A new opinion poll by the Sadat Center at the University of Maryland finds a sea change in the American public on the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. For the first time, the percentage of Americans who say they sympathize with Palestinians (28 percent) exceeds the percentage who sympathize with Israelis (22 percent)[!!!] Some one fourth (26 percent) of Americans say they are equally sympathetic to both. So 54 percent of Americans now sympathize with Palestinians, either primarily or equally with Israelis. Some 12 percent don’t like either one, and 13 percent don’t know. So of the Americans who have an opinion and feel knowledgeable, actually 67.5 percent either sympathize mainly with the Palestinians or equally with them and Israelis.
I’ve been following this issue all my life, and I’m in my early 70s, and this outcome is an absolutely astonishing turnabout.
In 2010, just 15 years ago, the respected Zogby polling organization found that 65% of Americans were favorable toward Israel, and 49 percent had a favorable view of then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (down from 53 percent the year before).
And the percent favorable toward Palestinians? 21 percent in 2010, with 73 percent “unfavorable.” 34 percent supported Israeli squatter-settlements on the Palestinian West Bank, with only 40 percent opposing them—even though the latter was at the time the official policy of the US government. Only 6 percent wanted the U.S. government to lean toward the Palestinians. Some 50 percent wanted a middle course.
Now, 22 percent of Americans think Israel is committing a genocide, and if you combine them with those who think Israel is committing war crimes of some description, it comes to nearly half the respondents. Moreover, that is in a situation where 23 percent say they don’t know.
Only 22 percent of Americans in this poll think that Israel’s actions are justified under the right of self defense.
Netanyahu and his rogues’ gallery cabinet has driven Israel’s numbers into the basement.
Moreover, some 61 percent of Americans frankly acknowledge that the US is complicit in allowing the Israelis to pursue these war crimes.
Photo of 2025 Boston demo by Brett Wharton on Unsplash
These attitudes have formed even though American network and cable television “news” almost never report what is going on in Gaza, and even though the newspapers of record often give permission for genocide by framing it as self-defense or acting as stenographers for false Israeli propaganda that hospitals are Hamas command centers and journalists are covert Hamas operatives. Principled journalists are actually resigning from major news services over it. I mean, I’m to the point where I can’t bear to watch American media on this issue.
Yet despite the ways in which mainstream media runs cover for Israel’s genocide, the American people have figured it out. There isn’t much hope for our politics, but maybe this is a sign that Lincoln’s adage that you can’t fool all the people all the time still holds in the post-truth era.
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