NY Jewish Week’s Eric Herschthal reports on “the increasingly liberal” views reflected in a Conservative movement survey of 100s of American rabbis:
46 percent said they were “always proud” of Israel, but 44 percent said they were “sometimes ashamed.” Sixty-three percent thought that Israel should freeze settlements in the West Bank, and another 17 percent were unsure. More than twice as many rabbis supported Obama’s call for a peace deal based on ’67 borders with lands swaps than those that opposed it, and the vast majority–78 percent–viewed the settler movement unfavorably.
And here’s another poll that suggests politicians are out of step with public opinion, a Think Progress report on a poll of Israeli opinion:
A joint poll by the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in the Occupied Palestinian Territories found that 69 percent of Israelis think that their country should accept United Nations recognition of an independent Palestinian state, according the Jerusalem Post.
With all due respect nobody in Israel gives a flying Avigdor Lieberman about the conservative Jews. Or the Reform crowd. They aren’t proper Jews, are they ?
Israel is like an all Jewish version of Texas.
It doesn’t matter what “people” think, whether in Israel or in USA. People as such don’t count, never did, in these leader-democracies, where leaders are chosen by elections and (at least in USA) elections are entirely “rigged” by a variety of BIG-MONEY, much of it owned or significantly controlled by pro-extreme-Zionist folks — who support the USA’s military empire and also Israel’s — who also do not believe in global warming, which, unlike the teensy-weensy problem of Israel (or of Palestine) IS A MAJOR PROBLEM. There’s no room for the “people” to have a voice.
A simple question for the rabbis, if ethnic cleansing and occupation are essential for the survival of Judaism, whither Judaism?