An overwhelming share of the American people remains supportive of Israel in its war against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, according to a Harvard CAPS/Harris poll published over the weekend.

The poll, conducted from Jan. 15-16 among US registered voters, found that 79 percent of Americans support Israel and 21 percent support Hamas, indicating that the Jewish state has remained largely popular with the American public over the course of the 15-month war in Gaza.

Both major political parties strongly back Israel, with 81 percent of Republicans, 75 percent of Democrats, and 80 percent of independents saying that they support it. In contrast, only 25 percent of Democrats, 19 percent of Republicans, and 20 percent of independents responded that they support Hamas, which launched the Gaza war with its invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Israel maintains strong support among all age brackets, although higher percentages back Hamas among the younger generations. Among those over age 65, the Jewish state enjoys a 90 percent rate of support, compared to only 10 percent of respondents who back Hamas. Among those aged 55-64, 83 percent support Israel and 17 percent support Hamas. Further, among respondents aged 45-54, 77 percent support Israel and 23 percent support Hamas. Seventy-one percent of respondents aged 35-44 support Israel and 29 percent support Hamas. 

Israel also enjoys strong support among the youngest age cohorts, despite he prevailing narrative that young Americans are opposed to the Jewish state. According to the poll, 68 percent of respondents aged 25-34 support Israel, compared to 32 percent for Hamas. Likewise, those aged 18-24 support Israel by a margin of 79 to 21 percent. 

The poll was conducted days before a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas went into effect on Sunday, halting 15 months of war sparked by the terrorist group’s Oct. 7. invasion of the Jewish state. During the onslaught, Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages to Gaza.

Under the ceasefire, Hamas will release 33 hostages over the next six weeks in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian security prisoners detained in Israel as fighting stops in Gaza. The poll found that 82 percent of respondents support the ceasefire.

In October, a Harvard-Harris poll showed similar results, with Americans indicating support for Israel over Hamas by a margin of 81-19 percent. This was a slight uptick from September, when 79 percent of Americans indicated support for Israel over the terrorist organization.

The post Americans Maintain Overwhelming Support for Israel Amid Ceasefire With Hamas, Poll Finds first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

The American Historical Association (AHA) has vetoed a controversial resolution, passed by its members earlier this month, which falsely accused Israel of sabotaging the higher education system in Gaza during its war to eradicate the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.

As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the resolution — titled, “Resolution to Oppose Scholasticide in Gaza” —  cited damages sustained by education institutions and loss of life, but rather than describing those misfortunes as inevitable consequences of a protracted war that Hamas started by launching a surprise massacre of Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, 2023, it argued that Israel’s aim was to murder educators and erase Palestinian history and culture.

The measure was, according to numerous groups which commented on it, intemperate and needlessly political, reducing the AHA to a manufacturer of political conformity. On Thursday, the AHA Council, the primary governing body of the organization, addressed that concern in a statement which announced its vetoing of the resolution and stressed the limits of its institutional mission.

“The Council considers the [resolution] … to contravene the Association’s Constitution because it lies outside the scope of the association’s mission and purpose, defined in its Constitution as ‘the promotion of historical studies through the encouragement of research teaching and publication; the collection and preservation of historical documents and artifacts; the dissemination of historical records and information; the broadening of historical knowledge among the general public; and the pursuit of kindred activities in the interest of history,’” the statement said.

It continued, “After careful deliberation and consideration, the AHA Council vetoes the resolution.”

AHA was subject to a flurry of criticism after the resolution passed, with organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) calling on it to reverse course and protect its reputation as a “respected source for evidence-based, nonpartisan historical perspectives for more than a century.” Meanwhile, the National Association of Scholars (NAS), a higher education nonprofit which promotes intellectual freedom and the restoration of academic standards, argued that the resolution was “disgraceful for its unwillingness to state forthrightly Hamas’s culpability for the indeed lamentable destruction of Gaza’s educational infrastructure.”

On Friday, the ADL said “we welcome” the veto of the resolution, adding that it “would not only alienate many members but also deviate from the [its] core purpose and undermine the AHA’s credibility.”

The AHA is not the first professional association for academics to have endorsed partisan attacks on Israel.

In August, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) issued a statement which endorsed academic boycotts, a seismic decision which overturned decades of policy and cleared the way for scholar-activists to escalate their efforts to purge the university of Zionism and educational partnerships with Israel.

The previous year, members of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) overwhelmingly voted to approve a resolution calling for a full academic boycott of Israeli academic institutions. With the resolution’s approval, the AAA, established in 1902 and based in Arlington, Virginia, became the first major academic professional association to endorse the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel since the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) did in 2022.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post American Historical Association Vetoes Defaming Anti-Israel Resolution first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Donald Trump pledged to rescue America from what he described as years of betrayal and decline in his inaugural address on Monday, prioritizing a crackdown on illegal immigration and portraying himself as a national savior chosen by God.

“First, I will declare a national emergency at our southern border,” he said. “All illegal entry will be immediately halted and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came.”

The speech echoed many of the themes he sounded at his first inauguration in 2017 when he spoke of the “American carnage” of crime and job loss that he said had ravaged the country.

Trump, 78, took the oath of office to “preserve, protect, and defend” the US Constitution at 12:01 pm ET (1701 GMT) inside the US Capitol, administered by Chief Justice John Roberts. His vice president, JD Vance, was sworn in just before him.

Trump will be the first felon to occupy the White House after a New York jury found him guilty of falsifying business records to cover up hush money paid to a porn star.

Trump intends to sign a raft of executive actions in his first hours as president, incoming White House officials said on Monday, including 10 focused on border security and immigration, his top priority.

In addition to declaring an emergency, the president will send armed troops there and resume a policy forcing asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for their US court dates, officials told reporters.

He will also seek to end so-called birthright citizenship for US-born children whose parents lack legal status, a move some legal scholars have said would be unconstitutional.

The inauguration completes a triumphant comeback for a political disruptor who survived two impeachment trials, a felony conviction, two assassination attempts, and an indictment for attempting to overturn his 2020 election loss.

“The journey to reclaim our republic has not been an easy one, that I can tell you,” Trump said, before referring to the assassin’s bullet that grazed his ear in July. “I was saved by God to make America great again.”

The ceremony was moved inside the Capitol due to the cold, four years after a mob of Trump supporters breached the building, a symbol of American democracy, in an unsuccessful effort to forestall Trump‘s loss to Democrat Joe Biden, 82.

Biden and outgoing Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost to Trump in November, were on hand inside the Capitol’s Rotunda, along with former Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump in 2016, arrived with her husband Bill, but Obama’s wife, Michelle, chose not to attend.

Numerous tech executives who have sought to curry favor with the incoming administration — including the three richest men in the world: Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg — had prominent seats on stage, next to cabinet nominees and members of Trump‘s family.

Trump, the first US president since the 19th century to win a second term after losing the White House, has said he would pardon “on Day One” many of the more than 1,500 people charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack. He skipped Biden’s inauguration and has continued to claim falsely that the 2020 election he lost to Biden was rigged.

Biden, in one of his last official acts, pardoned several people whom Trump has targeted for retaliation, including former White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci, former Republican US Representative Liz Cheney, and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley.

Trump will restore the federal death penalty, which Biden had suspended, and require that official US documents such as passports reflect citizens’ gender as assigned at birth, incoming administration officials told reporters.

They said he will also sign an order ending diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in the federal government on Monday, which is also Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a national holiday in memory of America’s most famous civil rights leader.

But Trump will not immediately impose new tariffs on Monday, instead directing federal agencies to evaluate trade relationships with Canada, China, and Mexico, a Trump official said, an unexpected development that unleashed a broad slide in the US dollar and a rally in global stock markets on a day when US financial markets are closed.

Some of the executive orders are likely to face legal challenges.

Even as he prepared to retake office, Trump continued to expand his business ventures, raising billions in market value by launching a “meme coin” crypto token over the weekend that prompted ethical and regulatory questions.

Earlier Trump and incoming first lady Melania Trump arrived at the White House, where Biden and outgoing first lady Jill Biden greeted them with handshakes.

“Welcome home,” Biden said.

DISRUPTIVE FORCE

As he did in 2017, Trump enters office as a chaotic and disruptive force, vowing to remake the federal government and expressing deep skepticism about the US-led alliances that have shaped post-World War Two global politics.

The former president returns to Washington emboldened after winning the national popular vote over Harris by more than 2 million votes thanks to a groundswell of voter frustration over persistent inflation, though he still fell just short of a 50 percent majority.

In 2016, Trump won the Electoral College — and the presidency — despite receiving nearly 3 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton.

Trump, who surpassed Biden as the oldest president ever to be sworn into office, will enjoy Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress that have been almost entirely purged of any intra-party dissenters. His advisers have outlined plans to replace nonpartisan bureaucrats with hand-picked loyalists.

Even before taking office, Trump established a rival power center in the weeks after his election victory, meeting world leaders and causing consternation by musing aloud about seizing the Panama Canal, taking control of NATO ally Denmark’s territory of Greenland, and imposing tariffs on the biggest US trading partners.

His influence has already been felt in the Israel-Hamas announcement last week of a ceasefire deal. Trump, whose envoy joined the negotiations in Qatar, had warned of “hell to pay” if Hamas did not release its hostages before the inauguration.

Unlike in 2017, when he filled many top jobs with institutionalists, Trump has prioritized fealty in nominating a bevy of controversial cabinet picks, some of whom are outspoken critics of the agencies they have been tapped to lead.

The inauguration took place amid heavy security after a campaign highlighted by an increase in political violence that included two assassination attempts against Trump, including one in which a bullet grazed his ear.

The traditional parade down Pennsylvania Avenue past the White House will now take place indoors at the Capital One Arena, where Trump held his victory rally on Sunday. Trump will also attend three inaugural balls in the evening.

Some diehard Trump followers slept in the street in frigid conditions to make sure they were in line to get a seat at the arena.

A desk and chair sat on the stage, where Trump was expected to sign some of his first executive orders in front of his supporters before heading to the White House.

The post Trump Sworn In a Second Time, Says He Was ‘Saved by God’ to Rescue America first appeared on Algemeiner.com.