I just don’t see the prevalent dovish attitude among American Jews that you see. In regards to Lebanon, for example, I saw most American Jews as united in supporting Israel during that awful war, with even normally dovish groups like the Israel Policy Forum staunchly standing behind Israel. I would love to be proven wrong, but it seems to me a majority of American Jews do not support confronting Israel over the settlements, negotiating with Hamas, etc,

I was all set to argue with you & bring to bear previous poll results I’ve read conducted by Steven Cohen. But a curious thing happened. I couldn’t find a full representation of Cohen’s survey results anywhere online. Cohen wrote to me saying he hadn’t polled on this issue since 2004. And it appears that the only other polling is done by the American Jewish Committee, an organization with such a suspect political agenda regarding Israel that I also suspect their poll results. Not that there’s anything fake about them. But as any pollster will tell you, survey response are highly susceptible to massaging based on how you word questions, etc.

And on examining the most recent survey results, which are quite out of date being from 2005, your contentions about the conservatism of American Jews is largely borne out. But with a few significant exceptions. First, 56% of American Jews support a Palestinian state “in the current situation.” One could argue that George Bush and Ehud Olmert support a Palestinian state too (at least in words). But the difference is that American Jews are willing to see one NOW & those 2 are not.

Also, 61% of American Jews believe that Israel should give up either “all” or “some” of its existing West Bank settlements. That too can be a suspect number as one can argue that Olmert too believes in dismantling “some” settlements. But I believe that American Jews would be willing to dismantle far more settlements than Olmert would.

UPDATE: I just found an Ameinu poll conducted by Cohen (this must’ve been the most recent poll he’d done which he referred to in his e mail to me) and released in April, 2005. It reassures me of my original assumption about the dovish attitudes of American Jews & also shows just how different surveys can be which cover very similar territory.

It says that 41% of American Jews favor withdrawing from “most” settlements, while only 27% oppose it.

Cohen finds that 70% favor a Palestinian state if it were to be created in the context of a full resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

75% believe the U.S. should push for a settlement of the conflict “even in the face of objections from Israelis or Palestinians.” This attitude of course flies in the face of current Israeli AND U.S. policy.

A 41% plurality believe Israel should allow a small number of Palestinians to return who left Israel in 1948 (Right of Return), in the context of a peace settlement.

A 47% plurality believe the U.S. should push Israel to be more conciliatory toward the Palestinians.

A 40% plurality believe:

Rather than almost always taking Israel’s side as it does now, the United States should be more even-handed in its approach to the conflict…

I also believe that if you look at some of the distressing AJC polling numbers from that 2005 survey you’d find that some of the more right-trending attitudes would’ve moderated significantly in light of Israel’s disastrous war with Lebanon.

Regarding negotiating with Hamas, I haven’t seen any poll results on that question. But Cohen notes that American Jewish attitudes closely parallel Israeli attitudes toward the conflict. And I HAVE seen Israeli polls which show 60% support Israeli negotiations not just with a national unity government, but with Hamas itself. I believe American Jewish opinion wouldn’t be much different.

Regarding Lebanon, I’m not so sure I agree with you on what American Jews believed. While a significant number would’ve supported Israel’s position lock, stock & barrel–the fact that pro-Israel rallies organized by the mainstream community were relatively poorly attended during the war leads me to believe that there was profound ambivalence among many American Jews. But yes, I agree with you that there was entirely too much lock step support and entirely too little questioning of the assumptions behind Israeli policy toward Lebanon & Hezbollah.

When JTA ran a story last week about an initiative backed by George Soros (or not yet backed if you believe Rosner’s reports below) and other powerful dovish American Jewish leaders, it noted that one of the purposes of the…