The NYTimes posted a piece yesterday (link) showing that according to a recent Palestinian opinion poll, 84% of Palestinians supported the Mercaz Harav attack, 64% support the ongoing bombing of sderot, and 75% believe that the Peace Talks are a waste of time. In the words of NYTimes:
A new poll shows that an overwhelming majority of Paelstinians support the attack this month on a Jewish seminary in Jerusalem that killed eight young men, most of them teenagers, an indication of the alarming level of Israeli-Palestinian tension in recent weeks.
The survey also shows unprecedented support for the shooting of rockets on Israeli towns from the Gaza Strip and for the end of the peace negotiations between Palestinian and Israeli leaders.
The pollster, Khalil Shikaki, said he was shocked because the survey, taken last week, showed greater support for violence than any other he had conducted over the past 15 years in the Palestinian areas. Never before, he said, had a majority favored an end to negotiations or the shooting of rockets at Israel.
Now, this poll is worrying in the extreme. Why? Because we are negotiating with the Palestinians. But they have no intention of making Peace with us! What is the point? It feels like a simple delusion. See this video (link) by the Hamas MP (We seek Death like They Seek Life!) or the fact that last week Abbas admitted that if the political Process failed, they would be happy to return to armed struggle!!
But there is another aspect of this poll which makes me want to point this poll out in particular. It is because Haaretz today just ignored it. Instead it published a different poll (link):
Study: Israeli Jews becoming increasingly racist toward Arabs
We are rascist? How about them wanting to kill us! Why is HaAretz consistently so down on ourselves, on Israel? We are always awful; the Palestinians, helpless victims. I like reading HaAretz. It is intelligent ... and has a great arts and culture section. But it is frequently so self-hating and so post-Zionist.
This left-wing post-Zionism and always seeing ourselves as wrong, evil, rascist etc. is worrying. It is worrying because many of the so proclaimed "intellectual elite" and media leaders in Israel are precisely these Left Wingers and they routinely delegitimise anyone who holds different political views as if they were barbarian.
Please see this excellent op-ed by Amnon Rubinstein (link), and this (link) depressing article by Daniel Gordis.
They relate to the emptiness of the Left wing secular as well. Just today on the radio I heard a presenter talking about how most secular Israelis only know that Purim is a day one gets dressed up. They don't even know the Purim story! They have never heard the Megilla!
What's to be done?
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