Left-wing organizations are waging a psychological war on Israelis living in the Jordan Valley, activist Danny Dayan, the former head of the Yesha (Judea and Samaria) Council, has accused.
Dayan revealed a recent incident in which one organization tried to rally support based on a poll showing that most Israelis living in the Jordan Valley want to leave – a poll which, he says, turned out to have been a complete fabrication.
“They called me from Reshet Bet. The group ‘Atid Kachol Lavan’ [‘A Blue and White Future’, which promotes a withdrawal from Judea and Samaria - ed.] was going to present the results of a survey conducted among residents of the Jordan Valley showing that most wanted to evacuate with or without a diplomatic agreement [between Israel and the Palestinian Authority],” he recalled.
“’Would you like to reply on air?’ they asked. ‘Yes, definitely. It sounds very strange to me,’” Dayan continued. “'It’s a poll done by Mina Tzemach,' they announced happily."
Mina Tzemach is widely renowned as a political pollster.
“So we went on the air. The chairman of that organization, and me. He said that according to the poll by Mina Tzemach, so-and-so many people want to leave the Jordan Valley,” Dayan said.
“I saw there was clear manipulation, because the results contradicted reality – which is that new residents are moving to the Jordan Valley. ‘It can’t be true,’ I said. ‘But Mina Tzemach did a poll!’ was his unequivocal response.
“A poll that nobody in the Jordan Valley heard about?” Dayan wondered. “After all, a poll would need to include at least 500 households. In the Jordan Valley, news [of the poll] would spread like wildfire.”
Dayan’s skepticism led him to conduct his own investigation. “I asked them to speak to Mina Tzemach, and she said, ‘I haven’t done any recent poll about the Jordan Valley. I have no idea what they are talking about,’” he reported.
The incident with the fake poll is a sign of things to come, he warned. “In the near future, we – residents of Judea and Samaria in general, and of the Jordan Valley in particular – are likely to face psychological warfare against us from the extreme left, in an attempt to weaken us, to delegitimize us, to cause us to despair,” he said.
“But I didn’t expect such a low level as this,” he added.
The Palestinian Authority demands a full Israeli withdrawal from the Jordan Valley, along with other parts of Judea and Samaria. United States diplomats, too, have put heavy pressure on Israel to agree to a withdrawal.
Many Israeli leaders say Israel must not concede the strategically crucial region. Ministers recently voted to do the opposite, and to officially declare the territory to be part of Israel.