Americans Still Strongly Back Israel, Most Cite Religious Ideology as Reason

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1233304699073&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull


The Jerusalem Post released an article yesterday that discusses a survey of conducted recently to ascertain the level of American support for Israel. Of 800 respondents, 57% "defined themselves as Israel supporters", and only 8% "called themselves Palestinian supporters. (34% were undecided or had no opinion. The survey was conducted by a non-profit group called The Israel Project, who said that in the past several months to a year, the number of Americans identifying themselves as Israel supporters had dropped twelve percent. Opposingly, the number of Americans identifying themselves as Palestinian supporters had risen by two percent. (This was to be expected, given the recent Gaza conflict.)

What interested me about this article was the calculation that 73% of those surveyed thought the Israeli-Palestinian "conflict was about ideology and religion". Only nineteen percent of the surveyed persons were of the opinion that the conflict was over land. I do not feel I am qualified to have a strong opinion concerning this, but I feel that the conflict is much more layered and deep-rooted than I can fathom. It is for this reason that it is baffling to me how such an overwhelming majority of Americans can label the conflict as being over ideology and religion. (For example, in cities like Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, it seems like people of many religions live together in Israel without constant warring and over-crippling terror.) Sure, some people have thought it through, but I feel that many have not (I haven't).

In any case, I'd like to ask a few questions to those of you who have an opinion: Do you support Israel or Palestine? Why? Why do you think America has an interest in this Mid-East conflict? Do you think America should have this interest? I'd be honestly interested to hear what you think.