[Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA: "Meretz and Peace Now said the survey indicated
that Israelis did not yet realize the potential benefits of the regional
peace initiative that Obama was advocating, but they expressed confidence
that they eventually would."

Reminds me of the song from the old MASH movie: "suicide is painless"]

Left laments Obama's image in Israel
Gil Hoffman , THE JERUSALEM POST Aug. 30, 2009
www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1251145146673&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull

The Israeli Left reacted with dismay over the weekend to the results of a
Jerusalem Post-sponsored Smith Research poll published on Friday that found
only 4 percent of Jewish Israelis believe that US President Barack Obama's
policies are more pro-Israel than pro-Palestinian.

The survey, which was featured prominently on Fox News in the United States
and picked up by media outlets around the world, reported that 51% of Jewish
Israelis considered Obama's administration more pro-Palestinian than
pro-Israel, 35% called it neutral and 10% declined to express an opinion.

The poll of 500 people representing a statistical model of the Jewish
Israeli population had a margin of error of 4.5%.

Meretz and Peace Now said the survey indicated that Israelis did not yet
realize the potential benefits of the regional peace initiative that Obama
was advocating, but they expressed confidence that they eventually would.

"It is terrific for Israel that there is an American president with vision,
and it is a pity that most Israelis don't realize that," Meretz faction
chairman MK Ilan Gilon said. "Israelis think that Christian evangelists who
rubber-stamp everything Israel does are the only Americans who are
pro-Israel. But what is really good for Israel is a solution to the
conflict, and Obama is doing what it takes to bring it about."

Peace Now secretary-general Yariv Oppenheimer said what mattered more at
this stage of the peace process was Obama's reputation in the Arab world,
and not in Israel.

"Despite the results of the poll, the Israeli interest is that Obama will be
popular in the Arab world, so he could bring about a peace agreement with
Israel," Oppenheimer said. "Bush was popular in Israel and hated around the
world, and his policies did not help Israel end the Palestinian conflict or
quell the Iranian threat. If he succeeds in his goals of advancing Middle
East peace, I am sure he will become much more popular with Israelis."

Zionist Organization of America President Morton Klein, who was excluded
from a recent meeting of US Jewish leaders with Obama, issued a press
release saying that the poll confirmed a high degree of Israeli concern with
and disapproval of the US leader's policies.

"It is clear that the Obama administration's relentless pressure upon
America's ally Israel to not permit even one additional Jew to move into
eastern Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, demanding virtually the unilateral
establishment of a Palestinian state that will certainly be a terrorist
state antagonistic to Israel, while putting no serious pressure on the
Palestinians to arrest terrorists or end incitement against Jews and
Israelis, has led most Israelis to now believe that Barack Obama is friend
of Arabs and not of the Israelis," Klein said.

Chicago-based Palestinian commentator Ray Hanania wrote on the Arabisto Web
site that Israelis might have assumed wrongly that Obama would be
pro-Israel, because he shared a name with Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

"[Obama] is not in anyone's back pocket," Hanania wrote. "The Israeli lobby
in the United States must be besides itself wondering what the heck is going
on. But if being fair, just and dedicated to genuine peace means that 'more'
people might think you are not on their side, then maybe that's the price
someone in this country should finally pay if the United States is going to
continue to insist on being the sole arbiter of the so-far elusive Middle
East Peace."

The Right questioned how 4% of the Jewish Israeli population could still
consider Obama more pro-Israel than pro-Palestinian.

"Four percent of the public evidently didn't understand the question," said
National Union MK Arye Eldad. "If they did, 99.9% would say that he is
extremely anti-Israel. The only Israelis who would say he is pro-Israel are
those who join Fatah and call for anti-Israel boycotts.

"Obama is one of the most antagonistic presidents to Israel ever. I hope he
will not succeed in his goal of doing irrevocable damage to Israel and that
once again we will be saved by the rejectionism of the Arabs, who always
want even more than they have been offered."

Likud MK Danny Danon expressed satisfaction that Israelis believed that
Obama was not acting in Israel's interests. He said he hoped that the US
president's "one-sidedness" would ironically derail the Middle East peace
process, because Israelis would urge Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to
reject Obama's pressure.

"If at first we thought Obama was omnipotent, we see polls in Israel and in
the US that the magic and nice words have finally begun to wear off," Danon
said. "Obama's extremism against Israel has united the population from
center to Right behind Netanyahu."