If this poll is accurate, the hand-wringing among the anti-Israel set is going to increase exponentially.

A new survey conducted by a Washington DC-based evangelical organization among American Christians has found that 82% of them believe they have a moral obligation to support the Jews and Israel. The poll, conducted among Catholics and Protestants alike, tested their stance on Jerusalem’s future and ways to deal with the Iranian nuclear threat.

See, it’s not just Evangelicals. And gee, the U.S. majority religion, let me think, what is it, hm…. oh, that’s right! Christianity!

CAIR is going to blow a gasket over this one.

The subjects were asked whether they thought a country created in the West bank and Gaza would be democratic and peaceful, or a terrorist state. Thirty-two percent thought it would become a terrorist state, 24% thought it would be democratic and peaceful, and 44% said they didn’t know. Fifty percent said they believed Jerusalem should remain unified, 17% supported dividing it between two states, and 33% remained undecided.

And the Iranian mullahs are going to have a fit, too.

According to the poll, 65% of American Christians are convinced that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, which its leaders will attempt to use in order to destroy Israel. A similar percentage said that the US presidential candidates’ Middle East stance would constitute a major factor in their vote for president in August, in contrast to 13%, who said that the issue would not affect their vote.

Obama will be worrying too, but hey, he’s already discounted those hicks that “cling to religion” out of bitterness and frustration.

And how refreshing it is to have Jews and Christians on the same side of an issue for a change. Here. Have a virtual handshake, folks.

Jimmy Carter can’t even get respect from Shimon Peres these days.A poster at Firedoglake, Ian Welsh, though, considers Jimmy Carter the best friend Israel ever had! After botching history (Carter created the conditions for Camp David by planning to bring the Russians back to the Middle East, after Egypt had expelled the Russians, not due to his diplomatic expertise.)

Of course Welsh has also been asleep for the past 15 years or so when Israel did all it could to enable a Palestinian state and got terror in return. I love this gross understatement:

Now let’s add in the usual caveats—the Palestinians have hardly been angels; in fact they have been thugs. They have often negotiated in bad faith (though certainly no more often and probably less often than the Israelis, in recent years). They do engage in terrorism, though what the difference to the victims between being killed by a suicide bomber or missile is compared to being killed by a tank, helicopter or bomb has always escaped me—except that tanks, helicopters and bombs kill far more people than the weapons of a terrorist or guerilla. They have certainly often been stupid and done things that weren’t in their best interests.

And if the Palestinians wanted a state, they would have had it by now. The writer may delude himself on this point but if the Palestinians were building an economy instead of a terrorist infrastructure they’d have had their state by now.

The bad faith of the Palestinians is evident when its “moderate” leaders claim that there’s no basis for a Jewish state in the Middle East and when those same moderates criticize Israel for protecting its own citizen. Nothing that Israel has done in the past 15 years comes close to rejecting very premise of the peace process, which is exactly what the “moderate” leaders of the Palestinians.

But the bottom line is that Israel is the party that can make or break negotiations. Israel is the party with the full army. Israel is the party with the money. Israel is the party that refuses to actually negotiate with the lawfully elected representative (which is Hamas) of the Palestinians.And Israel needs a peace more than the Palestinians do. That seems counterintuitive, but the Palestinians are on a path that leads to victory and the Israelis are on a path that leads to loss. Yes, the Palestinians will suffer more, much more, than the Israelis getting there, but that’s not relevant to the end-state, except in that they may not be very gracious to the Israelis once they have won. Germans killed far more Russians than vice-versa and lost. America never lost a battle in Vietnam and killed at a 10:1 ratio. It didn’t matter.

Israel doesn’t have the power to “make or break” the negotiations. Because even Fatah has never forsworn terror as a tactic to get what it wants, that means Israel needs to accede to every single demand of the Palestinians or then its efforts at peace are deemed insufficient.

Twenty years ago who would have believed that the Palestinians would be ruling themselves in Gaza and a handful of cities in Judea and Samaria? And yet they are? Who would have believed they would have accomplished all that and still portrayed Israel as an evil occupier?

Israel doesn’t make or break negotiations. The Palestinians, through violence, hold veto power over the peace process. The Palestinians’ friends, like Mr. Welsh, do them no favors by assuring them that they are nearly always right and that they ought to suffer no repercussions for their ongoing bad faith.

A true friend tells you when you’re walking down the path to defeat. A true friend tells you when you’re acting despicably. And that’s why Jimmy Carter is Israel’s best friend in America—the only President to negotiate a lasting peace between Israel and one of its enemies and the only major figure to tell the Israelis that they’re walking a path to their own destruction.Here’s hoping Israel wakes up and listens and acts. If it doesn’t, within the lifetime of many of us here today, there will be no Israel as it exists today; there will be no “Jewish” state.

Again, Camp David was the result of a Carter blunder and Israel does have a treaty with Jordan. But if a true friend tells you hard truths, why is this friend of Israel going to Israel’s enemies? Why is he encouraging Hamas, which is building an arsenal of offensive weapons to use against Israel armed by the Iranian regime that is rhetorically (if not practically) devoted to Israel’s destruction?

That these questions never occur to Welsh shows that what he shares with Jimmy Carter is not friendship with Israel, but enmity.

Fresno Zionsim pegs Carter as a tool of the Saudis. The Heathlander drags out the same busted myth Carter used yesterday that a majority of Israeli support ongoing talks with Hamas. And Carter admits that he’s been meeting with leaders of Hamas for years. Israel Matzav fisks yesterday’s Carter gabfest on ABC. (via memeorandum)

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

The other day I wrote about Charles Krauthammer’s most recent column. He argued that since it’s clear that negotiation and sandtions have failed to prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb, the United States had to expressly state its support for defending Israel. I had thought that the column wasn’t the greatest I read. On the other hand, Krauthammer didn’t seem to be operating with the luxury of alternatives.At Contentions, Gordon Chang thinks that American deterrence is still possible. Noah Pollak thinks that such a declaration will have the exact opposite effect.

David Hazony, though, takes a different tack. He links to a Ze’ev Chafets column arguing that the Iranian bomb is out of American hands, however:

What’s more, it is fair to say that Israel is not a weak country. It has developed a powerful set of strategic options. In the best case, it would be able to act on its own to degrade and retard the Iranian nuclear program as it did in Iraq (and, more recently, Syria). In a worse case, if the Iranians do get the bomb, Iranian leaders might be deterred by rational considerations. If so, Israel’s own arsenal — and its manifest willingness to respond to a nuclear attack — ought to suffice.If, on the other hand, the Iranian leadership simply can’t resist the itch to “wipe Israel off the map” — or to make such a thing appear imminent — then it would be up to Israel to make its own calculations. What is the price of 100,000 dead in Tel Aviv? Or twice that? The cost to Iran would certainly be ghastly. It would be wrong for Israel to expect other nations to shoulder this moral and geopolitical responsibility.

Note that this isn’t just a discussion of an Osirak like strike, but of first use of nuclear weapons if necessary. I don’t believe that an Osirak like strike is possible: Iran is farther away than Iraq and the surprise factor can’t be as great anymore.

I would add that if it comes to that, and I hope it doesn’t, it’s not just the failure of the United States. There are many nations and world bodies who have been quite happy to humor Tehran and pretend that its extremism was just for public consumption. Sometimes it pays to take fanatics to heart.

Crossposted at Soccer Dad.

Sometimes organizations do what you expect them too. CAIR, for example, has no issue with Jimmy Carter shaking the blood soaked hands of Khaled Meshal.Sometimes the organization that does the advocating is surprising. For example two leaders of the Israeli Policy Forum are advocating outreach to Hamas. Why is this surprising? Well the IPF writes on it website that one of its goals is:

IPF sponsors exceptional educational programs and publications, which produce a unique cadre of effective advocates for a two state solution. (emphasis mine)

So now Geoffry Lewis and Seymour Reich write that we should be Finding a way to bring Hamas In. That’s Hamas the organization dedicated in word and deed to a one state solution - one without Israel.

Lewis and Reich write:

IT’S BECOMING increasingly clearer that reaching an Israeli-Palestinian agreement requires finding a way to bring Hamas into the process. This must be done without compromising Israeli or American interests.Many respected Israeli security officials, including two former heads of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, arrived at that conclusion some time ago. So have 64 percent of Israelis, who said, according to a Haaretz-Dialog poll taken in February, that they would negotiate directly with Hamas to end the rocket attacks from Gaza, controlled by Hamas since June 2007, and to secure the release of the captive Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit.

As noted before the Israeli poll approving talks with Hamas only gave respondents one choice. A different poll giving Israelis the choice between talking and fighting, showed that Israelis much preferred fighting their enemies than coddling them.

Lewis and Reich praise Sec. Rice for her decision to engage Hamas indirectly.

Rice appears to recognize these realities. During her previous visit to the Middle East early last month she used Egypt as an intermediary to open a channel between Israel and Hamas to mediate a cease-fire. This is a significant and commendable development. It could facilitate reaching an Israeli-Palestinian agreement by the end of the year, the goal of the Bush administration, or during the next administration.

And since then what? Well Hamas manufactured a fuel crisis, using as cover for an attack on the Nahal Oz fuel depot. So would you say that bringing Hamas in has been helpful, or has it emboldened them?

Back at the beginning of the peace process, advocates like Lewis and Reich claimed that it was necessary to talk to Arafat and Fatah and to isolate Hamas. In the past 15 years, Fatah has shown itself to be uninterested in peace (or more precisely: uninterested in any commitments to helping peace but plenty interested in receiving the land, guns and money in exchange for those phantom commitments) and Hamas has gotten even stronger.

Now after Fatah has proved itself uninterested in making peace, Hamas is left with power, so Lewis and Reich propose that Israel now talk to Hamas. Have they been paying attention to the past 15 years? Why would talking with Hamas work any better now than talking with Fatah did in 1993?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.