Recent war chatter has highlighted the possibility that Israel may attack Iran’s nuclear program. The U.S. and its allies say a nuclear armed Iran threatens regional security and nonproliferation and are committed to preventing Iran from acquiring such weapons. But some Israeli leaders view Iran with nuclear weapons as an “existential threat,” and say they may strike Iran if they perceive that the nuclear program is entering a “zone of immunity.” Israeli officials, including its foreign minister, have hinted that such an attack would be their decision and their decision alone.

But a poll released today by the University of Maryland showed that Israelis don’t support that policy. Indeed, Maryland professor and Brookings Institution scholar Shibley Telhami wrote:

Only 19 percent of Israelis polled expressed support for an attack without U.S. backing, according to a poll I conducted — fielded by Israel’s Dahaf Institute Feb. 22-26 — while 42 percent endorsed a strike only if there is at least U.S. support, and 32 percent opposed an attack regardless.

Here’s a chart included in the poll results:

The reported estimates of U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies don’t indicate that Iran has made a choice to build nuclear weapons — a conclusion matching that of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency. Top U.S. intelligence and Pentagon (both brass and civilian) officials have also publicly corroborated this estimate.

More than a quarter of those surveyed think the U.S. would join an Israeli war, and nearly one in four said the U.S. would give Israel diplomatic but not military support. Israelis were nearly evenly divided on how long they thought a war would last: time frames of “days,” “weeks” and “years” each garnered about one in five responses, while 29 percent thought the resulting conflict would last “months.”

The poll also shows that 22 percent of Israelis think an Israeli strike would delay Iran’s nuclear program by more than five years, and the same amount think it would “delay Iran’s capabilities” by three to five years. Nearly 20 percent think it would have no effect on the nuclear program and one in ten said it would accelerate the program.

In another turn against the conventional wisdom, the poll showed that Israelis favor President Obama over all the potential Republican candidates except for former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who was tied with Obama for 29 percent of respondents each.

A Florida Senate panel approved a measure to ban the use of Sharia law in the Sunshine State yesterday after deliberating for just three minutes and turning dozens away who sought to give their testimony.

SB 1360, which already passed the Senate Judiciary Committee, was approved by the Criminal and Civil Justice Appropriations Subcommittee on Tuesday by a 5-2 vote. A concurrent anti-Sharia bill in the House was also sent out of committee last week and will be voted receive a floor vote in the next few days.

The proposed legislation, which would ban the use of “foreign law,” is drawing ire not only because it’s been used as a way to attack Muslims in this country, but also because it could have a number of unintended consequences. As the Orlando Sun-Sentinel notes, many Jewish groups are calling the legislation discriminatory against them as well:

Andrew Rosenkranz, regional director for the Anti Defamation League, said that the decisions of Jewish tribunals called Bet Dins, which often handle divorce proceedings, are often converted into civil divorce decrees by the courts. But under the Senate bill, and another ready for a vote by the entire House, an observant Orthodox couple would “effectively be barred from following their faith and using a Jewish tribunal to dissolve their marriage,” he said.

“The alleged threat of Islamic, other religious or foreign law to Florida’s court system is completely illusory, and the Senate’s consideration of this measure is an unwise use of resources,” Rosenkranz said, adding that both the Florida and U.S. constitutions “already prohibit the unconstitutional application of foreign law in the courts.”

But neither representatives from the ADL [Anti-Defamation League] nor about 50 Muslims who were visiting Tallahassee as part of Muslim Day at the capital were allowed to speak at the meeting, which had more than 20 bills on the agenda and started late.

In 2011, Florida Republicans tried to pass an anti-Sharia bill, but it failed to gain approval. Proponents are hopeful they will gain enough support this year.

Last month, a similar Sharia ban in Oklahoma was ruled unconstitutional by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. Nevertheless, a number of states like Florida are pushing forward. Just two months into 2012, 22 states have introduced anti-Sharia bills.

To learn more about what Sharia law actually is (and is not), read this Center for American Progress primer. Also check out CAP’s report Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America to read about the players behind state anti-Sharia bills.

Protests have been raging in Afghanistan since news surfaced that U.S. troops burned copies of the Quran at Bagram Air Force Base. Last week, President Obama apologized to Afghans and the Afghan government saying the act was “inadvertent.”

But the Republican presidential candidates — who are averse to saying sorry for anything — pounced on the president. Rick Santorum admitted the Quran burning was a “mistake” but said Obama’s apology “shows weakness.” And Newt Gingrich said Obama “surrendered.” “There seems to be nothing that radical Islamists can do to get Barack Obama’s attention in a negative way,” Gingrich said, “and he is consistently apologizing to people who do not deserve the apology of the president of the United States, period.”

When CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Gingrich yesterday if that standard also applies to President Bush (Bush issued an apology to Iraq for a similar incident there in 2008), the former House Speaker didn’t have an answer. “I wasn’t a presidential candidate at that point,” was all he could come up with. Blitzer tried one more time:

BLITZER: So I just want to be precise. I can — I totally understand where you’re coming from as far as President Obama is concerned, apologizing now. But with hindsight, was it wrong for President Bush to apologize back in 2008?

GINGRICH: Look, I think we should always have respect for various religious documents. But I would also ask you, Wolf, why was it OK for the U.S. Army to burn bibles? I mean I don’t understand this one-sided nature that is always apologizing for Islam while it is dissing Christianity. And it was the U.S. Army policy to burn bibles in 2009. It wasn’t the Obama administration.

And I am just — I personally am — one of the reasons that I’m running for president is that I’m tired of the elite view in this country, you can do anything you want to to Judaism and Christianity, but you have to apologize for Islam as often as necessary and you can never stand up and just say that’s baloney.

Watch the clip:

So Gingrich says that Obama surrendered the nation to Afghanistan by apologizing for Quran desecration, yet Bush gets off the hook. The former speaker’s hypocrisy shouldn’t be all that surprising though, as it’s been the hallmark of his presidential campaign.

Art Jones wants to be the U.S. Representative from the 3rd district of Illinois, which encompasses part of the South Side of Chicago and its suburbs. But his mish-mash of a platform — ranging from some standard Republican positions to classical isolationism — will probably not garner the same attention as his views that surfaced today on AOL’s Patch local news service. Jones, a neo-Nazi, says the “Holocaust never happened“:

As far as I’m concerned, the Holocaust is nothing more than an international extortion racket by the Jews. It’s the blackest lie in history. Millions of dollars are being made by Jews telling this tale of woe and misfortune in books, movies, plays and TV.

The more survivors, the more lies that are told.

Jones says his philosophy is National Socialism (Nazi for short) and he was once a member of an Illinois Nazi party. “Officially,” says Jones today, “I don’t belong to any party except my own, the America First Committee” — harkening back to a group, among them fascist sympathizers, that opposed U.S. entry into World War II. Accordingly, Jones wants to end the so-called “war on terror” and is “completely against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the deployment of troops to other countries.”

Despite his party identification, Jones remains a registered Republican, he says. He told Patch he votes for the GOP “90 percent of the time.” That doesn’t, though, shield the GOP from rhetoric that derides “the current Repugnant Republicans.” (HT: Huffington Post)