Nearly half of Israelis see Iran deal as existential threat

Just 22% trust Obama with their security, poll finds.

By GIL STERN STERN HOFFMAN
Iranian students burn Israeli flag. (photo credit: REUTERS)
Iranian students burn Israeli flag.
(photo credit: REUTERS)
US President Barack Obama has failed to persuade Jewish Israelis that the deal his administration is seeking with Tehran will prevent it from becoming a nuclear power, according to a Geocartography Institute poll.
Some 48.5 percent of respondents said the proposed deal was a threat to Israel’s existence, while 22% said they did not, according to the poll taken last month. The rest of the respondents said they did not know or were divided between the two options.
When asked whether they trust Obama to maintain Israel’s security, 44.5% said they did not and 21.9% said they did. The rest of the respondents said they did not know or answered with the Hebrew phrase “kacha-kacha,” meaning “yes and no.”
Just 7.4% of respondents said they would advise Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept the Iranian nuclear deal as is.
Instead, 46.3% said the prime minister should discretely pressure Obama not to remove sanctions on Tehran until the West’s conditions are met; 15.6% said Israel should publicly oppose the deal; 9.2% said they backed a military strike against Iran; and 21.6% either said they did not know, they had no opinion or they were unaware of the details of the agreement, which has not been finalized.
When asked whether they thought the US would see European-style anti-Semitism, 54.9% answered yes; 34.6% said no; and 10.4% said they did not know.
The poll was taken by telephone in the third week of May among 500 respondents representing a statistical sample of the adult Jewish population of Israel. It has a margin of error of ± 4.4 percentage points.