Americans’ views of Israelis have grown more negative, survey finds

JAA – While Americans view Israelis far more favourably than the Israeli government, their opinion of the Jewish State’s residents has continued to decline, according to a survey released on Thursday, 9 July by the Pew Research Center. 

The survey of 12 574 American adults from 4 to 17 May found that 52% have a favourable opinion of the Israeli people, compared with 42% who hold an unfavourable opinion. 

A similar share hold a favourable view of Palestinians, with 50% saying they hold a favourable opinion, while 44% have unfavourable views. The margin of error for the full sample was about 1.3 percentage points. 

The survey found that Americans’ views of Israelis have grown increasingly negative in recent years, while views of Palestinians have remained steady. In 2022, 67% of US adults held a favourable view of Israelis, dropping to 52% this year, while views of Palestinians have dropped from 53% to 50%. 

Unfavourable views of Israelis rose from 25% in 2022 to 42% this year, while unfavourable views of Palestinians rose from 39% in 2022 to 44% this year. 

In contrast, the majority of Americans, 62%, held unfavourable views of the Israeli government, while 69% said they hold an unfavourable opinion of the Palestinian Authority, which governs in the West Bank, and 84% said they have an unfavourable view of Hamas. 

The Pew survey was conducted prior to Hamas’s announcement on Monday that it will dissolve its government in Gaza ahead of its transfer to the Palestinian technocratic committee that was established by US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace. 

The survey comes as a number of recent polls show, for the first time, Americans sympathise more with Palestinians than Israelis. 

Opinions of Israeli and Palestinian people were split among Republicans and Democrats, with 65% of Republicans holding a favourable view of Israelis compared with 43% of Democrats. Roughly two-thirds of Democrats hold a favourable view of Palestinians, compared with one-third of Republicans. 

A little more than half of Democrats now hold an unfavourable view of Israelis, up from 31% in 2022. Among Republicans, the share that hold a negative view towards Israelis also rose from 17% in 2022 to 31% in 2026. 

US adults under 30 years old are also more likely to hold a favourable view of Palestinians, at 58%, than Israelis, at 32%. According to pollsters, the attitude was largely driven by young Democrats, of which 72% hold a positive view towards Palestinians and just 26% hold a positive view of Israelis. 

Among Jewish respondents, the poll found that attitudes toward the Israeli people and government have declined in recent years. Since 2024, their favourable views of the Israeli people have fallen from 89% to 83%, and favourable opinions towards the Israeli government have fallen from 54% to 47%. 

It also found that 40% of Jewish adults in the US view the Palestinian people favourably, compared with 58% who said they view Palestinians unfavourably. Just 10% of Jewish adults said they hold a favourable view towards the Palestinian Authority, and 2% said they hold a favourable view of Hamas.