Uncategorized
For the first time, Democrats sympathize more with the Palestinians than with Israel, poll finds
WASHINGTON (JTA) — For the first time, a poll by Gallup found that Democrats are likelier to sympathize with Palestinians than with Israelis, though a majority of Democrats have a favorable view of Israel.
Asked, “In the Middle East situation, are your sympathies more with the Israelis or more with the Palestinians?” 49% of Democrats sympathized more with the Palestinians and 38% sympathized more with the Israelis. An additional 13%, according to the poll, sympathized with neither, both or had no opinion. It was the first time since at least 2001 that more Democrats sympathized with the Palestinians than with the Israelis.
Sympathy for Israelis among Republicans remains strong, with 78% sympathizing more with the Israelis and 11% sympathizing more the Palestinians. Among independents, 49% sympathize with the Israelis and 32% with the Palestinians. Overall, a majority, 54%, of Americans sympathize more with Israelis and 31% sympathize more with Palestinians.
“The resulting 23-point gap in Americans’ sympathy for Israel versus the Palestinians represents Israel’s slimmest advantage on this question in Gallup’s World Affairs poll trend,” Gallup said. “It is also the first time Israel has not enjoyed a better than 2-to-1 advantage over the Palestinians in Americans’ sympathies.”
Majorities of both Republicans and Democrats view Israel favorably, according to Gallup. Overall, with 68% of respondents have a favorable opinion of the country. Among Republicans, 82% view Israel favorably, and the figure among Democrats is 56%.
Last year, sympathies among Democrats in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were virtually tied, with 40% sympathizing more with Israelis and 38% sympathizing more with the Palestinians. A decade ago, 55% of Democrats sympathized more with Israel, and 19% sympathized more with the Palestinians. Israel’s positive margin in the survey has progressively declined since then.
The trend in recent years, Gallup said in its release Thursday, has been toward increased sympathy toward the Palestinians, but it did not detail what caused the 11% surge in sympathy for the Palestinians among Democrats in the past year.
Tensions between Israelis and Palestinians have intensified over the past year. More than a dozen Israelis have died in attacks this year while dozens of Palestinians, who Israel says are mostly militants, have died in Israeli military raids in the West Bank. Late last year, Israelis elected a governing coalition that includes far-right parties, including lawmakers who have declared themselves openly and proudly anti-LGBTQ.
Halie Soifer, the CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that Gallup’s question presents a false dichotomy and that the Democratic Party’s leadership is pro-Israel.
“Democrats – from President Biden on down – strongly support Israel’s safety and security,” she told JTA. “There is no contradiction between being pro-Israel and supporting Palestinian rights, which is why Democrats continue to support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as… security assistance for Israel and humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a zero-sum game, and thus polling that presents it as a binary choice is inherently flawed.”
Matt Brooks, CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said in a statement that declining Democratic sympathy for Israel “is an extremely troubling trend.”
The pollster also reported that sympathies for Israelis tended to diminish among younger voters. Baby boomers sympathize with Israelis over Palestinians by a margin of 46 points. But Palestinians hold a two-point advantage in sympathies among millennials.
The phone poll of 1,008 voting Americans took place between Feb. 1 and Feb. 23. It had a margin of error of 4 percentage points.
—
The post For the first time, Democrats sympathize more with the Palestinians than with Israel, poll finds appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Israel’s Netanyahu Hopes to ‘Taper’ Israel Off US Military Aid in Next Decade
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to the press on Capitol Hill, Washington, DC, July 8, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview published on Friday that he hopes to “taper off” Israeli dependence on US military aid in the next decade.
Netanyahu has said Israel should not be reliant on foreign military aid but has stopped short of declaring a firm timeline for when Israel would be fully independent from Washington.
“I want to taper off the military within the next 10 years,” Netanyahu told The Economist. Asked if that meant a tapering “down to zero,” he said: “Yes.”
Netanyahu said he told President Donald Trump during a recent visit that Israel “very deeply” appreciates “the military aid that America has given us over the years, but here too we’ve come of age and we’ve developed incredible capacities.”
In December, Netanyahu said Israel would spend 350 billion shekels ($110 billion) on developing an independent arms industry to reduce dependency on other countries.
In 2016, the US and Israeli governments signed a memorandum of understanding for the 10 years through September 2028 that provides $38 billion in military aid, $33 billion in grants to buy military equipment and $5 billion for missile defense systems.
Israeli defense exports rose 13 percent last year, with major contracts signed for Israeli defense technology including its advanced multi-layered aerial defense systems.
US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a staunch Israel supporter and close ally of Trump, said on X that “we need not wait ten years” to begin scaling back military aid to Israel.
“The billions in taxpayer dollars that would be saved by expediting the termination of military aid to Israel will and should be plowed back into the US military,” Graham said. “I will be presenting a proposal to Israel and the Trump administration to dramatically expedite the timetable.”
Uncategorized
In Rare Messages from Iran, Protesters ask West for Help, Speak of ‘Very High’ Death Toll
Protests in Tehran. Photo: Iran Photo from social media used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law, via i24 News
i24 News – Speaking to Western media from beyond the nationwide internet blackout imposed by the Islamic regime, Iranian protesters said they needed support amid a brutal crackdown.
“We’re standing up for a revolution, but we need help. Snipers have been stationed behind the Tajrish Arg area [a neighborhood in Tehran],” said a protester in Tehran speaking to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity. He added that “We saw hundreds of bodies.”
Another activist in Tehran spoke of witnessing security forces firing live ammunition at protesters resulting in a “very high” number killed.
On Friday, TIME magazine cited a Tehran doctor speaking on condition of anonymity that just six hospitals in the capital recorded at least 217 killed protesters, “most by live ammunition.”
Speaking to Reuters on Saturday, Setare Ghorbani, a French-Iranian national living in the suburbs of Paris, said that she became ill from worry for her friends inside Iran. She read out one of her friends’ last messages before losing contact: “I saw two government agents and they grabbed people, they fought so much, and I don’t know if they died or not.”
Uncategorized
Report: US Increasingly Regards Iran Protests as Having Potential to Overthrow Regime
United States President Donald J Trump in White House in Washington, DC, USA, on Thursday, December 18, 2025. Photo: Aaron Schwartz via Reuters Connect.
i24 News – The assessment in Washington of the strength and scope of the Iran protests has shifted after Thursday’s turnout, with US officials now inclined to grant the possibility that this could be a game changer, Axios reported on Friday.
“The protests are serious, and we will continue to monitor them,” an unnamed senior US official was quoted as saying in the report.
Iran was largely cut off from the outside world on Friday after the Islamic regime blacked out the internet to curb growing unrest, as videos circulating on social media showed buildings ablaze in anti-government protests raging across the country.
US President Donald Trump warned the Ayatollahs of a strong response if security forces escalate violence against protesters.
“We’re watching it very closely. If they start killing people like they have in the past, I think they’re going to get hit very hard by the United States,” Trump told reporters when asked about the unrest in Iran.
The latest reported death toll is at 51 protesters, including nine children.