British Jews unfazed by poll portraying Israel as unsafe, ugly
Miriam Shaviv, THE JERUSALEM POST Jan. 4, 2005
LONDON - British Jewish leaders on Tuesday said they were not surprised by a poll published in the Daily Telegraph on Monday showing that Britons consider Israel one of the most undemocratic, unsafe, unfriendly and unattractive countries in the world.
"The survey has simply highlighted an ongoing issue which the community has been working hard to combat for the past four years," said Jason Pearlman, a spokesman for the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the national representative body of the British Jewish community. "The results reflect the way the media has covered the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and this is something we've known for a long time."
The British does not report the daily killing of Palestinians by the settlers and the IDF, if they were told, they would certainly mention "the most terrorist country in the world"
The poll, which was conducted by YouGov the week before the Christmas break, invited 2,058 adults across Great Britain to rate almost two dozen countries, including Israel, Britain, Canada, Australia, the US, Ireland, Egypt, South Africa, Russia, Dubai, India and China on 12 separate criteria.
Israel came out on the bottom in four cases and among the bottom five in four more. Only Russia had a worse overall score.
Only the French (30%) and the Germans (23%) were considered to have less friendly people than Israel (15%), and only the United States (37%) was considered more dangerous than Israel (33%). Despite being the only fully democratic state in the Middle East, Israel was also thought to be among the world's "least democratic countries," beaten only by China, Russia and Dubai.
In response to the poll, Zvi Hefetz, Israel's ambassador to England, told Channel 2 that the poll was "not a big deal. I would not give it too much attention. Polls are a dangerous thing anyway.
Shuli Davidovich, press secretary at the Israeli embassy in London, called the results "disappointing," but noted that there had been a rise of 60% in the number of British tourists to Israel in the past year to more than 100,000 |
