A majority of Israelis believe that American Jews exert considerable influence on the U.S. government with regard to its policies toward Israel, according to a survey conducted for the Jewish Agency. The survey, released this week, showed that 70.6 percent of Israelis interviewed believe American Jews have the influence and 54.3 percent believe they are exercising it sufficiently in Israel’s favor, Jewish Agency director general Moshe Rivlin reported.
Another 17.7 percent thought American Jews were doing “more or less” what was expected of them and 16.6 percent felt U.S. Jewry was not doing enough to influence their government. The latter idea was most common among the younger generation, intellectuals, university graduates and sabras, the survey disclosed. According to Rivlin only 4.2 percent did not believe American Jews could influence their government and 21.6 percent felt they had “little” influence.
The survey found that 86.9 percent of Israelis believed that Jews throughout the world identify with Israel and a larger proportion of the respondents said they were conscious of the amount of money world Jewry raises for Israel.
The public was divided as to whether money or aliya was more important. A majority of 44.5 percent said both were equally important. But 29.7 percent favored aliya against 21.8 percent who thought financial aid was most important. Those who valued money more were found to be mainly Israelis of European origin with higher education. People of Asian and African origin and those with less education in lower financial brackets put a higher value on aliya.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
