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Gallup Poll: American sympathy for Israelis lowest on record

17-month war in Gaza has clearly had an effect on domestic public opinion

Reporting | QiOSK

New Gallup polling indicates that, for the first time, a minority of Americans — only 46% — are sympathetic toward Israelis. The percentage is the lowest recorded in Gallup’s 25 years of tracking the issue via its annual World Affairs Survey.

While the polling shows that Americans are more sympathetic toward Israelis over Palestinians overall (46% vs. 33%), U.S. adults are reporting they are more sympathetic toward Palestinians, up 6% from last year.

Americans’ views are largely split by political affiliation, according to Gallup. Republicans remain broadly supportive of Israelis, with 75% sympathizing with them over the Palestinians. Democrats, meanwhile, now side with Palestinians over Israelis by an almost 3-to-1 ratio (59% vs. 21%).

And a majority of Americans support the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, though Democrats (76%) and Independents (53%) support the idea more than Republicans do (41%).

Americans’ increased Palestinian sympathies follow an extended Israeli war on the Gaza strip, that has killed more than 48,000 Palestinians and wounded 110,000 others, though bodies are still being recovered from the rubble.

Previous polling suggests Americans’ changing attitudes toward the Israel-Palestine issue can impact election results. Indeed, a mid-January YouGov pollbacked by the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) Policy Project indicated the Biden administration's Gaza policy was a top reason 2020 Biden voters stayed home in 2024, costing then Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris critical votes.


Top Image Credit: Shutterstock/Hapelinium
Reporting | QiOSK
Ukraine war
Top image credit: HC FOTOSTUDIO via shutterstock.com

Should a Russia-Ukraine peace leave territorial control for later?

Europe

Since the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term, there have been ongoing diplomatic efforts to broker a peace settlement in the three-year-long war between Russia and Ukraine. So far, however, negotiations have failed to bridge the stark divide between the two sides.

Two of the key contentious issues have been post-war security guarantees for Ukraine and the political status of Ukrainian territory claimed or annexed by Russia. Specifically, regarding territorial sovereignty, Ukraine and Russia have rejected the United States' proposal to “freeze” the war along the current line of conflict as a de facto new border. Ukraine has refused to renounce its claims of sovereignty over territories occupied by Russia (including Crimea, which was annexed in 2014). Russia, in turn, has demanded Ukraine’s recognition of Russia’s territorial claim over the entirety of the four Ukrainian regions, which Russia annexed in 2022.

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Sea-launched, nuclear-armed cruise missiles, or SLCM-Ns, were considered unnecessary for U.S. national security for years. But now, the Navy’s pushing to bring SLCM-Ns back — even if doing so costs taxpayers billions.

Indeed, U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Johnny Wolfe told House Armed Services Committee members on May 7 that the Navy was fast tracking the development of the Sea-Launched Cruise Missile - Nuclear, known as the SLCM-N, along with the Trident II D5 Strategic Weapons System and hypersonic missiles.

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Bipartisan bill seeks to put arms sales lobbyists on ice for 3-years

Military Industrial Complex

President Donald Trump announced some $200 billion in potential arms sales to Saudi Arabia and Qatar a week ago — this is huge potential business for major U.S. defense contractors like RTX, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and General Atomics, all of which deploy armies of lobbyists in Washington each year to influence such contracts.

A new bipartisan bill dropping this week will impose some of the strictest bans to date to make sure former government officials aren’t lobbying on behalf of those big companies or foreign countries to get their share of this massive federal pie. In fact, the legislation will make it a crime to do so.

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