Politico, Rosner and the fabulous world of Israeli "experts"

Politico, Rosner and the fabulous world of Israeli "experts"

 

Politico has an incredibly disingenuous article up about how Israeli national security "experts" give Obama a higher score on Israel than Romney.

The article is based on a blog post by Shmuel Rosner. Rosner has picked a panel of "experts" whom he apparently asks about various issues from time to time. He gives their answers a score and based on that score he tabulates his results.

Of course, it's not really true that Israeli "experts" score Obama higher than Romney on Israel. Rosner makes up questions, and he picks the "experts" he wants to answer those questions. In this way, he ensures the "score" comes out any way he wants. 

Surprise, surprise, the closer we get to the us presidential election, the closer Rosner comes to endorsing Obama for reelection while masking his personal opinion as "expert" opinion.

The questions in Rosner's "survey" are all over the map, and tell us nothing useful. 

For instance, Questions like "Romney ‎was practically endorsed by PM Netanyahu - agree or disagree" and "Romney's visit will help him win over Jewish voters - agree or disagree" tell you absolutely nothing about the candidates and whether their policies are good or bad for Israel. All they tell us about is Rosner's personal concerns.

If that wasn't bad enough, most of Rosner's "experts" are leftists. None are on the right -- the ideological space occupied by the majority of Israelis.

What we have here is not an impartial survey. What we have is Rosner creating and stacking the deck to make up fake pro-Obama numbers.

Aside from that, let's think for a second about the nature of the "expertise" of Israeli leftists who always are overrepresented in the rarified world of Israeli "expert" opinion. 

The fact is that  Rosner's fake survey is not objectionable merely because it fails to include anyone who occupies the intellectual space in which the majority of Israelis reside. The Left which most of Rosner's "experts" call home is manned by people whose policies have pushed Israel off one strategic cliff after another for the past 20 years. Every single policy endorsed by leftist "experts" over the past generation has failed completely. To refer to these serial bunglers as national security experts is an insult to the intelligence.

But then, again, nothing to be surprised about here. This is what the Left always does. In Israel and abroad, this is how the Left invents perceptions based on thin air. They get together a group of people who represent no one, call them experts, ask their opinion -- in this case on nothing in particular -- and reach a definitive conclusion about something largely unrelated and then crown this stellar achievement with banner headlines. Brilliant. 

http://www.carolineglick.com/e/