Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Perils of Editing

What I found researching articles by Shmuel Katz at the Jerusaelm Post:

A FAILURE OF AMERICAN JEWISH LEADERSHIP?
December 13, 1991

EARLY in November, the results of a "poll" of American Jewish leaders were published. It was gleefully reported by Joel Brinkley in The New York Times as demonstrating that the tremendous ovation accorded Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir by the 3,000 participants in the annual Conference of Leaders of Jewish Community Federations was not a true reflection of those leaders' views on the conflict in Palestine. The poll had taken in 339 participants, of whom evidently only 205 replied to the questions.

The replies revealed that 88 percent of the 205 respondents favored a "territorial compromise;" 79 percent agreed to a "Palestinian State;" 85 percent rejected Shamir's statement that he would not give up an inch of territory; and 78 percent favored a freeze of the "settlements." One month earlier, the American Jewish Committee published the results of its annual poll of American Jews, embracing 1,125 respondents nationwide, on the same questions. It revealed a considerable hardening of attitudes toward the Arab-Israeli conflict. Eighty-six percent of those who responded agreed that Israel "must hold on to the West Bank," while 14 percent disagreed.
Twenty-four percent favored outright "annexation," while 52 percent favored Israel's "military control with local self-rule for the Arabs." Similarly, the poll reflected a firm attitude toward American pressures on Israel. Seventy-one percent believed that the US "should stop criticizing Israel for expanding the West Bank settlements." Whatever else these two sets of figures portend, they emphasize a long-revealed phenomenon: that the "leadership" is out of touch with the community. They also serve to remind Israelis that the reports in the media of the defeatist ideas of American Jewry, and sometimes threatening minatory (Judy: it means threatening, for your information! --so YOU decide whether you want to change it and risk encountering his wrath, that prima donna!) doom-laden warnings, are simply absurd.

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