute comes just ahead of Netanyahu's major policy speech on Sunday that is expected to address a growing divide with Washington.

...Fifty-six percent of those surveyed said Netanyahu should not consent to the American demand to halt all settlement construction, as opposed to 37 percent who said he should. Fifty percent said failure to comply would not provoke a crisis with the U.S., while 32 percent said they thought the settlement freeze was a make or break issue for Washington.

Maagar Mohot also found in a separate poll that two-thirds of Israelis have little appetite for dismantling West Bank settlements. Thirty-six percent oppose any evacuation as part of a final peace deal and 30 percent said only a small number should be dismantled.

Both surveys polled 503 people and had a margin of error of 4.5 percentage points.

And this Israeli Democracy Institute poll this year:

Evacuating settlements: 48% of Israelis are not prepared to evacuate any settlements within the framework of a permanent agreement; 37% are prepared for the evacuation of isolated settlements; and 15% are prepared to evacuate all the settlements over the green line.

If I understand that result, 85% support keeping all veteran establishment communities in place.

Let's do one more?

Here, the prestigious Tel Aviv Peace Index from October:-

...it appears that a majority of the Jewish public (60%), think continued building in the settlements does not reduce the chances of reaching the two-state solution and is not concerned that continued building will lead in practice to the situation of a binational state, with only one-third concerned about such an outcome. A cross-checking of the answers to the two questions -on agreement with the two-state idea and on continued construction in the settlements - shows that among both the supporters and the opponents of the two-state formula, a majority thinks continued construction in the settlements will not ultimately detract from the realization of the two-state solution; nonetheless, the position on the first question influences the assessment on the second question. That is, while among the two-state supporters only 54% are not concerned about continued building, among the two-state opponents a large majority of 72% are not concerned about the effects of continued building in the settlements.

I could go on but Pogrund seems to be fantasizing.

The Guardian gonked out on him.