Are 95% of US Jews Really Zionists?
JVL Introduction
Statistics are used to “prove” many things people would like us to believe.
But the headline-grabbing statements of “fact” can rarely be taken at face value as Tim Harford’s BBC radio programme More or Less points out elegantly week after week.
Statistics about antisemitism or about Israel are as amenable to distortion and misuse as any others.
In this Jewish Currents article by Caroline Morganti, US statistics are scrutinised, beginning with the popular assertion that “95% of Jews . . . support the Jewish state.”, an assertion it turns out that is based on Gallup pollster Frank Newport’s “back-of-the-envelope estimate, based on only 128 Jewish-by-religion respondents over five years. Instead, it is regularly repeated as a truism…”
Here Morgantini explores what we reliably know and don’t know about American Jewish attitudes.
[PS: The title above has been amended to make it clear the article is about Jews in the USA]
This article was originally published by Jewish Currents on Thu 29 Oct 2020. Read the original here.
Are 95% of Jews Really Zionists?
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The last poll (University of Maryland) seems a good response; only about one-third supporting the current state or annexation, with one-third a two-state solution and one-third a single democratic state.
I don’t believe playing the numbers game is very helpful. The evaluation of Israel should be based on facts not how many Jews support Israel. Let’s suppose 100 percent of American Jews strongly supported Israel, they would be just as wrong to do so as if 50 percent supported the Jewish State.
Racism is always wrong whoever supports it.
“What the Jewish Community believes” is a tactic used by Zionists to divert attention from the reality on the ground in Israel.
Racists non Jew and Jew thoroughly deserve to be offended because racism is always offensive.
Back in the 90s there was a free Jewish newspaper that I used to pick up occasionally at the local library (in NW London), and as time went by I couldn’t help but notice how it was becoming increasingly hardcore, for want of a better way of putting it. I’m pretty sure it was a weekly paper, and no doubt was also ‘stocked’ by other libraries right across NW London and libraries in other areas of the country where there were Jewish communities.
I don’t recall the name, but it could have been something as simple as Jewish News, and even back then I realised – as time went on and it became more and more militant – that the sole purpose in providing a free newspaper was to harden the views of those who read it against the Palestinians and any Israelis or Israeli groups who were sympathetic to the Palestinians and their plight.
I don’t know what the complexion of the media is in Israel, but I assume it mostly disseminates the Establishment line – as with the British media – and my point IS of course that peoples opinions are ONE thing, and who ‘formulated’ them entirely another!
If your left arm is in the microwave, and your right in the freezer , on average you are comfortable!!
So much for statistics !!
Here’s another unscientific poll: I have dozens and dozens of Jewish friends and acquaintances, and they’re not all Tory voters, and I honestly have never encountered one who is anti-Israel to the extent that JVL and most of its contributors are. Plenty are concerned, critical, supportive, hopeful, heart-broken and some are active in different movements but Israel’s continued existence as a thriving Jewish State is dear to their hearts whatever their politics. If that’s being a Zionist then I suspect the percentage is 99-100%. Half of the Jewish people in the world live in Israel; we all have friends, relatives and associates there. Why should we not care about their security and prosperity? Talk of some theoretical secular state for all is nonsense if we really care about the welfare of our fellow Jews, which I believe 99%+ of us do.
This is an interesting article, but I want to make a couple of observations. Firstly, the title should refer to US Jews and not Jews in general, as the claim it refers to is “95% of US Jews support Israel”. Secondly, the Pew survey linked to in the article is very interesting, particularly about the huge gulf in religiosity between older generations and millennials and also the observations that US Jews generally consider oppressed minorities, including Muslims, as more discriminated against than they are. Finally, it is a pity that the questions about solutions to the oppression of the Palestinians has not been put to US Jews in a survey. It is quite possible that a similar proportion would favour a single democratic state, despite some of those people’s claims of affinity or whatever to Israel – and the former opinion is more important as it has real practical implications.
The Pew survey looks like it is more rigorous than any of the ones in the UK, as it considers people who are Jewish by ancestry (for some reason, the article above fails to say this, despite the fact that it is stated in the same sentence as talking about Jews by religion and culture). The only way such Jews might have been included in a UK survey is by looking at surnames and that would miss many Jews, most of them non-observant, for example me.
Thank you for this article…most insightful
Reply to Jaye: your personal experience of Zionist Jews is at complete odds with the data. That is not necessarily surprising. If I based my understanding on my personal experience and contacts, I would conclude that 99% of all Jews were supporters of a secular democratic state.
Your claim that 99-100% of all Jews are supporters of Israel is way out even if you just consider religious Jews living in Israel. 10% of the Israeli population are Haredi and a large majority of them do not support the Israeli state. A similar proportion of US Jews are Haredi and possibly even 20% in the UK.
Please explain how a secular democratic state would be bad for the “welfare” of Jews.
“10% of the Israeli population are Haredi and a large majority of them do not support the Israeli state.” This statement needs justification and a cursory check suggests it is incorrect. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haredim_and_Zionism, “According to a 2012 Democracy Index survey: 62% of Haredi Jews in Israel claim to be Zionists as well.”