American Support for Israel...

...is soaring.

Comments

[DRaftervoi]

Any idea how they phrased the question (i.e., did they phrase it in such a way that you can interpret it as warm feelings towards the citizens as opposed to the STATE? Because I find it difficult to believe that 11% of American citizens have warm feelings towards a religiously fundamentalist one-party state wherein government officials chant "death to America" as part of government meetings. Where, exactly, do you find 1 out of 10 Americans who have "warm feelings" about "death to America?" On the other hand, I have warm feelings towards IranIANS, an entirely different matter than my attitudes towards their government.

[Gail]

Interesting question. I checked the site of the poll's commissioner, The Israel Project, and found the following:

A new poll commissioned by The Israel Project (TIP) shows that Israel's image is at a five-year high among U.S. opinion elite. When asked to rate their feelings on a scale of one to 100, in which 1 meant "very cold or unfavorable" and 100 meant "warm/very favorable," Israel received a "warm/very favorable" rating from 63 percent of elite and an average or mean rating of 66. That was an increase of 13 points from a "warm/very favorable rating" from 50 percent and a mean of 61 percent in May 2006.

Iran was rated negatively by 71 percent of those polled and received a positive rating from only 11 percent, with an average or mean rating of 28 percent. Hamas received a cool rating from 71 percent, a warm rating from 6 percent and an average or mean rating of 23 percent on a scale of one to 100.

The actual questions and results can be found here.