JERUSALEM - The Anti-Defamation League saysits newest poll finds that Americans strongly support Israel's planned disengagement from Gaza and the Northern West Bank and believe Israel is more serious about peace than the Palestinians.
The poll comes on the heels of a poll by the anti-disengagement Zionist Organization of America that reported nearly opposite findings.
ADL President Abe Foxman defended his poll's results during a press conference with journalists in Jerusalem Tuesday as some challenged the questions and the results.
"You ask the questions you want, we'll ask the questions we like," Foxman said. "We've been in the polling business long enough. One can always ask a question differently. We felt that was the best way to ask it."
The ADL question stated that Israel has decided unilaterally to withdraw from the Gaza Strip without a peace agreement, and then asked respondents whether that was a "bold step toward peace or not." A total of 71 percent of respondents said they agreed with that statement.
Loaded questions
The Zionist Organization of America poll, released June 30, said Americans oppose “Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from a section of Gaza and Northern Samaria” and “forcing 10,000 Israeli Jews from their homes and businesses” by a margin of 63-16 percent.
Pro-disengagement activists in the U.S. said last week they questioned the ZOA's poll, as it ran counter to others.
"If you ask a loaded question, you get a loaded answer," Lewis Roth, assistant executive director of Americans for Peace Now told the Forward newspaper.
ZOA countered with a statement this week criticizing the ADL poll's results, and citing support for its position from several U.S. and Israel-based statistics and mathematics professors.
Foxman said Tuesday that ADL had no agenda in designing its poll's questions.
"There have been efforts in the last week or two, including a press release yesterday, to challenge our statistics," he said. "It's a free society. We come to this issue without preconceived notions."
Other findings in the ADL poll were that Americans continue to favor Israel over the Palestinians, and that current results are similar to polls conducted in 2004 and 2003.
"The U.S. sees Israel as the party that is serious about peace," Foxman said."They have questions about the Palestinians."
Foxman was on his way to meeting with Palestinian Chairman Mahmoud Abbas after the press briefing.