A new
Gallup poll shows that most Democrats now have unfavorable opinion of Israel, and he percentage who have a favorable opinion is down to 33%.
Here is the trend over time of those who have a favorable impression of Israel:
That is a precipitous drop.
Gallup says:
This year marks the first time any party group has had majority-level unfavorable ratings of Israel, with 60% of Democrats expressing that view. Forty-four percent of independents also have an unfavorable opinion of Israel.
Democrats’ and independents’ sagging views of Israel have pushed its favorability to 54% among all Americans, its lowest rating since January 2000, when it was also at 54%. The last time Americans had worse opinions of Israel -- 48% favorable -- was in February 1992. The all-time low was 45% favorable (and 45% unfavorable) in 1989.
In 2014, 74% of Democrats had a favorable opinion of Israel; in 2020 it was 67%.
More Democrats have a favorable view of the Palestinian territories - 45% - than Israel.
Also, Democrats gave higher scores to Egypt - 61%.
Other countries the Democrats prefer to Israel are Cuba and Colombia.
To me, this indicates the effectiveness of anti-Israel propaganda and of anti-Israel media bias over the past year. Democrats - and independents - get most of their news from the mainstream media which has shown lots of photos and videos of Palestinian civilians and nearly none of Hamas terrorists whose decisions made them miserable.
Perhaps this next chart is more important. Here is a chart of all Americans' opinion of Palestinians for the past 25 years:
That jump in favorability this year is primarily from Democrats (
26% to 45%). In fact, no other demographic (age, income, race) showed as much of a change in opinion as Democrats altogether.
Even if you accept the slander that Israel is guilty of "genocide," which most of the Democrats seem to think, why would this translate into more favorable opinions of Palestinians? What did they do this year to make them more admirable?
Certainly the PA did nothing. And Hamas spent the past year lying about casualties and bragging about attacks. The corruption and support for violence has not gone down in the least.
Why would Democrats opinions of Palestinians jump so much in a year when the Palestinians did nothing positive, and plenty negative?
This may indicate that the zero-sum mentality so prevalent among Palestinians has now infected Democrats. To them if Israel is bad, Palestinians must be good.
Perhaps worse is that Democratic leaders have not been outspoken in their support of Israel, out of fear of alienating their noisy pro-terror constituents. Outside of John Fetterman and Richie Torres, the Democratic politician message on Israel has been ambiguous at best and hostile at worst. This is a big contributor to the deepening rift between Israel and the Democratic party.
When Israel is no longer a bipartisan issue, it is bad for everyone.