A new Gallup poll shows that, despite what we’ve sometimes been reading, Americans of all political stripes and ages still overwhelmingly support Israel over the Palestinians.
They don’t say the percentages of Democrats that view Palestinians more favorably, but when the question was rephrased a little differently:
- 83% of Republicans, 72% of independents and 64% of Democrats view Israel favorably.
- 27% of Democrats, 21% of independents and 12% of Republicans view the Palestinian government favorably.
Notice also that the Democrat sympathy for Israel, although a but rocky, is still higher than it was in the early 2000s.
Also:
Beyond party and consistent with Gallup previous findings by age, Israel also receives higher favorable ratings from adults 55 and older (80% favorable) than from those 35 to 54 (72%) or 18 to 34 (65%). Conversely, the Palestinian Authority receives somewhat better ratings from adults 18 to 34 (31% favorable) than from those 35 to 54 (15%) or 55 and older (18%).
Looking at the trends, this is higher across the board for all three age groups. Gallup’s chart from their 2015 report on support for Israel by age shows this:
Each age group’ sympathies with Israel has jumped at least 10% in the last three years.
All of the doom and gloom articles about how young people are so anti-Israel are simply not true. Right now, support for Israel among 18-31 year olds is at nearly an all-time high, since 1991 when there was a lot of sympathy for Israel during the Gulf War. Since 1997, sympathy for Israel as opposed to Palestinians for the younger crowd has soared from 32% to 65% – more than double!
The trend of people’s sympathies to Israel has been pretty consistently going up since the BDS movement started in 2004.
I’m not saying that BDS isn’t a threat – but looking at the numbers, their accomplishments aren’t just zero – they are far less than zero.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
Leave a Reply