and a mother's prediction is vindicated
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BONG!
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A new Gallup poll shows that less than half of Americans are sympathetic to Israel, with respect to the Israel/Palestine nightmare, for the first time since they started taking the poll in 2001.
Consistently in the 60s until Obama’s last years in office, support for Israel started steadily declining in 2020 and plummeted last year to its current number of 46%.
Sympathy for the Palestinians, OTOH, ascended from its record low of 12% in 2013 to a peak of 31% in 2023, then dropped to 27% last year amidst the wave of Israeli propaganda that saturated this country, then turned around and shot up to 33% by the time the poll was taken in early February.
A sea change in American public opinion is happening, and it cannot be reversed. Like all sea changes, this one has historical roots, which I think I can best describe through the eyes of a child.
The child was myself. I was a weird kid who liked to watch the news, probably because my dad always had it on and I wanted his approval. It didn’t hurt that both my parents encouraged this behavior.
In 1967, when the Israelis attacked Syria, Jordan, and Egypt and sank the USS Liberty during the Six Day War, 9 year old me asked my mom why we supported Israel instead of the Arabs.hey started taking the poll in 2001.
Consistently in the 60s until Obama’s last years in office, support for Israel started steadily declining in 2020 and plummeted last year to its current number of 46%.
Sympathy for the Palestinians, OTOH, ascended from its record low of 12% in 2013 to a peak of 31% in 2023, then dropped to 27% last year amidst the wave of Israeli propaganda that saturated this country, then turned around and shot up to 33% by the time the poll was taken in early February.
A sea change in American public opinion is happening, and it cannot be reversed. Like all sea changes, this one has historical roots, which I think I can best describe through the eyes of a child.
The child was myself. I was a weird kid who liked to watch the news, probably because my dad always had it on and I wanted his approval. It didn’t hurt that both my parents encouraged this behavior.
In 1967, when the Israelis attacked Syria, Jordan, and Egypt and sank the USS Liberty during the Six Day War, 9 year old me asked my mom why we supported Israel instead of the Arabs.hey started taking the poll in 2001.
She sighed, and said “Because we felt sorry for them,” them obviously meaning the Jews even to 9 year old me. Of course I asked why, but all she would say is that the Germans did horrible things to them during the war, and “everybody” felt they deserved their own country because of it.
That is the foundation of American support for the State of Israel right there—pity. Pity for the poor Jews who didn’t deserve what happened to them, and a resolve that it should never again happen to them, and by implication anyone else, because if that resolve didn’t include everyone it was meaningless.
Just six years later, during the October War, my 15 year old self, who had by now seen the images of both the Holocaust and of the horrors the Japanese had inflicted on both Allied prisoners of war and the Chinese population in general, asked his mom if she still felt the same way.
Continue reading article in Substack.
Just six years later, during the October War, my 15 year old self, who had by now seen the images of both the Holocaust and of the horrors the Japanese had inflicted on both Allied prisoners of war and the Chinese population in general, asked his mom if she still felt the same way.
Continue reading article in Substack.