If you say that just won’t happen, you’d be in the sparse company of about 16 percent of Americans.
That’s because 80.2 percent of the respondents of a new poll said they do fear a time when anti-Semitism around the world will turn violent and there would be deliberate attempts to wipe out Jews.
The results are from polling done on behalf of author Joel C. Rosenberg.
“To me, this is a stunning number. It indicates that Americans do not see the history of the Nazi Holocaust as some kind of ancient history,” he said. “Across the board, Americans of all ages, income groups, ethnic groups, religions, political ideologies and regions of the country are deeply concerned that a ‘Second Holocaust’ may be coming if world leaders do not take decisive action to stop Iran before it is too late.”
He said the question was posed by McLaughlin & Associates, a nationally respected polling firm, to 1,000 likely U.S. voters.
They were asked, “Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: ‘If the world does not take decisive action, and the Iranian regime is permitted to build nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them, the Iranian regime will one day attempt to annihilate the state of Israel and bring about a second Holocaust’?”
Only 3.7 percent said they didn’t know, while 80.2 percent said they agree, and 16.1 percent said they disagreed.
The margin of error for the recent polling data was not immediately available. The Obama administration largely has addressed Iran’s stated intent to develop nuclear power with sanctions. Then last year there was an agreement to relieve most of those sanctions in exchange for delays in Iran’s program development.
Israel contends the rogue nation’s nuclear program has one ultimate goal: nuclear weapons. It’s former president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, repeatedly said he wanted to wipe Israel from the face of the map.
Rosenberg previously has addressed issues of the Middle East in his work, with his “Epicenter: A Video Documentary,” talking with many military, government, business and Christian ministry leaders throughout the Middle East, as well as skeptics and critics of evangelical Christian views of the “last days.”
He focuses on the question, “Are we living in the last days?”
He also has written “Implosion,” which addresses the idea that America as an empire is “in decline.”
Financial turmoil, political instability, plunging morality and natural disasters add up to the threat that “history’s greatest democracy” will either “stage a miraculous comeback” or not.
Rosenberg, a New York Times bestselling author of “The Last Jihad,” is a communications strategist based in Washington.
Once a political columnist for World magazine, a front-page Sunday New York Times profile called him a “force in the capital.”
It was the second poll question released by Rosenberg. His first revealed that 72 percent of Americans now view Vladimir Putin and the Russian government as a “clear and present danger to the U.S. and Israel.”
WND has reported in recent weeks on the anti-Semitism surging around the world, with a three-part series that looked at what is going on in Europe and the United States.
The report found that the problem is global in scope.
It was in April when researchers with the European Jewish Congress and Tel Aviv University released a report that documented a massive 30 percent increase in serious anti-Semitic incidents around the world last year.
Linking the ongoing economic turmoil to the sudden rise in anti-Jewish hatred, the report documented 686 incidents in 34 countries – everything from violent attacks on Jews to vandalism of Jewish cemeteries and places of worship. Some 40 percent of the incidents included physical violence.
By comparison, 526 incidents were documented in 2011.
The reports found nowhere is the rise of anti-Semitism more extreme than in the Islamic world.
According to a 2011 Pew Research poll, part of the Global Attitudes Project, Muslim-majority nations harbored overwhelmingly negative attitudes toward Jews.
In Egypt and Jordan, for example, just 2 percent of respondents had a favorable view of Jews.
The Islamic country with the most favorable views toward Jews is Indonesia. But even there, less than 10 percent of the population has a positive attitude.
“In the Middle East it’s definitely getting worse – it’s at crazy proportions,” said Martin Himel, a Canadian film director who recently produced a ground-breaking documentary examining anti-Semitism around the globe.
In Islamic Pakistan, there are essentially no Jewish citizens. The overwhelming majority of Pakistanis have never even met a Jew.
When Himel traveled to the Muslim nation to document anti-Semitism for his film, “Jew Bashing: The New Anti-Semitism,” what he found was profoundly disturbing.
More than a few people, for example, expressed the view that “Jews have taken over America” and “engineered the 9/11 attacks” for the purpose of conquering Afghanistan and Iraq as a prelude to taking over Pakistan, Himel told WND.
“You talk to the average, non-informed Pakistani on the street and ask him what has to be done, and they say, ‘Well, thank God we have nuclear weapons, we’re gonna’ nuke the Jews’; and they’ve never even seen a Jew in their lives,” he said.
The report found the Shiite Iranian regime, despite fundamental disagreements with Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi rulers over Islamic doctrine, is widely considered one of the most dangerous anti-Semitic forces on the planet.
While a small Jewish remnant remains in Iran, top leaders in Tehran regularly demonize Jews, Judaism, Zionism – and especially Israel, which Iranian leaders openly say they hope to annihilate.
“It has now been some 400 years that a horrendous Zionist clan has been ruling the major world affairs,” declared Ahmadinejad in a speech last year. “And behind the scenes of the major power circles, in political, media, monetary, and banking organizations in the world, they have been the decision-makers.”
Iranian leaders, going all the way to the top, also continue to boast publicly about their plans to destroy the Jewish state.
Last year, for example, Maj. Gen. Hassan Firouzabadi, chief of staff of the Iran’s Armed Forces, declared again that “the Iranian nation is standing for its cause that is the full annihilation of Israel,” echoing past statements by other top officials.
According to the U.S. State Department’s Commission on International Religious Freedom, the tiny Jewish minority in Iran, along with other beleaguered religious minorities, is coming under increasing pressure from authorities.
“Heightened anti-Semitism and repeated Holocaust denials by senior government officials and clerics continue to foster a climate of fear among Iran’s Jewish community,” the U.S. commission said in its latest report. “Physical attacks, harassment, detention, arrests and imprisonment intensified.”
Instead of working to assure Israel that its longtime ally, the United States, will stand by its side, President Obama’s administration members have held meetings with a senior politician in Jerusalem in which the U.S. delegates brought up the possibility of replacing Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister, according to an informed Jerusalem diplomatic source.
The meetings were held with Israel’s popular finance minister, Yair Lapid, founder and leader of the Yesh Atid Party, which became the second-largest party in the Knesset winning 19 seats in the last election.
The diplomatic source said the Obama administration identified Lapid as a moderate who could be helpful in pushing the Israeli government into accepting the framework to create a future Palestinian state.
According to the source, the talks included the possibility of Lapid bolting Netanyahu’s government if the prime minister rejects the U.S.-brokered regional talks.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/03/8-in-10-americans-fear-2nd-holocaust/#qhyhLCcdz75cEwsd.99
Source:http://www.wnd.com/2014/03/8-in-10-americans-fear-2nd-holocaust/
No comments:
Post a Comment