US Democrats sympathize more with Palestinians than Israelis: poll
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A recent poll reveals a new percentage weighing toward Palestine support and not 'Israel'.
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Groups march outside the White House, Thursday, Aug. 25, 2021, in Washington, as President Joe Biden welcomes Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to Washington. (AP)
Democrats' perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute have dramatically changed; in a yearly Gallup poll, they indicated for the first time that they sympathized more with Palestinians than Israelis.
Generally speaking, more Americans (54%) have sympathy for Israelis than Palestinians (31%), and two-thirds of Americans still think positively of "Israel." However, opinions on such topic are becoming more divisive in the US by generation and by political party.
53% of Democrats said they sympathized more with the Israelis in 2016, and 23% with the Palestinians. By 2022, that gap had virtually disappeared.
Only 38% of Democrats said they sympathized more with Israelis when Gallup polled them this year from February 1–23, while 49% said the same about the Palestinians.
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Americans born after 1980, the narrow majority of whom are more sympathetic to Palestinians than Israelis, are primarily responsible for this shift. More than twice as many Americans in earlier generations sympathize with Israelis.
The Democratic Party's progressive faction in Congress has also become more outspoken about the Palestinian cause.
Some Israeli officials and observers contend that by siding with the Republicans so closely, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu turned "Israel" into a partisan issue in Washington.
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Democrats as a whole (56%) still have a positive opinion of the occupation. This is significantly lower than the 82% of Republicans, down from 63% last year, but generally in line with prior results for Democrats over the two decades that Gallup has been conducting the poll.
Israeli politics are also very divisive; President Isaac Herzog warned on Wednesday that a civil war was imminent as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu moves forward with a plan to reform the judiciary that detractors claim will weaken the Israeli democracy.
