Source: The Huffington Post
American and Israeli Jews have much more than an ocean dividing them.
Four out of five Jews in the world live in either Israel or the United States. And while these two groups feel a strong emotional connection to each other, a new data essay from the Pew Research Center shows that they disagree on a variety of issues ― from religious identity to political ideology to the prospect of peace with Palestinians.
Pew researchers pulled together data from a March 2016 survey of Israeli adults and an October 2013 survey of American Jews. The resulting essay illustrates broad ideological differences ― for example, most Israeli Jews place themselves on the center or on the right of their country’s political spectrum. In contrast, most American Jews identify with the center or the left.
When asked about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, only 43 percent of Israeli Jews believed that Israel and an independent Palestinian state could coexist peacefully, compared to 61 percent of U.S. Jews. Forty-two percent of Israeli Jews agreed that Jewish settlements in the West Bank help their country’s security, while only 17 percent of American Jews thought the same.
Yossi Klein Halevi, a senior fellow at Jerusalem’s Shalom Hartman Institute, believes this divergence is due to differing life experiences.
“Israelis live in the least hospitable region on the planet, not only for Jews, for everybody. And American Jews live in the most welcoming society, the most hospitable society that Jews have ever known in 4,000 years,” Halevi said in a Pew Research Center video. “That means we need to develop opposing strategies for coping. [Israeli Jews] need to be the toughest kid on the block and American Jews need to be flexible.”
Categories: America, Israel, Judaism, Middle East, The Muslim Times, USA
‘US And Israeli Jews Are Strongly Connected But Sharply Divided’ – balderdash – jews are jews, regardless of what the jews say – caught for the sixth time WW11, Auschwitz, – Bible:- ‘the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow’.