Most Americans do not support Israel's war on Gaza, polling shows

Middle East Eye

3 days ago

Not since 7 October 2023 has support for Israel among Americans been this low.
In a dramatic 10 percentage point drop since a poll from September 2024, only 32 percent of Americans said they support Israel's war on Gaza, new Gallup polling results released on Tuesday showed.
As of July 2025, 60 percent of Americans said they disapprove of Israel's military action, and 52 percent said they see Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a negative light - a significant shift from a year and a half ago.
Netanyahu has also never been viewed this unfavourably in any of its previous polling stretching back to the 1990s, Gallup said, citing a "continued deterioration in his image".
The International Criminal Court has an outstanding arrest warrant for Netanyahu for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
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The decline in support for the war and for Netanyahu is mainly driven by those who identify as Democrats and Independents, the results showed.
The vast majority of Republicans still back Israel and its leadership.
The contrast is sharp. Among Democrats, only eight percent of respondents said they approved of Israel's military action. Among Independents, that figure rose to 25 percent.
Among Republicans, 71 percent of respondents said they approved of what Israel was doing in Gaza.
Of those with a positive opinion of Netanyahu - a total of 29 percent of survey respondents - 67 percent of them identify as Republicans, compared with 19 percent who are Independents, and nine percent who are Democrats.
Most who support Netanyahu and the war on Gaza are white males aged 55 or older. They significantly outnumber women of the same race and age group.
The lowest level of support for Israel and Netanyahu came from the 18-34 age group who identify as non-white. Their favourable opinions were in the single-digit percentages, creating a dramatic gap between them and older white men.
All of this comes as several US allies around the world - backed by NGOs and the United Nations - have either strongly condemned Israel's conduct under Netanyahu or, in some cases, referred to it as a genocide, and mass protests in support of Palestinian rights have upended the US political landscape.
Israel has killed over 60,000 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them women and children.
Gallup - a global analytics and advisory firm best known for its survey expertise - carried out a similar survey just a few weeks after the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel in October 2023, which sparked the war, and back in November 2023, half of the American public was on board with Israel's military response.
" Since then, disapproval has outpaced approval in each survey, peaking at 55 percent in March 2024 before dipping to 48 percent in two readings later in the year," Gallup found.
November 2023 was when South Africa filed its genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice - a harbinger of what was to come.
Iran
Gallup also looked at American attitudes toward the Israeli bombing of Iran - an event US President Donald Trump termed "the 12-day war" last month.
The questions posed by Gallup include the "US assist" to Israel, which consisted of bunker-busting bombings of Iran's three main nuclear sites. That was a one-day attack.
A majority of 54 percent of Americans said they disagreed with the conflict with Iran.
But only 18 percent of Republican respondents said they disapproved of the attacks, compared to 60 percent of Independents and 79 percent of Democrats.
Starving child in Gaza was killed minutes after receiving aid, former US military contractor says Read More »
An overwhelming 78 percent of Republicans said they were on board with the move, compared to just 31 percent of Independents and a mere 12 percent of Democrats, highlighting a drastic gap.
This is despite Trump's predecessor, Joe Biden, also having floated a possible attack on Iran, while carrying out heavy bombings of its proxies - the Houthis - in Yemen.
Gallup did not include those who said they had no opinion on the matter.
As for the demographics, it was once again white males aged 55 and older who made up the majority of support for Israeli and US attacks on Iran.
Of those aged 18-34, only 15 percent felt the same.
Respondents who identified as non-white did not appear to make up even one quarter of the support for any of the conflicts.
The poll results are derived from a random sample of 1,002 adults, aged 18 and older, across all 50 US states, during the period from 7-21 July, Gallup said. The margin of error is +/- four percentage points.