Democrats Shifting Support Away From Israel to Palestine
Suppose you needed more proof that AOC and her ilk have made it “Not your father’s Democratic Party” for the first time ever. In that case, a new Gallup poll shows that a majority of Democrats now favor the Palestinians and not Israel in the ongoing Middle East Conflict!
Forty-nine percent of Democrats now say they sympathize more with Palestinians, compared to 38 percent who side with Israelis—a staggering 11-point swing since just last year.
The poll comes as far-left, anti-Israel lawmakers have worked to shift the Democratic Party’s support away from Israel over the past several years.
High-profile “Squad” members, including Reps. Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY) have accused Israel of “apartheid” and called for cutting off military support to the Jewish state.
Omar’s claim that US politicians only back Israel because of donations—”It’s all about the Benjamins baby,” she wrote on Twitter in 2019—was widely denounced as anti-Semitic and led to Republicans removing her from the House Foreign Affairs Committee earlier this year. In 2021, House Democrats voted to block funding to Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system under pressure from far-left lawmakers.
“This is an extremely troubling trend,” said Republican Jewish Coalition CEO Matt Brooks. “Many elected Democrats claim to be pro-Israel, but party activists and rank-and-file members are increasingly indifferent and even hostile to the Jewish state. It’s long past time for Democratic leaders to admit they have a problem that must be addressed to restore the historic bipartisan support for Israel.”
The Gallup poll shows a significant shift in Democrats’ views of Israel over the past two decades, a trend that has become more pronounced in recent years.
Equally troubling for those that support the Jewish State, Independents also expressed a 6-point increase in support for Palestinians since 2022, but they still sided more with Israel by 49 percent to 32 percent.
According to the poll, the views of Conservatives have been left unchanged, with 78 percent backing Israel.
Nice spin. You can always see the curveball coming when these cut n paste wizards skip the source. However, in this one, Bill has put a number of sources together for a good story, if you lean into his spin.
The poll states that it’s the youngest slice of the Democratic Party that’s shifted and portends that the next slice aging into the party will shift as well. The poll mentions nothing about the squad, that’s Bill’s guestimate to create spin. It is the younger folk so the “not your fathers…..” seems valid, but the squad, only Bill knows, the poll mentions nothing. JC CEO Brooks makes a good point, but not sure he wants the Dems to duke this out given the platform supports at the current time. Might be better to take the win and let sleeping dogs lie.
What Bill left out was the poll’s conclusion by Gallop: “Americans’ views on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict have become more polarized as Democrats increasingly commiserate with the Palestinians, while Republicans maintain their solid alignment with the Israelis. The escalation of Israeli-Palestinian hostilities over the past year, resulting in a high number of Palestinians killed, could partly explain the most recent shift in Democrats’ perspective. But Democrats’ waning religiosity may be a factor in the longer-term trend. Sympathy for Israel has historically been highly correlated with religion, with those attending religious services weekly being much more sympathetic to the Israelis than those who seldom or never attend.
Regardless of the reasons that Democrats’ (and, to a lesser extent, independents’) views have changed on the conflict, majorities of all generational and party groups still view Israel favorably and look more favorably on Israel than on the Palestinian Authority. This suggests that while rank-and-file Democrats may want Palestinians’ needs addressed, they will want solutions that respect Israel’s needs as well.”
Points made in the poll’s conclusion are “all generational and party groups still view Israel favorably and look more favorably on Israel than on the PLA. This suggests that while rank-and-file Democrats may want Palestinians’ needs addressed, they will want solutions that respect Israel’s needs as well.” As the article concludes, this may be more about waning religiosity and ” Democrats increasingly commiserate with the Palestinians” than it is the squad, which is never mentioned by the pollsters or diminishing favorability for Israel.
Israel isn’t helping by trying to become a Fascist state. Oh wait, didn’t Israel originate out of the ashes of a Fascist state? Is Israel going to repeat the holocaust all over, on its own citizens? What is going on over there?
Another instance where democrats are ahead of the curve and republicans remain with their heads buried in the sand. The strong support that republicans show for Israel is about the Benjamin’s same as the strong support they show for assault rifles and guns in general is due to the ‘Benjamin’s’ they receive from the NRA. Republicans do not base their decisions on right vs wrong and their support for Israel is no different. Most American Jews, being of the liberal persuasion, see that Israel is on the wrong side of history, and will never resolve their problems with the Palestinians as long as they continue to antagonize them. So yes, yet again, democrats are on the right side of history in shifting their support from Israel to the Palestinians…
I am an Independent. I am on the side of Israel because scripture consistently shows us that God of the universe will never abandon Israel. He will chastise it, but not abandon it.
So key point of yours is “liberal Jews”. Show me where in scripture where Jews being liberal worked out for them. Read Isaiah first 22 chapters! Show me one place where Jews being liberal worked out.
Next, what is so right about hundreds and sometimes up to 1100 Iranian missiles being shot into Israel is right? Israel already tried appeasement and letting Palestinians alone, and all they got for it was more missiles. What is right about Iran saying publicly that they want to eliminate Israel from existence!??? This is why Israel gets military aid. And it gets it from the US Govt. Not the NRA directly, any such contributions are from NRA members that are pro-Israel – and there is nothing wrong with that!!!
And by the way Mike f, Dems are not as far ahead of the curve as you think, but you just do not realize this: Blumenthal, and most of his Democratic colleagues in both Houses, are in the grip of a foreign policy lobby as powerful as the NRA, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee or AIPAC. The latest evidence of that slavishness {to AIPAC] comes in the form of growing support among Democrats in both Houses for legislation sponsored by Sen. Benjamin Cardin (D-MD) and co-sponsored by Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer that would make it a felony for Americans to support the international boycott against Israel, commonly known as BDS. Anyone guilty of violating the prohibitions will face a minimum civil penalty of $250,000 and a maximum criminal penalty of $1 million and 20 years in prison. So, AIPAC is thwarting any efforts at Israel making any peace with Palestinians and AIPAC is a Dem pet!!! And it happens to be more powerful than the NRA. Read about it from this 20 year Congressman that wrote an article about this at “https://lobelog.com/sorry-democrats-your-nra-is-spelled-aipac/”.
It’s also an artifact of time, and frankly (and I can be Frank), quite a polite message in that we are just leaning that way. To be Middle East conscious, you could say “the camel’s head has entered the tent,” if you know what I mean, if you catch my drift. Like the Trump 2016 vote, they need to be cognizant of the fact the sides are getting closer and they might want to pay heed to the Democratic minority thought growth on this topic. IOW — time to settle this thing with a win-win for everyone.
The artifact of time is the when Israel was born —- it was run by survivors and these folks were one angry, motivated crowd that had experience in war and created things like MOSSAD with it’s feared Metsada and Kidon sabotage and assassination units. Even today, not much revealed about the Kidon thought to have assassinated over 3,000 by now. The world respects, fears, and tries to emulate MOSSAD. Survivors also ran the country — Israel’s version of The Greatest Generation with a much harder edge, and rightfully so, than that of the US and others. They were born into a war after being raised in a Holocaust and now time has passed, a lot of time, and both younger Israelis and Americans feels it’s time to treat Palestinians as people, not the enemy. At least not the common citizen.
We see hard evidence of the age gap in the recent protests against Israeli authoritarianism where they basically shut down what Republicans want Donald J. Trump to do. Take over the courts. They have loser replacement laws than our system of impeachment and they stopped Netanyahu’s court overhaul cold unlike our Republicans who just wanted to catch a cold (covid) instead.
I imagine a lot of US hardliners, if they thought about it, would rather see the Palestinian question answered and resolved. Israel needs to take the lead in that. I am glad we are tossing a shot over their bow; better than than below the water line. So, heads up Israeli’s, you got some splaining and fixin to do. Cuz we won’t have less milenials going forward, we will have more. And the next gen is leaning into you even more. The poll says — we still love Israel, but hey, it’s time to fix this Palestine thing and the pressure, from us, will only increase with time. HAGD!
And if you don’t mind me being frank, Frank, I am pro Israel but more pro-solution to the Palestinian question. I am not sure at this point if the lion will ever be able to lay down with the lamb, but it certainly cannot try to hurt. The only think you’ll get at worse case is lamb chops. If you go back into Roman Empire history, you will find that the whole area that would encompass both Israel and Palestine, was ALL called Palestine! And if you go back into Israel’s state religious documents which is where our Old Testament comes from, you will find that God chose the Hebrews (post Jacob they are called Israelis) to be an example to the world with regard to the goodness of praising God and not having false Gods. Go into Numbers and you will find that non-Jews were allowed according to God’s law to attend festivals and all Jewish events, but, they had to obey all rules and customs of the events. If they did not want to obey it all, they could stay home – but they did not have to leave the Israeli encampment.
Personally, I do not think Israel is acting according to God’s law as defined in the OT and Jewish Talmud. But this is my opinion. The point of my opinion is that it is incumbent upon Israel to find a way to make peace, and it is incumbent of Palestinians to surrender their grievances to peace efforts and be gracious about being restored while allowing peace efforts to succeed. Unfortunately we have Zionist hard core Netanyahu and orgs like AIPAC on one side not letting peace happen, and you got Hamas and other IRanian backed groups on the other side not letting peace happen. I feel sorry for the average Palestinian who just wants to live in peace. And you are correct Frank, heads up Israel, the younger generation in high school now is way to far removed from WWII, the holocaust, and most of their great grandparents that fought WWII. So things they are a’changin!
things are a changing, artifact of time, what’s the dif? Good of you to be so young. Personally, I haven’t really thought about it, much less a solution. It’s all Palestine, there is no Palestine. All I know is it hurts to discover. The West Bank is dotted with Palestinian islands of control, separated by a safe zone from the Gaza section on the sea. Not to mention millions of Palestinian dispora in surrounding countries.
it’s fucked up and neither you or I have the history or brain space to make a recommendation.
I could care less about God, country, and history, but my goodness — it just seems obvious that these people should have a state, a country, a piece of land to call their country. And that’s what I think the younger folk have concluded and that seems freakin-a-skipping to me. I am woke to that.
Yeah I agree, everyone should have a piece of land to call home, and it should be a peaceful piece of land, not always in conflict.
WRT your statement, “I could care less about God, country, and history, ….” I understand your views on the Almighty. But my point is that if you go through the history of the Jews, every time they partner with more powerful countries to provide protection (i.e. USA), every time they meet aggression with appeasement, in the end it does not work out for them and they get invaded. A trend is a trend is a trend. And I am seeing that trend today.