The AJC’ most recent poll of Georgia voters was conducted as Israel was fully engaged in its war to destroy Hamas after the terrorists’ barbaric attacks on Israelis on October 7. Our poll revealed that nearly two-thirds of Georgians think that supporting Israel is in the best interest of the United States. But there are significant numbers of dissenters.
Nearly 40% of Democrats told pollsters that supporting Israel is not in America’s national interest. What’s more, 41% of Black voters, who typically vote Democratic, share that opinion.
Why is this tepid support for Israel happening even as the country surely has the right to mobilize to defeat an evil terrorist organization that has vowed to wipe out Israelis “from the river to the sea?”
I’d suggest two reasons:
First, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a deeply polarizing figure for many Jews in Israel and in the United States. By forming a governing coalition government with far right anti-Palestinian parties, by encouraging the construction of more Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and by working to undermine the power of Israel’s supreme court (which has always been a counterbalance to government excesses) Netanyahu has been the target of massive protests by Israelis opposed to his policies. While Israelis have for the most part now unified to support the destruction of Hamas, many outside the country remain hostile to Netanyahu and assume he has little regard for the lives of non-combatant Palestinians in Gaza.
Second, the photos and videos of terrified Palestinians living under relentless, massive IDF attacks in Gaza hand the growing toll of the dead and displaced have captured the sympathy of many who just weeks ago were likewise appalled by the news of Israelis who were butchered indiscriminately by Hamas.
All of this reminds me of a trip I made to Israel in 1995 to cover a story that shook Israelis to the core: the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Rabin was beloved by many as a peacemaker who embraced the Oslo Accords, which paved the way for the two-state solution, giving Palestinians autonomy within their own secure territory in exchange for an acceptance of Israel’s right to continue existence as a Jewish state freed from constant threat of attack.
Rabin was shot to death by Yigal Amir, a right-wing extremist who opposed peace with the Palestinians. I arrived in Tel Aviv some 48 hours after the murder, and was just in time to see thousands of Israelis gathered to mourn Rabin’s loss in Kings of Israel Square (now Rabin Square), which was where he’d been murdered. The crowd waved lighted candles in the air, sang songs in Hebrew, and shed tears for his loss.
Many of the Jews who gathered to mourn Rabin’s death at that gathering on a warm November evening would soon also be mourning the beginning of the end of the two-state solution. Over the years, a succession of conservative government coalitions have further eroded support for the Oslo Accords. A poll conducted by Pew Research just weeks before the Hamas attacks revealed that only 35% of Israelis believe that a way can be found for Palestinians and Israelis to live side by side peaceably. That figure has declined more than 15 points over the past decade. Netanyahu has never been an outspoken supporter of the two-state solution, and earlier this year he gave an interview to CNN in which he said he found it extremely unlikely that the Israelis and Palestinians could achieve a long-term peace anytime soon. And that fuels the rage of terrorists who commit unspeakable attacks on Israelis.
And so we now have a punishing war that Israel is fighting to eliminate a terrorist threat, but which has taken a terrible toll on innocent lives on both sides of the conflict. As we watch, we are all asked to decide where we stand on one of the world’s most intractable problems.
Is it any wonder that here in Georgia, as elsewhere in the world the answer to that question pricks the conscience of us all?
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