Israelis on the whole do not know about Obama’s position on abortion, or on high technology, or a variety of other issues which might make him more palpable to the Israeli public, he argued. Since the media’s focus on Obama is almost exclusively on how he relates to us, and even this in a rather simplistic manner, the image of most is that relationship has deteriorated under his watch, he said.
Interestingly, while Israelis look at Obama and judge him almost solely on how he is toward the Jewish state, American Jews are judging him by his position on numerous other issues. Indeed, the AJC poll in September showed that Israel was a distant fourth among the issues that American Jews listed as most important to them, following the economy, health care and abortion.
The wide gap between American and Israeli perception of Obama, Almog said, was also an example of widening differences between American and Israeli Jewry over the years. “We are not synchronized,” he said, and our different perceptions of Obama is just one measure of that.
