J-Street released a really unprofessional survey on Democratic voters' attitudes towards Israel and the Palestinians.
The questions are so biased as to be laughable.
For example:
People often talk about being pro-Israel. Do you think someone can be critical of IsraeliI'm actually surprised at the 13%. Every thinking person, right or left, agrees that someone can be critical of Israeli policies and still pro-Israel. J-Street, of course, is critical of virtually every Israeli government policy. If they would have asked "Do you think someone can have thousands of anti-Israel tweets and not a single pro-Israel tweet, and still be pro-Israel?" then the answer would not have pleased them, because that is what J-Street is.
government policies and still be pro-Israel?
Total
Yes.........................................................................................81
No ..........................................................................................13
(Don't know/refused) ..............................................................5
Similarly, J-Street worded this question not to illuminate but to pretend that their opinions are mainstream, asking whether voters would be more likely to choose "A candidate who says he or she strongly supports Israel, and the United States must stand behind all of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's policies." Who thinks that?
Here's another loaded question that proves that J-Street themselves have no idea why anyone should support Israel:
Please tell me which statement comes closest to your own point of view, even if neither is exactly right.Is that the only reason why Americans support Israel?
1.The United States should act as a fair and impartial broker in order to achieve a peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians.
2. The United States should side with Israel during peace negotiations because Israel is our democratic ally and needs our support against a world that isolates them.
Why didn't J-Street try this statement?
The United States should side with Israel because Israel shares American liberal values, giving rights to minorities, women and LGBT who are oppressed in Arab countries. Israel has offered to live in peace with its Arab neighbors multiple times yet the Palestinians have rejected every single plan. An "even handed" approach rewards Palestinian intransigence.
How would liberals answer that one? After all, only one side has liberal values and has shown a real desire for peace - but J-Street will never point that out.
The fact is that J-Street knows that most respondents don't know squat about the Middle East so it phrases questions to lead the ignorant to the conclusions they want.
While 61% of the respondents said that they followed news about Israel "very" or "somewhat" closely, only 9% said that they were very familiar with what BDS was about. If you don't know what BDS is, you aren't following the news. Meaning that the vast majority of Democratic voters do not follow the Middle East closely at all, but they think they know what they are talking about.
J-Street uses this ignorance to create a poll that provides the answers they pre-determine within the questions themselves.
Professional pollster Steve Miller called this "shitty polling and incoherent questions."
In the annals of shitty polling and incoherent questions lies this slide https://t.co/pvYnJGrsoN— Steve Miller (@SteveMiller202) October 22, 2019
Why did J-Street release this poll, taken in May, now? Because it wants to use the results to pretend that it is mainstream ahead of its conference next week. The poll is meant to do one thing only: to make J-Street look good.
Anyone who reports on the poll as if it actually reflects reality is ignorant or knowingly deceptive.