WarSclerotic

Poll: American Jewish Voters Back Iran Nuclear Deal, Bibi, U.S. Role in Middle East Peace
By Tim Starks Posted at 11:53 a.m. on Nov. 6, 2014 Via Rollcall

(The Liberal Left and American Jews…just doesn’t seem right.-LS)

A poll commissioned by the group J Street found American Jews voted heavily for Democrats (69 percent) in this week’s elections. It also offered a window into their views on a range of foreign policy issues.

A total of 84 percent said they would strongly support or somewhat support a nuclear deal with Iran that had these parameters:

Imagine that the U.S., Britain, Germany, France, China, Russia, and Iran reach a final agreement, which restricts Iran’s enrichment of uranium to levels that are suitable for civilian energy purposes only, and places full-time international inspectors at Iranian nuclear facilities to make sure that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons. Under this agreement, the United States and our allies will reduce sanctions on Iran as Iran meets the compliance benchmarks of the agreement.

Of those polled, 64 precent had heard at least some amount about the nuclear negotiations, vs. 36 percent not much/none. Whether critics would describe a deal with those parameters in harsher terminology, perhaps by pointing out what such a deal wouldn’t include, is a separate question, as is whether such a deal is possible.

The poll found that, among politicians in the United States and other public figures, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) had the highest mean support (61 percent). Next most popular were Jon Stewart and Hillary Clinton (@hillaryclinton), with Republicans faring much worse, as you might expect from a group of largely Democratic voters. (For the Republican Jewish perspective to the poll’s results on Democratic voters, try here.)

Jewish support for the military operations in Gaza this summer was strong (80 percent total support), as was support for an active U.S. role in resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict (85 percent). That includes support for public U.S. criticism of both Israelis and Arabs (72 percent), but not as much when Israel is singled out (48 percent).

The topics that most interested voters in this week’s elections aligned closely with that reset of the electorate, with the economy the top priority. Asked to pick two from a list, the economy generated 44 percent of the answers, with some specific foreign policy subjects getting lesser support: terrorism and national security (17 percent), ISIS and Iraq/Syria (13 percent), Israel (8 percent) and Iran (0 percent).

The poll was conducted by Gerstein, Bocian, Agne Strategies. J Street is a left-leaning, pro-peace Jewish organization.

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