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.”
Politico diplomatic correspondent Felicia Schwartz
“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.”
Cori Bush looks to take back House seat
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that former Rep. Cori Bush is eyeing a run against Rep. Wesley Bell and try to take back Missouri’s 1st district seat.
Bell defeated Bush in the August 2024 primary, helped by $9 million from AIPAC. She was targeted for consistently speaking up for Palestinian rights and cosponsoring the few bills aimed at holding Israel accountable in any way.
Bell has predictably defended Israel throughout the genocide.
Over the summer, his first in-person town hall was interrupted by protesters taking him to task over the issue. Bell had just returned from an AIPAC junket to Israel
“There’s a lot of folks who don’t want to have the conversation,” Bell told the crowd. “They just want to spew what they think is important, but they don’t want to have an actual debate because these are tough issues.”
He went on to deny that a genocide is taking place.
“Wesley Bell wanted to argue for semantics so that he can have some ethical, moral standing ground that his complicitness isn’t perpetuating the genocide, and he really failed on showing the community that he cared about it,” one town hall attendee told NPR on the way out.
Braxton Payne, a St. Louis-based political strategist, tells Jewish Insider that the upcoming election would be Bush’s best chance to beat Bell.
“Her strongest place is inside the city (of St. Louis) and you’re seeing… a strong pendulum swinging in regards to the conflict in Gaza and Palestine, and I think that is going to be probably one of her main narratives that she’ll lead with,” said Payne “Among some of the progressive votes, especially among her base in St. Louis City, I think she’s going to do fairly well with those people.”
Is AIPAC prepared to stop Bush again?
Support for Israel has declined further since the last race, and there’s reason to believe the lobby’s influence is nosediving as well.
In Haaretz, Ben Samuels argues that the organization’s influence is “waning” among Democratic lawmakers, pointing to recent dueling letters on Palestinian statehood.
The first effort, which was led by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), calls for U.S. recognition of a Palestinian state. 47 House members have signed on.
That might seem low, but Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA) put forward an AIPAC-backed, pro-Israel letter rejecting the premise of Khanna’s argument, and less than 30 House members signed it.
One of those signatures was Wesley Bell’s.
“Once upon a time, such an effort would have had the majority of Democratic caucus support and would have only been bolstered by intensive American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobbying,” points out Samuels. “The influence of hawkish megadonors and lobbies like AIPAC, as well as the potential electoral implications of publicly criticizing Israel, have long been a staple of the conversation. Alas, the ground is shifting, and the pro-Israel exceptionalism is much less tolerable in almost every wing of the Democratic Party.”
“Skeptics may posit that neither letter will make any difference, considering the Trump administration has so forcefully denounced efforts from its international allies to recognize the State of Palestine,” he continues. “This short-view, however, neglects the fact that Gaza will be a motivating issue for Democratic primary voters next year like never before, and this will very likely extend to the 2028 Democratic presidential primaries.”
Based on everything we’ve seen in U.S. politics since the genocide began, it’s to hard to argue against that.
Odds & Ends
🇮🇱 Trump says Israel can ‘finish the job’ in Gaza if Hamas rejects latest ceasefire plan
🛬 Exposing JFK Airport’s hidden arms pipeline to Israel
⭐ State prosecutors in Texas seek to make anti-Israel graffiti a hate crime
🪤 Why the Trump-Netanyahu ‘peace plan’ is a trap
⚖️ Court to hear arguments in Mohsen Mahdawi and Rümeysa Öztürk lawsuits
💸 AIPAC’s and Israel’s influence is falling in Congress, two opposing letters show just how much
🇵🇸 The role of national liberation politics and the centrality of Palestine to a new global alternative
🗣️ Responsible Statecraft: Trump offers Gaza plan that will please no one but Trump
👀 Drop Site News: Jeffrey Epstein Helped Broker Israeli Security Agreement
💬 Newsweek: Palestinian Authority Responds to Trump Gaza Peace Plan
🤞 Common Dreams: Trump-Netanyahu Joint Remarks Ripped as ‘Litany of Lies… Not a Promising Foundation for Peace’
🗽 New York Times: Thousands Protest Netanyahu’s U.N. Speech in New York City
🇮🇷 Jewish Insider: House lawmakers introduce bill to send seized Iranian weapons to U.S. allies
🇺🇳 Truthout: As UN Turns 80, Trump Continues US Violation of Charter’s Limits on Use of Force
🇻🇦 Counterpunch: An Appeal to the Vatican State: Protect the Gaza Sumud Flotilla’s Safe Arrival
👁️🗨️ The Guardian: Microsoft blocks Israel’s use of its technology in mass surveillance of Palestinians
📄 Times of Israel: Netanyahu secured key edits to Trump plan, slowing and limiting IDF’s Gaza withdrawal
📊 Politico: An Entire Generation of Americans Is Turning on Israel
📉 New York Times: Americans’ Support for Israel Dramatically Declines, Times/Siena Poll Finds
🖥️ The Cradle: Israel invests millions to ‘game’ ChatGPT into replicating pro-Israel content for Gen Z audiences
👨⚖️ Common Dreams: Reagan-Appointed Judge Rips Into Trump Admin for Illegally Targeting Pro-Palestine Student Protesters
📱 Responsible Statecraft: TikTok investor: ‘Embed the love and respect for Israel’ in the US
🇶🇦 Haaretz: Trump Signed Executive Order ‘Assuring the Security’ of Qatar on Day He Met With Netanyahu
Add this to Odds & Ends:
Trump’s peace plan is everything Israelis dreamed of. But it’s a fantasy | Roy Schwartz | The Guardian
Trump’s peace plan is everything Israelis dreamed of. But it’s a fantasy.……A brief read-through of the one-page plan might suggest that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his people were involved in phrasing it. At times, it reads more like a list of Israeli demands than diplomatic compromises. Perhaps that’s why Netanyahu gave it his blessing rather quickly, which seemed to all but seal the deal. Even then, worth mentioning, his speech offered a slightly different version of the plan from the one in the written document – saying he didn’t agree to a Palestinian state or a full military withdrawal….Take section 17 of the plan, for instance. It states that even if Hamas rejects or delays the agreement, Israel will hand over “terror-free” areas to an international force. How exactly is that supposed to happen? How will such a force actually operate in a war zone? There are no answers to those questions….The same applies to the proposed International Stabilisation Force (ISF). Which countries will send troops? How many? Who will have overarching authority over these forces? How will they coordinate with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)? Who will be in charge of ensuring Gaza doesn’t become a playground for various countries, each with their own interests and agendas? And, last but not least: who will give assurances to the people of Gaza that all of this is not just a new form of foreign occupation?
If a peace plan fails to abolish the Zionist state and leaves the IDF in existence, the peace plan is incompatible with international law. Genocide is an inherent element of Zionism and of the Zionist state. The international community banned genocide and made the ban jus cogens on Dec 11, 1946.
The example of Tucker Carlson indicates that the American public can almost certainly be moved to support derecognition of the Zionist state and the punishment of every Zionist on the planet.
Watch Tucker Carlson address the Chosen People Heresy.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DPS1NVljoQJ/
A poll question of whether one “supports Israel” is ambiguous. In the current discourse in the US, it’s often thought of de facto as supporting the state, its government, administration, and its basic policies and political course. In popular discourse, “Pro-Israel” is treated to mean supporting the Israeli state’s attacks on Iran and Gaza, the occupation of Pal. territories and its basic condust of those operations. From that pro-war “pro-Israeli” POV, those who have demanded a ceasefire and make much human rights criticism of those operations are “anti-Israel”, because the pro-war “pro-Israel” camp claims that the operations are necessary to support the state.
I don’t actually agree with this pro-war POV. I think that the state is hurting itself, especially in the long run, with its aggressiveness because it makes its neighbors more resentful. So criticizing its aggressiveness doesn’t actually make one anti-Israel.
But when people have intense loyalty to a state, under-criticizing and over-defending the state’s policies is a natural resulting tendency. So if the state is aggressive and pro-war, intense loyalists are naturally going to be inclined to support that aggressiveness as well. Support for a state’s policies is a tendency, so it’s not true for everyone.