Mondoweiss: Support for Israel is plummeting among U.S. voters

Reprinted from Mondoweiss.

Support for Israel is plummeting among U.S. voters

An Israeli flag flying in the sun. (Photo: Flickr/Justin LaBerge)

Two new polls show that support for Israel has cratered among the U.S. population. A Quinnipiac survey found that a plurality of voters (47%) think supporting Israel is in the national interest of the United States, while 41% think it is not.  Compare that to the December 2023 poll, when 69% of voters thought supporting Israel was in the national interest, and just 23% disagreed. The same poll found that just 21% of voters have a favorable view of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is in Washington this week publicly embracing Trump’s new Gaza plan. A new poll from The New York Times and Siena University found that “American support for Israel has undergone a seismic reversal” in the last two years. In the new poll, just 34% of U.S. voters say they back Israel, compared to the 47% who supported Israel in the aftermath of October 7.  The survey also found that a majority of voters oppose sending more economic and military aid to Israel, roughly 6 out of 10 voters think Israel should end its campaign, regardless of whether the hostages are released or Hamas is eliminated, and 40% of voters now believe that Israel is killing civilians intentionally. For the first time since the Times began polling voters on these issues in 1998, more voters say they sympathize with the Palestinians than the Israelis. At Politico, diplomatic correspondent Felicia Schwartz writes about young people’s dissatisfaction with Israel, regardless of political affiliation. The Sienna poll found that almost seven in 10 voters under 30 oppose more military aid to the country. “Public polling makes clear that generational change is coming that is set to reshape U.S. policy toward Israel in fundamental ways,” writes Schwartz. “On both the left and the right, young Americans are growing more skeptical of offering unconditional U.S. support to Israel, particularly as the death toll in Gaza rises and the possibility of Palestinian statehood dims.” “At the same time, younger Israelis are veering hard to the right, becoming more nationalist and religious and less sympathetic to the Palestinians, a shift that will create more tension in the U.S.-Israel relationship in the years to come. A collision looks unavoidable,” she continues. The New York Times spoke with a number of voters for their article on the new poll. “As a mother, seeing those children is horrifying,” a physician assistant from the suburbs of Hartford told the paper. “This isn’t a war. It’s a genocide.”