The majority of Americans do not support Israel.

A new Gallup poll indicates that only 32% of Americans support Israel in its war on Gaza, a 10-percentage-point drop from September 2024, as anger continues to mount over atrocities against Palestinians.

The poll, released Tuesday, also showed a significant partisan divide on the issue. Seventy-one percent of respondents who identified as Republicans said they approved of Israel's behavior, compared to 8% of Democrats.

Overall, 60% of respondents said they disapproved of Israeli military action in Gaza.

According to experts, this latest poll reflects a trend toward growing discontent with Israel that goes beyond the war on Gaza, and perhaps cements a generational pattern among young Americans in particular, particularly Democrats, progressives, and even independents, but also some Republicans.

Perhaps one of the most telling signs of change is Georgia Republican Rep. Margo Taylor Greene's Tuesday statement that Israel is committing genocide, becoming the first Republican (and a staunch Trump supporter) to describe Israel's war as genocide.

In a poll, only 9% of respondents under the age of 35 said they approved of Israel's military action in Gaza, and only 6% said they had a positive opinion of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The study follows a Pew Research Center poll conducted in April, which found that a majority of respondents—including 50% of Republicans under the age of 50—said they had unfavorable views of Israel.

But even as public opinion in the United States continues to shift, Washington's policy of unconditional support for Israel has remained unwavering. Since the start of the war on Gaza in October 2023, the United States has provided Israel with billions of dollars in military aid, in addition to diplomatic support at the United Nations. Both current Republican President Donald Trump and his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, have been staunch supporters of the Israeli assault on Gaza, which most human rights groups have described as genocide.

According to reports from the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, Israel has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians in Gaza and injured more than 160,000, the vast majority of them women and children. It has also imposed a crippling blockade, destroying much of the Strip, reducing its buildings to rubble. The crippling blockade has also caused a deadly famine, with the United Nations saying on Tuesday there is "growing evidence of widespread famine and starvation."

However, the US Congress remains strongly pro-Israel on a bipartisan basis. Earlier this month, a legislative attempt to block $500 million in missile defense support for Israel failed in a 422-6 vote in the House of Representatives.

Experts believe that the average American voter is not particularly concerned with foreign policy, and it has not traditionally been a driving factor in elections. For example, domestic issues such as abortion, the economy, and gun control typically dominate the Democratic electoral agenda. This is in addition to the influence of pro-Israel groups, such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which spent more than $100 million in the 2024 elections to defeat critics of the Israeli government, especially progressives.

Powered by Froala Editor