The Friday Edition
Americans Still Favor Israel While Warming to Palestinians
Source: NRC Amerika
By Bas Blokker
Published May 25, 2021
Translated and edited by Abraham A. van Kempen
Who should make the necessary compromises, the Palestinians or the Israelis?
PRESSURE ON ISRAEL. NRC Correspondent Merijn de Waal wrote last week about the impact of the war between Israel and the Palestinians on American domestic politics (Is Biden Sensitive to Growing US Criticism of Israel?). De Waal showed that the weight Americans attach to the Middle East in their daily lives has diminished. In a periodic Gallup poll, you see sympathy for the Palestinian cause rising over the years, although support for Israel is still significant.
Now that a ceasefire has been agreed upon, partly under pressure from President Biden, Israel, and Hamas, it is interesting to underline the party-political positions. Trump has tried to make Israel a domestic political issue. At every rally, he spoke about the move of the US embassy to Jerusalem. Given the Gallup poll, that seems to have been a futile effort.
The same poll contains a breakdown by party. Across the board, Israel is the Americans’ favorite. But the difference between what Democrats think versus the Republicans and Independents is growing. The differences emerge from the survey, and this chart shows the dynamics of those differences. Since President Obama took office, Republicans have not changed their mind about whether the US administration should put more pressure on Israel when the conflict flares up. The Independents have shifted somewhat to that position. On the other hand, most Democrats have embraced the idea to apply more pressure on the Israelis.
Biden has entered the challenging phase of politics. After the first weeks of record numbers of presidential decrees and record amounts of government aid, now comes the months of the gravel, the political mills that grind in Washington. However cautiously Biden maneuvers – “Until the neighboring countries unequivocally recognize Israel’s right to exist as a sovereign Jewish state, there can be no peace, says Biden” –
Under pressure from that shift in position from his constituency and especially from the left Avant-Garde, the Democratic Party will start to shift its position among Biden’s party members. And that’s currency for the Republicans.
LATEST OPEN LETTERS
- 20-03Stand up to Trump
- 18-02Average Americans Response
- 23-12Tens of thousands of dead children.......this must stop
- 05-06A Call to Action: Uniting for a Lasting Peace in the Holy Land
- 28-05Concerned world citizen
- 13-02World Peace
- 05-12My scream to the world
- 16-11To Syria and Bashar al-Assad
- 16-11To Palestine
- 24-10Japan should withdraw from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations (UN), WHO's controlling parent body, to protect the basic human rights and lives of its citizens.
Latest Blog Articles
- 01-07If Israel cannot stand alone, why do we let it?
- 01-07Mohammad Marandi: Why Israel Blinked — And What Iran Is Planning Next
- 01-07Israel is DESTROYING Itself: Alastair Crooke PREDICTS US-Iran War Before It Happened
- 30-06The Evangelical Pope | God is Lord of Time
- 26-06Our Friday News Analysis | What the World Reads Now!
- 25-06Our Wednesday News Analysis | Israel’s attack on Iran: The violent new world being born is going to horrify you
- 24-06Israel’s attack on Iran: The violent new world being born is going to horrify you
- 24-06Sumud: The unyielding heart of the Palestinian cause in Gaza
- 23-06The Evangelical Pope | Jerusalem – Yad Vashem
- 19-06Our Friday News Analysis | What the World Reads Now!
- 17-06Our Wednesday News Analysis | Greta Thunberg tried to shame western leaders – and found they have no shame