They seemed to be the ties that would for ever bind.
For three-quarters of a century, unshakable support for Israel – in the form of military aid and diplomatic backing, and underpinned by broad public sentiment – has been an indelible feature of the US political landscape.
But Abdul El-Sayed, a Democratic candidate for the US Senate in Michigan, tipped by some as a rising star, detected something had changed as he campaigned in 100 towns and cities across what has long been one of the country’s election swing states.
“There’s no doubt that there’s been a change,” he said. “We’ve now lived through genocide, and that is bound to change public opinion in a pretty profound way.”
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Two years after Hamas’s attack on 7 October 2023 that killed almost 1,200 – mostly civilians – on the Israeli side and which initially generated a surge in popular solidarity, the views of the American public have indeed undergone a remarkable transformation, polls and analysts say.
Fueled by mounting dissent over the war in Gaza, which has left more than 67,000 Palestinians dead and produced searing images of widespread starvation, popular support for Israel has plummeted to previously unseen levels – while sympathy for the Palestinian cause has risen.
The effect was apparent in Michigan this week when Mallory McMorrow, one of El-Sayed’s Democratic opponents in a three-way party primary to replace the retiring senator Gary Peters, publicly agreed with El-Sayed’s characterization of the conflict as “genocide”.
Abdul El-Sayed speaks at a rally in Detroit in 2018. Photograph: Carlos Osorio/AP
Politicians – Democratic and Republican – who would once have bitten their tongues rather than voice the mildest criticism of Israel, now openly decry the long-running Gaza offensive, a small but growing number calling it a genocide.
This public breast-beating has done nothing to ease the Palestinians’ plight, or interrupt the billions of dollars of US military aid flowing to Israel; several election cycles may be needed for the policy impact to filter through. Yet analysts believe the change in public opinion to be so fundamental as to represent a permanent shift.
Significantly, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) – for years the most influential pro-Israel lobby group, which has organized primary challenges and boasted of unseating members of Congress deemed too critical or unsupportive – has shown signs of diminishing influence, as senior Democrats reportedly break longstanding ties.
The seismic shift is even more pronounced among the wider public.
A Pew Research Center survey last week reported that nearly six out of 10 Americans, 59%, now hold a negative view of Israel, while 39% believe it is “going too far” in its war in Gaza – compared with 31% who held the same view a year ago, and 27% who thought this just two months after the war started. A poll from the same organization in 2022 showed 42% with negative views.
The anti-Israel swing is confirmed by other polls. A recent New York Times/Siena poll showed pro-Palestinians sympathies outscoring support for Israel – albeit narrowly, by 35% to 34%.
An Economist/You Gov poll in August found that 45% of the public believe Israel is committing genocide – a charge Israel vociferously denies – compared with only 31% who disagreed. About four in 10 American Jews believe the same, according to a new Washington Post poll.
People attend a vigil and protest for Palestine outside Columbia University in New York. Photograph: Adam Gray/Getty Images
The change has been more acute among Democrats, where support for Israel is declining among all voter groups – with potentially profound implications for future elections and US foreign policy.
“A debate is brewing among Democrats that is certain to appear in the Democratic presidential primaries, and it will not be a comfortable debate within the party,” said Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-author of a recent report on Israel’s eroding support.
“If the next president is a Democrat, there will be a mix of views represented in the White House, and that itself will have an impact on governance,” he continued.
The shift has propelled upstart candidates who have publicly identified themselves with the Palestinian cause. The most notable has been Zohran Mamdani, a self-proclaimed democratic socialist who triumphed in a Democratic primary to become the party’s candidate for New York mayor after championing Palestinian rights.
Another is El-Sayed, in his campaign to be the party’s Senate candidate in Michigan, a traditional election swing state and home to a significant bloc of Arab American voters who swung in significant numbers to support Donald Trump in last November’s presidential election because of disenchantment with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s support for Israel’s Gaza offensive.
Zoran Mamdani with Bernie Sanders in Brooklyn last month. Photograph: Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images
El-Sayed, a former public health official, said his campaign had revealed an altered view of the conflict irrespective of background.
“I’ve gone to a lot of communities where there are no Arab or Muslim residents and when I when I talk about this issue, there’s a collective sigh of relief,” he said in an interview.
“People think, ‘Finally there’s a politician who’s willing to name the obvious … our tax dollars are being sent abroad to do unspeakable things instead of investing here at home.’
“Over the past few years, we’ve watched as life has become more unaffordable. People are struggling to afford everything from groceries to gas to healthcare, watching their schools crumble.
“So the idea that our tax dollars that could be used to invest in our children here at home are instead being used to destroy other children is beyond the pale for a lot of folks.”
‘The last extremely Zionist-inclined administration’
Republicans are encountering their own version of skepticism over support for Israel.
While voters over 50, according to the Brookings study, remain staunchly supportive of Israel, a drift has been discernible among younger Republicans, many of whom see unconditional backing for Israel as clashing with Donald Trump’s commitments to avoid foreign entanglements.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, the hard-right member of Congress from Georgia, made headlines in July by labelling Israel’s actions in Gaza “genocide”, several weeks before Bernie Sanders, the progressive senator from Vermont, did the same.
Trump has taken note. Talking to the Daily Caller in September, the president – who last week unveiled a plan for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, standing alongside the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu – said Israel had lost political influence in Washington.
Marjorie Taylor Greene in Washington earlier this year. Photograph: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images
“Israel was the strongest lobby I’ve ever seen. They had total control over Congress, and now they don’t,” he said.
Growing restiveness among his Maga base may have spurred Trump into trying to end the war with greater urgency, although the results remain to be seen.
Some supporters say the disenchantment is generational.
Curtis Mills, executive director of the American Conservative, a magazine originally founded to oppose the US-led invasion of Iraq, and which has long railed against the US alliance with Israel, said Trump’s presidency could be “the last baby boomer, conservative, extremely Zionist-inclined administration”.
“The US has been involved in foreign policy adventures at the behest of the Israeli cause for decades, and it hasn’t worked for the United States – it’s worked for Benjamin Netanyahu,” he said. “For people under 40, 30, or even 20, when it’s the Middle East, again, again, again, the gag reflex is going into full effect. And I think it’s becoming bipartisan.”
He continued: “The average age of a congressman is in the mid-60s, so this is not going to be expressed in legislative power today or even in the next Congress. But for under-50s, I think the Israel issue is dead on arrival.
“It is unlikely that the [next] Republican [presidential] candidate will be nearly as pro-Israel as previous Republican candidates have been.”
For now, the clearest signs of a sea change may be in Washington, where Aipac – long the dominant pro-Israel lobby group – is losing ground to traditionally smaller organisations.
The New York Times reported that Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, had accepted the endorsement of J Street, a center-left group that has criticised Netanyahu’s government and favors a two-state solution to the decades-old Israel-Palestinian conflict.
“For a long time, Aipac was the biggest kid on the block,” said Galston, of the Brookings Institution. “It will be a more equal fight in the next cycle.”
Pro-Palestine demonstrators march under a giant Palestinian flag. Photograph: Julius Constantine Motal/The Guardian
Marshall Wittmann, Aipac’s spokesman, cited a Senate vote in July defeating a motion backed by Sanders seeking to halt US arms sales to Israel as proof that Congress remains pro-Israel. While senators voted against the resolution to block the sale of assault rifles, a majority of Democrats present in the chamber, voted in favour.
“Polls fluctuate, but the reality is that Israel is fighting a just and moral war against a barbaric enemy that savagely attacked the Jewish state on October 7 and continues to hold 48 hostages,” he wrote in an email. “It is entirely consistent with American interests and values to stand with a democratic ally as it battles Hamas and other Iranian terrorist proxies.”
But Galston predicted that future policymakers would not see Israel in same David-and-Goliath image that once shaped the US view.
“Joe Biden will surely be the last [Democratic] president whose views were shaped by the early years of Israel, its astonishing victory in 1967 [in the six-day war], and by the fact that Israel was a beleaguered underdog for decades,” he said.
“That has all changed.”
