WarSclerotic

Two thirds of Jewish Israelis believe that US president Barack Obama will fail to keep his promise to prevent Iran’s development of nuclear weapons, while only 27% believe he will succeed, according to the monthly Peace Index poll taken by the Israel Democracy Institute and Tel Aviv University, which was released Thursday.The poll of 601 respondents constituting a representative sample of the adult population of Israel was conducted last Monday and Tuesday, the days that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met with Obama in Washington and delivered his address to the United Nations General Assembly. The headlines in the days ahead of the poll were about the Iranian charm offensive at the UN and the historic phone conversation between Obama and Iranian president Hassan Rouhani.Asked whether the US was projecting weakness on Iran, affirmative answers were given by 60% of Israelis, including 64% of Jewish respondents and 40% of Arab respondents. Only 22% of Israelis said the US was projecting power, including 20% of the Jewish respondents and 31% of the Arab respondents.

When asked the same question about Syria, the results were similar. Sixty three percent of Israelis said the US was projecting weakness. Among Jews, 66% answered affirmatively and 49% of Arab respondents said yes. Twenty three percent said the US was projecting power, including 22% of Jewish respondents and 28% of the Arabs surveyed.

Israeli Jews and Arabs differed starkly in their opinion on whether Iran was really changing its position. Eighty percent of Israeli Jews said they believed that Rouhani’s UN speech calling for an agreement with the West does not indicate a real change, just a change in rhetoric. Only 14% of Israeli Jews said they believed that it does constitute a real change. Among Israeli Arabs, 47% said a real change was underway, while 42% believe that only the rhetoric has changed.

Seventy-seven percent of Jewish Israelis said Netanyahu was right to continue warning the world of the danger Iran poses, while 14% said he should leave that job to American and European leaders.

The measurement error for a sample of this size is 4.5%.