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A poll shows Palestinians overwhelmingly support Oct. 7. What does that mean?

(JTA) — When a recent survey showed that nearly three-quarters of Palestinians supported Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, Israeli officials and commentators cited it to justify their country’s war in Gaza, which aims to depose the terror group.

“Palestinians need to focus on prioritizing the building of their nation, rather than trying to destroy ours,” read an online post by Act4IL, an Israeli government-run social media feed.  “It’s not a conflict about borders, it’s about the mere fact that Palestinians don’t want us here.”

For Israelis and others who hope to see Palestinians reject Hamas and its attacks on Israelis, the poll offered little reason for optimism. It found that 72% of respondents approved of Hamas’ decision to launch the Oct. 7 attack, in which the terror group killed 1,200 Israelis, took more than 240 captive and committed numerous atrocities. 

That finding was no outlier. According to the survey, support for Hamas has increased since September, particularly in the West Bank, where it has tripled. More than 60% of respondents say violence is the best means of ending the Israeli occupation. Most Palestinians — particularly in the West Bank — approve of Hamas’ conduct during the war. 

Writing in Israel Hayom, an Israeli right-leaning paper, commentator Nadav Shragai said the results underscored the argument that “commitment to perpetuate the struggle against the Jews and the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people comes from the grassroots level, from the Palestinian public en masse.”

But the pollster who conducted the survey and other analysts of Palestinian affairs say the results, while sobering, paint a more complex picture. Several told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the increased support for Hamas is an indictment of the past decade or so of Israeli-Palestinian relations, in which the two sides have not conducted any sustained peace negotiations. In the absence of diplomacy, they say, Palestinians have turned to violence.

“The prevailing perception is that the Palestinians do not have the option of resorting to diplomacy and negotiations to end the Israeli occupation, that this is not a viable means of ending the Israeli occupation so they’re left with nothing but violence,” said Khalil Shikaki, director of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, which conducted the poll.

“And the only group in Palestinian society that can deliver violence effectively against Israelis is Hamas,” he said. “So we will continue to see support for Hamas going up as long as the majority or substantive number of Palestinians do not see diplomacy as viable.”

The poll, conducted between Nov. 22 and Dec. 2 in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, reached 1,231 adults in face to face interviews, 750 in the West Bank and 481 in the Gaza Strip. It has a margin of error of 4%.

Shikaki, perhaps the most widely respected Palestinian pollster, pointed out wrinkles in the data. Support for Hamas as a movement, according to the poll, is softer than support for its actions. In addition, support for the two-state solution — in other words, the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel — has risen slightly since the last edition of the poll and stands at 34%, though 70% of respondents don’t think U.S. efforts toward that outcome are “serious.” 

Perhaps most significantly, the overwhelming majority of Palestinian respondents said they did not know or were in denial that the events of Oct. 7 included mass atrocities. Some 85% of respondents said they did not see videos showing the violence of the day and, when told of the atrocities, only 10% believed they occurred.

Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, said such denial is typical in the throes of a war, especially one in which close to 20,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Hamas-controlled Gaza health Ministry. (That figure does not differentiate between civilians and combatants and does not denote deaths from misfired Palestinian rockets. It is roughly in line with Israeli estimates of Palestinian casualties in Gaza.)

“Hearts harden and you demonize the other,” said Telhami, who is also a veteran pollster. “And then you block because you see whatever it is that you’re doing as justified, and whatever your side is doing as justified.”

The same is true of the Israels, he said. “When you look at the Israelis, they still think their army is doing its best to save civilians, even though we have thousands killed,” he said.

That assessment is reflected in a recent poll of Israelis by the Israel Democracy Institute, which found that nearly all Jewish Israelis, 91.5%, believe the army is observing the rules of war and international law, while 81% believe that the army should not take Palestinian suffering into account when planning its military operations in the war. The poll reached 503 Hebrew speakers and has a margin of error of approximately 4%.

Other analysts agreed that Palestinians see violent attacks as their best hope following the collapse of the peace process launched in the 1990s. Scholars say settlement expansion, settler violence against Palestinians and Israel’s recent advances in normalizing relations with a support of Arab and Muslim countries have contributed to the isolation fueling Palestinian backing for violence as a means of achieving their goals.

“Hamas’ actions putting Gaza on the world stage apparently look quite effective to Palestinians,” Dahlia Scheindlin, an Israeli public opinion expert, wrote in Haaretz after the poll came out. “Given the renewed urgent international attention to reviving diplomacy to resolve the conflict, Hamas made a good argument for using force.”

Yousef Munayyer, who heads the Palestine-Israel Program at the Washington D.C.-based Arab Center, said Hamas was garnering support as the more able agent to achieve Palestinian national ambitions, not for its Islamist ideology.

He pointed to a question near the end of the poll that asked respondents about what the “most vital Palestinian goal” should be. Forty-three percent responded ending Israel’s occupation and establishing a state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, while 36% said the priority should be Palestinian refugees returning to their homes in Israel’s recognized borders — a demand Israeli officials have long viewed as tantamount to the end of Israel as a Jewish state. Smaller percentages favored focusing on building an Islamic society, or strengthening democracy for Palestinians. 

The poll, said Munayyer, “calls on us to be cautious about interpreting support for Hamas as support for the religious ideology, in terms of the way society should be structured.”

The poll showed cratering support for the Palestinian Authority, led by Mahmoud Abbas. Biden wants a reconstituted Palestinian Authority to govern the Gaza Strip once the war is over. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that’s out of the question, and has depicted Abbas as not much better than Hamas — although cooperation between Israel and P.A. forces has so far kept a lid on violence erupting in the West Bank.

Disdain for Abbas may be the one area where Palestinians agree with Netanyahu. Some 60% of respondents want the Palestinian Authority dismantled and nearly 90% want Abbas to step down. Ronni Shaked, a research fellow at the Truman Institute at Hebrew University whose specialty is Palestinian society, said Palestinians see Abbas and the P.A. as it currently stands as little better than collaborators. 

“In their eyes, he is working with the Israelis, for the Israelis, he cooperates and coordinates the security with the Israeli people,” Shaked said. He noted also that the polling was conducted during an exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinians in Israeli prison on security offenses. Israel released roughly three prisoners for every hostage. 

That boosted Hamas in Palestinian eyes because of the priority Palestinians place on the release of the thousands of prisoners held by Israel, Shaked said.

”It’s a consensus among all the Palestinians, Hamas, Fatah [Abbas’ party], whatever you want, that to release the prisoner is … No. 1 for the society.”

The poll showed that 81% of respondents believed that Hamas’ primary goal in its Oct. 7 attack was a “response to settler attacks on Al-Aqsa Mosque and on Palestinian citizens and for the release of prisoners from Israeli prisons.”

Shikaki, who has been polling Palestinians since the outset of the Oslo process, said shifts in public opinion occur when diplomacy becomes viable, something that Biden is hoping to achieve even in the face of Netanyahu’s opposition to the P.A. and its low standing among Palestinians. 

“For a long time, we never had a majority in support of violence,” he said. “Support for violence started to rise when two, three years ago, violence by settlers increased considerably.”

Shaked was pessimistic. He said violence had become part of the Palestinian ethos since the collapse of the 1990s-era peace process and the launch of the Second Intifada in 2000. What was needed, he said, was a strong Palestinian leader who repudiated violence, and long-term teaching for peace to supersede decades of teaching violence.

“The ethos of the Palestinians has not changed,” he said. “They have the same collective memory, the same collective emotion, the same collective societal beliefs about the  delegitimization of the Jewish people.”


The post A poll shows Palestinians overwhelmingly support Oct. 7. What does that mean? appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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Anti-Zionists Are Excluding LGBTQ+ Jews From Pride Spaces, New Report Says

Jews of Pride members are seen marching in the Pride parade 2025, part of LGBTQ+ community’s Midsumma Festival. Photo: Alexander Bogatyrev / SOPA Images via Reuters Connect.

Anti-Israel activists in the LGBTQ+ community are subjecting Zionist Jews to extreme levels of discrimination, including expulsions from major progressive groups and even physical assault, according to a new report by the nonprofit A Wider Bridge.

The release of the report — titled “Unsafe Spaces: Addressing Antisemitism Against LGBTQ+ Jews and Ensuring Pride Safety” — comes as LGBTQ community members across the Western world observe Pride Month, a period of festivities which celebrate the expansion of social and legal rights that have allowed gays to live more freely and authentically than ever in human history. For pro-Israel Jews, however, Pride Month 2025 is a challenging moment, as anti-Zionism has creeped into and crowded out many queer spaces which once welcomed them with open arms.

From online forums to the streets, the maltreatment and “erasure” of Jewish queer identity is severe, the report explains. Eighty-two percent of LGBTQ Jews have reported being expelled from social media channels or harassed on them, A Wider Bridge noted.

Earlier this year, NYC Dyke March, a public demonstration held by members of the lesbian community in New York City, banned self-proclaimed “Zionists” from its annual event, citing a desire to stand against the so-called “genocide” occurring in Gaza. Last year, the NYC Dyke March came under scrutiny after organizers settled on “genocide” as the theme of its 2024 event. In a statement, decrying “ethnic cleansing, violence, and dehumanization,” the organization compared the ongoing war in Gaza, to mass killings occurring in Ethiopia, Myanmar, and Sudan.

Also in 2024, the Dyke March Committee formally barred “Zionists” from participating in the Pride March, and during the event Jews were attacked and heckled after being seen wearing the Star of David on their clothing. That same year, an LGBTQ-friendly bar in the Brooklyn borough of New York City refused to hold a screening party for the Eurovision talent competition due to the participation of an Israeli contestant.

Forced, mass exiles are taking place in response to this new reality, the report added. Forty-three percent of queer Jews say they are leaving online forums; 40 percent abstain from participating in LGBTQ social events; and 30 percent said their decision was driven by precipitous deterioration of the manner in which they are treated. The only conclusion to draw, the report said, is that the Pride movement is “no longer universally safe or inclusive.”

“What we have found since Oct. 7 and what the report points to is that the explosion of antisemitism that the whole Jewish community has experienced has in some ways grown even more exponentially in the LGBTQ community,” Rabbi Denise Eger, interim executive director of A Wider Bridge and former president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, told The Algemeiner during an interview on Friday. “What we’re seeing around now as Pride marches and organizations put on their celebration s is institutional discrimination and outright boycotts.”

Eger went on to note that antisemitism in LGBTQ communities is all the more distressing due to the outsized contributions, legal and political, which Jewish gays and lesbians have made towards fostering a society that is more inclusive of non-heteronormative identities and relationships.

“Look at who were the early leaders of the LGBTQ civil rights movement — Harvey Milk, one of the first openly gay elected officials in the US, was a Jewish man. Edith Windsor, who brought one of the first marriage equality cases that we won at the Supreme Court, and her attorney, Roberta Kaplan, who won it — these are LGBTQ heroes, not just LGBTQ ‘Jewish’ heroes and heroines,” Eger continued. “So, for LGBTQ Jews to be continually shut out of these spaces is paralyzing, shocking, and horrifying, and LGBTQ Jews are asking where is their home.”

She added, “These are difficult times, but together, the whole Jewish community, including the LGBTQ part of the Jewish community, can stand strong and be resilient in the face of all this, just as the Jewish people have done throughout our history. We have the tools within our tradition to keep us strong and to help us educate. And yes, I believe so much, as a rabbi, that we can and must help change the world for the better. That’s what we are called to do as the Jewish people.”

As previously reported by The Algemeiner, recorded incidents of antisemitism in the US continue to increase year over year, breaking all previous annual records.

In 2024, as reported by the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) annual audit, there were 9,354 antisemitic incidents — an average of 25.6 a day — across the US, creating an atmosphere of hate not experienced in the nearly thirty years since the ADL began tracking such data in 1979. Incidents of harassment, vandalism, and assault all increased by double digits, and for the first time ever a majority of outrages — 58 percent — were related to the existence of Israel as the world’s only Jewish state.

The Algemeiner parsed the ADL’s data, finding dramatic rises in incidents on college campuses, which saw the largest growth in 2024. The 1,694 incidents tallied by the ADL amounted to an 84 percent increase over the previous year. Additionally, antisemites were emboldened to commit more offenses in public in 2024 than they did in 2023, perpetrating 19 percent more attacks on Jewish people, pro-Israel demonstrators, and businesses perceived as being Jewish-owned or affiliated with Jews.

“Hatred toward Israel was a driving force behind antisemitism across the US, with more than half of all antisemitic incidents referencing Israel or Zionism,” said Oren Segal, ADL senior vice president for counter-extremism and intelligence. “These incidents, along with all those documented in the audit, serve as a clear reminder that silence is not an option. Good people must stand up, push back, and confront antisemitism wherever it appears. And that starts with understanding what fuels it and learning to recognize it in all its forms.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post Anti-Zionists Are Excluding LGBTQ+ Jews From Pride Spaces, New Report Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Two UK Men Convicted, Jailed Following November Antisemitic Harassment

Illustrative: A pro-Hamas march in London, United Kingdom, Feb. 17, 2024. Photo: Chrissa Giannakoudi via Reuters Connect

A court in the United Kingdom on Thursday sentenced Hussein Altamimi, 22, and Ali Alanzi, 30, to prison sentences of eight months and seven months respectively, for charges stemming from an incident at London’s Western Marble Arch Synagogue in November 2024, according to British media.

The two men received convictions for yelling at four Jewish worshipers such phrases as “Jews aren’t welcome here,” “you don’t belong here,” and “f—king Jew.” They also repeatedly screamed “free Palestine.”

The incident grew violent when Altamimi hit one victim’s arm to try and prevent her from filming the abuse. Alanzi also hurled liquid from an alcoholic drink toward one person. When police arrived to arrest the pair, he assaulted one of the officers.

The court convicted both men of four counts of religiously aggravated public order offenses and religiously aggravated assault. Alanzi also received a conviction for attacking the officer and will endure an additional 12 weeks’ incarceration due to a previous suspended sentence.

On Friday, the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) described its reaction to the hate crime prosecutions on X in one word: “Vindicated.”

Altamimi also faced additional charges and guilty verdicts related to a July 2023 incident which included racial abuse and striking a police officer.

“The CPS is working closely with the police to tackle hate crime, making sure that perpetrators who target victims because of their religion, race, sexuality, gender identity, or disability are brought to justice,” Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) lawyer Anna Hindmarsh said following the trial. “We know that hate crimes have a significant impact on victims and the wider community, and we will continue to support victims and witnesses who come forward to report any examples of hate crime they have experienced.”

The convictions against Altamimi and Alanzi are part of a historic surge in antisemitic acts in the United Kingdom.

The UK experienced its second-worst year for antisemitism in 2024, despite recording an 18 percent drop in antisemitic incidents from the previous year’s all-time high, according to a report released in February.

The Community Security Trust (CST), a nonprofit charity that advises Britain’s Jewish community on security matters, released data showing it recorded 3,528 antisemitic incidents for 2024, a drop of 18 percent from the 4,296 in 2023. These numbers compare to 1,662 antisemitic incidents in 2022, 2,261 in 2021, and 1,684 in 2020.

In the 12 months following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel, CST counted 5,583 antisemitic incidents in the UK, an increase from 204 percent from the same period the previous year.

Many of the incidents involved violence targeting the Jewish community.

Last month, On May 26, a group of six or seven men attacked three Jewish boys at the Hampstead Underground Station in North London, requiring hospitalization for one. CAA said that “this report is yet another stark reminder of the growing threat facing Jewish communities, including children.”

Another antisemitic assault occurred in Manchester in February, when an unidentified individual hit a Jewish man with what was believed to be a bottle, shattering the victim’s glasses.

The heavily Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Stamford Hill in Hackney saw an antisemitic act last week when vandals targeted a Jewish-owned investment firm, smashing its windows and splashing red paint. The group Palestine Action claimed responsibility for the crime, as it had done previously for similar acts at the University of Cambridge’s endowment fund headquarters and the BBC’s New Broadcasting House.

“This should be treated as [an] antisemitic incident without any doubt. [The owners] are visibly Jewish people; the people who run the business and this business itself have nothing to do with Israel,” said Rabbi Herschel Gluck, president of Jewish security service Shomrim’s branch in Stamford Hill.

Days earlier, residents of Brighton in southeastern England discovered antisemitic vandalism at a memorial created to honor the victims of the Hamas-led Oct. 7 terror attacks.

“There have been over 40 attacks on the site including vandalism, theft, and graffiti. The abuse has been relentless,” Heidi Bachram, who volunteers to maintain the memorial, told The Jewish Chronicle at the time. “It’s shocking that grief for innocents is met with such violence. The hate won’t stop us, and every night, a different victim’s story will be told [at the memorial]. We will never let them be forgotten.”

In April, according to prosecutors, Abdullah Sabah Albadri, 33, attempted to climb a wall outside of the Israeli embassy in London while carrying a “martyrdom note.”

Prosecutor Kristel Pous said that Albadri told police that he wanted to “do something to send a message to the Israeli government to stop the war.”

The Israeli embassy stated in response to the foiled attack that “we thank the British security forces for their immediate response and ongoing efforts to secure the embassy.” It vowed that “the embassy of Israel will not be deterred by any terror threat and will continue to represent Israel with pride in the UK.”

The post Two UK Men Convicted, Jailed Following November Antisemitic Harassment first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Large Pro-Israel Event in Texas ‘Indefinitely Postponed’ Due to Threats of Terrorism

A protester holds a sign that reads, ”From the river to the sea Palestine will be free” during a pro-Palestinian emergency demonstration outside the Consulate General of Israel in Houston, Texas, on March 19, 2025. Photo: Reginald Mathalone via Reuters Connect

The 2025 Israel Summit in Dallas, Texas has been indefinitely postponed in response to what organizers described as intensifying threats of terrorism. 

Prior to the cancellation, the event was expecting over 1,000 attendees. The Israel Summit had already undergone a last-minute venue change due to mounting safety concerns. The gathering, scheduled for June 9–11, was set to feature prominent voices from both the Jewish and Christian pro-Israel communities.

Former US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, who had been scheduled to speak at the event, commented on the cancellation on social media: “This is what America looks like in 2025. A peaceful pro-Israel gathering with more than a thousand participants had to be scrapped because of threats from violent extremists.”

Ten days prior to this year’s event, local police and intelligence officials in Dallas alerted organizers that the gathering had been upgraded to a “high-threat event.” 

According to Josiah Hilton, host of the Israel Guys show, which was scheduled to co-host the event with HaYovel, the organizers had to produce “a mandatory security plan with a substantial budget estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

The organizers then moved the Israel Summit to a facility in an isolated area of Kenneth, Texas. However, the event was forced to cancel after the Palestinian Youth Movement Dallas and Jewish Voice for Peace, a pair of anti-Israel, pro-Hamas organizations, revealed its location to their followers. 

[T]he Genocide Summit had to change plans last minute in desperation due to them claiming to be ‘under attack.’ The reality is they understand DFW’s commitment to confronting the extremist ideology that is Zionism,” Palestinian Youth Movement Dallas wrote on Instagram. 

However, the organizers stated that they are going to hold the pro-Israel event “in the near future,” and vowed to “come back bigger and stronger, with more people.”

Hilton said that the cancellation reflects “the growing normalization of antisemitic threats and anti-Israel extremists, which are fueling intimidation and silencing voices of support for Israel across the United States.”

The cancellation of the Israel Summit also reflects growing concern regarding potential violence against supporters of the Jewish state. Last month, two Israeli embassy staffers, Yaron Lipschinsky and Sarah Milgrim, were murdered while exiting an event hosted by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC. Then this past Sunday, an assailant firebombed a pro-Israel rally in Boulder, Colorado, injuring 15 people and a dog.

The post Large Pro-Israel Event in Texas ‘Indefinitely Postponed’ Due to Threats of Terrorism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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