The farce news agency

Editorial

The official Iranian news agency was duped by the American satirical magazine the Onion last week, reporting as fact an item created for fun that declared “an overwhelming majority of rural white Americans said they would rather vote for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than U.S. President Barack Obama.”

The FARS news agency had to apologize to readers for being taken in by the farce news agency. “Although it does not justify our mistake,” the apology on the English-language FARS site read, “we do believe that if a free opinion poll is conducted in the U.S., a majority of Americans would prefer anyone outside the U.S. political system to President Barack Obama and American statesmen.”

Given that Republicans are bending backward and inside out to explain to Americans alleged inherent flaws in the dozens of opinion polls that show Obama ahead of challenger Mitt Romney nationwide and in every swing state, it may indeed be possible for “a free opinion poll” to be interpreted in myriad counterintuitive ways. Even so, the FARS farce was a moment of welcome levity amid a week of dark and disturbing diplomacy at the United Nations General Assembly. Though it was not the only one.

Although addressing the existential and deadly serious topic of Iranian nuclear developments, Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu whipped out a visual prop that has now gone viral. Intending to exhibit the proximity of Iran to obtaining nuclear weapons capability and the necessity of drawing a “red line” to prevent it, Netanyahu employed a cartoonish bomb with a fuse worthy of Wile E. Coyote. The prime minister’s statement was important and grave. Netanyahu and his team should have recognized that the cheesy style of the graphic would detract from the message. In the end, though, Netanyahu may have been crazy like a fox … or a roadrunner. Given that few at the UN lend credence to anything Israel says, the viral spread of the unintentionally humorous “Bibi bomb” may have put the issue in front of more eyes than it otherwise would have.

However serious the issue may be, and as conflicted as Israeli-American relations may have become because of it, the results of an actual opinion poll suggest Jewish American voters are not moved by the (largely) implicit position of Netanyahu that Obama is not doing enough to stop the Iranian nuclear drive – or by the dogged repetitions by Romney that Obama is throwing Israel “under the bus.” A new poll says Obama is favored by Jewish voters over Romney by a two-to-one margin. This is a slight decline from four years ago – but it is a massive statement of endorsement for Obama.

The issues are not all about Iran, of course. Jewish American voters have a very long and entrenched relationship with the Democratic party. The issues of domestic policy on which most Americans make up their minds on election choices seem to decidedly keep the largely liberal Jewish voters massively in the Democratic column. Still, Netanyahu is making a relatively transparent case that the fate of Israel is at almost immediate risk from what he has previously said is the Obama administration’s neglect or hesitancy, so the lack of resonance among Jewish voters must be frustrating for him (and for Romney).

One might think this would also be confounding for the conspiracy theorists, some of them high-ranking commentators like John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, authors of The Israel Lobby, and the iceberg represented by the tip that their book represents. Arguing that the American foreign policy dog is wagged by a Jewish American tail, this cadre of commentators (most prevalently and crudely represented in the comments section at the bottom of seemingly every media article about American Middle East policy) must be struggling to comprehend how the shrewd Zionists have not managed to better puppetmaster Obama. Not so, in fact. Obama’s position – deemed lukewarm by some like Netanyahu – will be seen as kowtowing to Zionism as long as it remains anything short of complete repudiation of Israel. Besides, conspiracy theories are rarely debunked by occasional inconvenient contradictions.

Meanwhile, opinion polls – yes, there is a theme here – in Israel indicate that the population there is also divided over whether the issue requires urgent military action. Senior retired military figures and other commentators are not entirely buying Netanyahu’s sense of urgency, hoping that something positive will intervene to make the threat less dire. Indeed, hopeful, if modest, indicators are that the economic sanctions against the Iranian regime are having the desired impact and that the Iranian people themselves may be moved to demand moderation. This is a wishful perspective, and one that would require immense courage from the civilian population, but it is one of several potential scenarios that may not involve military action.

Hopeful signs, however modest, are welcome and must be kindled, albeit not to the detriment of rational action. Meanwhile, the Onion last week reported: “Newborn loses faith in humanity after record six days.”

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