One could be forgiven for having missed an important Pew poll that was released on the same day that the doomsday clock was counting down on Donald Trump’s threat to destroy Iranian civilization. On April 7, the Pew Research Center released data on attitudes towards Israel in the U.S., and the numbers are devastating for the self-proclaimed Jewish state. What they reveal is a U.S. public increasingly aware that the myths spun over the last several decades justifying the U.S.- Israel relationship are false. And as these myths crumble, a significant political shift regarding official support for Israel is happening in centers of power in the U.S.
Pew reports that overall, 60% of U.S. adults have an unfavorable view of Israel, up from 53% in just one year and a nearly 20-point increase since 2022. Break down the numbers by various demographics, and the picture becomes only starker for Israel:
- Among Democrats, Israel’s unfavorability ratings have increased from 69% to a mindboggling 80% in one year and up from 53% in 2022.
- Among Republicans, overall unfavorability is 41%, but among those aged 18-49, it jumps to 57%, up from 50% last year. The unfavorability demographic among younger Democrats was 84%.
- Adding another twist is the decline in favorability among men under 50, which went from -3 in 2022 to -22 in 2025, and stands at -47 today. This is the same demographic that voted overwhelmingly for Trump in 2024.
Beyond the bipartisan nature of the results, one major takeaway from the poll is that Zionism has lost the young at such a dramatic pace that there is little doubt the shift is structural and not situational, regardless of what Sara Horwitz would have them do with their cell phones.
One puzzling part of the poll was a question about Americans’ confidence in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “do the right thing” in world affairs. The question assumes that Americans somehow would naturally trust the head of this foreign government. I suspect few, if any other, international political figures are the subject of such Pew questionnaires. Also implicit in the question is that a change in Israeli leadership can somehow set things straight and make the U.S.-Israeli relationship great again. But switching out the Netanyahu deck chairs for the Yair Lapid or Benny Gantz ones on the Titanic isn’t going to melt the iceberg Israel has been steering toward since 1948.
In fact, the story the Pew numbers tell is of the unmasking of the true nature of a brutal ethno-nationalist settler colony. Regardless of the person bearing the title Prime Minister, Israel cannot and will not, of its own volition, cease its plans to control the region by colonial expansion, a project begun over a hundred years ago in Palestine, and that continues today in Lebanon, Syria, and Iran.
Such a project can only be maintained through perpetual war, for which Americans are expected to foot the bill and shut up about it. But an increasing number of Americans are deciding that shutting up may not be in their best interest, not to mention in the interest of Palestinians.
For millions, politics on Israel and the Palestinians shifted as they watched a livestreamed genocide for over two years. While the Biden administration shoveled billions upon billions into Israel’s war chest during the assault on Gaza, Americans were left on their own to contend with the nation’s crumbling infrastructure, an insane healthcare “system,” spiraling housing prices, and the daunting weekly trip to the grocery store.
Enter Trump, who continued Biden’s practice of “emergency” weapons transfers to Israel that bypass congressional approval, and bought Netanyahu’s Iran war snake oil that not even Biden would countenance. The latest Pew numbers show the irreversibility of a trend that’s been growing since the early 2000s, not long after Netanyahu’s assurance to George Bush in 2002 that war on Iraq would result in “enormous positive reverberations on the region.” Sound familiar?
The political fallout
The political ramifications of this shift are undoubtedly being felt in D.C. and beyond.
Since 1967, it was a given that the United States’ unwavering commitment to Israel extended to both major U.S. parties. But Democrats have been steadily moving away from this position over the past decade, with support cratering in the last few years. Resulting from a confluence of events, including the furious pace of illegal settlement building in the West Bank, multiple horrific attacks on Gaza made unprecedentedly visible by social media, and the embrace of social and racial justice issues explicitly connected to Palestinian liberation, most clearly expressed by the Movement for Black Lives, this shift by Democrats was the first crack in the bipartisan consensus on Israel.
Exacerbating the crisis for Israel is the sharpening divide within the Right over its support for the state. Traditional Republican representatives continue their long-standing support for Israel, voting consistently for weapons sales and cheering on Israel’s military adventures. But with Evangelical Christians, considered the Republicans’ bedrock of support, also moving away from an unabashedly pro-Israel stance, and popular alternative media figures like Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly railing against the Iran war and America’s relationship with Israel, it seems only a matter of time until the MAGA base exacts a price from the Israel Firsters in public office.
Indeed, the sense of betrayal is palpable among those who, for a variety of reasons, view Israel’s actions in the region and America’s ongoing support for it as anathema to what MAGA was supposed to be about. Looming in the background are the Epstein files, the partial release of which by Trump’s DOJ fooled exactly no one, serving only to chalk up another broken campaign promise made to the base. Documents tying the financier and pedophile ring leader to Israel and its military, security, and hasbara operations provide a through line that connects some of the most politically toxic issues dogging the administration and the Republicans at large.
We have reached an inflection point in how U.S. citizens view the Israeli state. It turns out that viewing the intentional murder of tens of thousands of men, women, and children and laying waste to a place inhabited by over 2 million people doesn’t sit well with the American public, regardless of party affiliation, especially when we’re the ones paying for it. And when a president who campaigned against “endless wars” starts one, due to a mixture of imperial hubris and Israeli encouragement, the result has been predicatably unpopular.
The Pew poll, conducted during the fourth week of the U.S.-Israel war on Iran, reflects these sentiments and offers a glimpse of a future political battleground already taking shape.
Just this month in the Senate, an overwhelming number of Democrats voted to block bomb and bulldozer sales to Israel in what is being called a historic shift in the position of mainstream Democrats. While Republicans holding the pro-Israel line resulted in the bills’ defeat, the vote was another nail in the coffin of bipartisan support for Israel.
Signs of this shift are also unmistakable in election year campaigning, with presidential hopefuls and down ballot Democrats increasingly forswearing AIPAC support. Whether this proves to be a bellwether for a shift among Republican party hopefuls remains to be seen. It is noteworthy that these changes are happening despite Israel’s multimillion dollar hasbara budget that churns out countless ways to smear its critics as antisemites, and a well-oiled and universally-feared pro-Israel lobbying machine in the U.S. It seems that happiness isn’t the only thing money can’t buy.
