American Support for Israel Is Faltering

If you don't support Israel lighting up a few million innocent civilians your fricken anti-semitic.

Innocent of what! They don't care for the Israelis. You know what that means!

My neighbor down the block thinks I'm an overly aggressive pain in the ass. Sadly his home burst into flames last night.

American Support for Israel Is Faltering

The Jewish state’s security is at higher risk as Western public sentiment shifts.

By William A. Galston, WSJ

Aug. 12, 2025

The Israeli government’s push to widen the war in Gaza faces staunch opposition from the military leadership and much of the Israeli public. It also comes against a backdrop of declining Western support for Israel.

American attitudes toward Israel are changing. An early August Economist/YouGov survey offers a snapshot of current views. Seventy-one percent of Americans believe that there is a “hunger crisis” in Gaza. Seventy-eight percent favor an immediate cease-fire. By a margin of more than 3 to 1, those who favor cutting military aid to Israel outnumber those who favor increasing it.

It gets worse. Only 32% of Americans view Israel’s response to Hamas as justified by the threat that the fanatical Islamist group poses, while 41% see Israel’s response as unjustified. Forty-three percent of Americans say Israel is committing genocide in Gaza; only 28% disagree, while the remainder aren’t sure. Only 29% of Americans sympathize more with Israelis than with Palestinians; almost as many have the opposite sentiment.

Support for Israel is especially low among younger adults. This is troubling because young people’s attitudes will shape future American policies toward Israel, which needs U.S. support to maintain its security in a region not yet reconciled to its existence. Only 18% of Americans under 30 sympathize more with Israelis than with Palestinians, compared with 41% who have the opposite sentiment. Even among the next-oldest cohort, those 30 to 44, Palestinian sympathizers outnumber Israeli ones.

A Pew Research Center survey conducted this spring shows that Americans’ support for Israel has eroded over the past few years. Between March 2022 and March 2025, the share of Americans expressing an unfavorable view of Israel rose from 42% to 53%.

Articulating a common Republican view, Matt Brooks, who leads the Republican Jewish Coalition, says that these changes mostly have been confined to the Democratic Party. “Today, there is only one pro-Israel party, and that’s the Republican Party.” This isn’t entirely true: While Republicans are still more favorably inclined toward Israel than are Democrats, the share of Republicans with unfavorable views rose from 27% in 2022 to 37% this year. (The share of Democrats with unfavorable views of Israel rose more, from 53% to 69%.)

Most of the change in Republican sentiment has occurred among Republicans under 50, whose negative share has risen from 35% to 50%. Among Republicans 50 and older, the share with negative views has barely budged and now stands at 23%.

The pattern has been different among Democrats. While negative attitudes toward Israel among Democrats under 50 rose by 9 points, from 62% to 71%, negative views increased by a startling 23 points, from 43% to 66%, among older Democrats. The result: When sorting by age and party affiliation, majority support for Israel is now confined to a single cohort—older Republicans—who will be replaced over time by younger members of their party, who now hold less positive views.

In response to events in Gaza and the American public’s reaction to them, Democratic elected officials have begun what may be a momentous shift on U.S. relations with Israel. On July 30, a majority of the Senate Democratic caucus voted for a resolution that called for stopping exports of automatic assault rifles to the Israel National Police. Many Democrats supported a parallel measure urging a stop to the export of 1,000-pound bombs to Israel. Although these measures failed, some longtime Democratic supporters of Israel have mused that this growing split may be irreparable.

Similar shifts in public opinion are forcing the hands of Western democracies that have long supported Israel. Canada, France and the U.K. recently declared their intention to recognize Palestine as a state next month. Australia has joined them, and New Zealand may follow suit. Last week, Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany, whose unswerving support for Israel has been rooted in the legacy of the Holocaust, announced the suspension of arms sales to Israel. Thorsten Brenner, director of a Berlin think tank, has described this as the “biggest rupture” between Germany and Israel since the relationship began in the 1950s.

Last week, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens—as staunch a supporter of Israel as there is—wrote that “being pro-Israel means looking at Gaza through the wider lens of Israel’s overall interests,” which include the rehabilitation of Israel’s international reputation and the resumption of diplomacy to turn Israel’s regional military successes into enduring political gains. Mr. Stephens closed with a warning: If Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “makes the colossal mistake of trying to reoccupy Gaza for the long term, then no thoughtful person can be pro-Israel without also being against him.”

Whatever Mr. Netanyahu may say about his government’s decision to seize Gaza City, its likely consequence will be the long-term occupation of Gaza. In the event of such an occupation, Israel would likely lose even more of its remaining American supporters. What would that mean for Israel’s future?