American Jews don't vote in Israel - so why are they being polled on its election?

A recent Jerusalem Post report carried an intriguing finding: A majority of 'connected' American Jews surveyed by the Jewish People Policy Institute would prefer to see Israel's opposition defeat the current governing coalition in the upcoming election. In other words, the poll tells us something quite predictable: American Jews who identify with the political Left in the United States are more likely to prefer the Israeli Center and Left, while conservative American Jews are more sympathetic to Israel's Right. Only 8% of those surveyed are Israeli citizens eligible to vote in the election. That means 92% of the respondents are being asked whom they would prefer to govern a country in whose election they cannot cast a ballot. The writer is an attorney and the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. He is author of A Father's Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terror (now available in an expanded paperback edition on Amazon.com) and is the chair of the Religious Zionists of America-Mizrachi. An oleh, he divides his time between Jerusalem and New Jersey.