Writing in the Times of Israel, Josef Federman tells us:
An opinion poll of attitudes inside Egypt and Saudi Arabia conducted by Israel’s Interdisciplinary Center found virtually no support for presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in the two Arab countries.
The survey could signal trouble for Trump if he wins the November election and sets out to devise a Mideast policy. Egypt and Saudi Arabia are two of America’s most powerful and important allies in the Arab world.When asked who their preferred candidate was, just 3.8 percent of Egyptian respondents chose Trump. In Saudi Arabia, only 6% favored Trump.
According to survey director Alex Mintz, “The overall pattern is that most people … do not support either candidate, but they hate Trump..."
Ya don't say!
They hate Donald Trump in Saudi Arabia, do they?
I have to tell you, it almost makes me want to support the guy.
Saudi Arabia is the very fountainhead of Salafism and thus Islamism and thereby ISIS.
It was the Arabian Peninsula, of course, where Muhammad and his friends came to believe that killing Jews was not only a dandy idea, but adored in the eyes of G-d.
For all that Koranically-based hatred murdering its way around the Middle East, and all those chopped heads toppling onto the beaches in Libya, and all those young girls raped as a matter of religious privilege... let's hand it to our friends on the Saudi peninsula.
Let's hand it to the King, the Crown Prince, and the Royal Family.
Let's give them a big round of applause.
I am not writing this as a Trump supporter, you should know, mainly because the guy is just so obnoxious that I do not see how he can possibly function as president of the United States.
People say that Trump is both a racist and a sexist and he definitely threw away my likely support when he demeaned Carly Fiorina's looks.
The racism charges, however, are primarily based on the notion of a wall separating the United States from Mexico and the fact that Trump intends to keep Islamic terrorists out of the United States.
As to the former, what Trump wants is simply to keep out illegal immigrants and I do not have a problem with that. I do not know that a big wall is the answer and I certainly would hate to see the National Guard rounding up gazillions of Latinos for deportation, but I do not believe in an open-door policy, either.
But Latinos are not the problem.
The gang activity in places like Los Angeles or Phoenix, Arizona, is considerable, but it is not particularly political or ideological and no more troubling than gang activity throughout the United States from other ethnicities, including white people.
And, unlike political Islam, it is not grounded in religiously-based Jew hatred.
Middle Eastern immigration into the United States, though, is another matter entirely.
What we do not want - or what we should not want, at least - is for Jihadis to slide through the process and end up murdering people in places like San Bernadino, California.
It is not "racist" to defend oneself against a large and hostile political movement that would prefer to see your family dead.
Must it be reiterated that polling throughout the Arab-Muslim Middle East demonstrates a distinct hatred for both Jews and Americans?
And why should Jewish Americans happily welcome people who decidely hate us into our own country?
It is a matter of basic common sense and fundamental human decency - particularly among a small minority - to want to protect one's friends and family and children from those who would seek them harm.
No people of any ethnicity would willingly welcome a much larger hostile population into their own homes and it is not bigoted to say so.
But this is the dilemma for Jewish people throughout the world.
Jewish self-defense is considered a form of aggression in both the Middle East and the West.
And it has been that way for a very long time.
Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.
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