Why is Israel Losing Support in The World?

By Robert Inlakesh

Those who have been exposed fully to the live-streamed genocide in Gaza are overwhelmingly the young people of the United States.

It is no secret that Israel’s stock amongst the global public has been plummeting since October 7, 2023. A top Israeli think-tank has now identified the trend as a “brewing crisis in bilateral relations”. However, reversing the damage done to Israel’s reputation is now impossible.

The Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), an influential Israeli think tank, has expressed great concern over the growing partisan gap in the United States on the issue of Israel. It took note of polling data and the growing gap between Democratic versus Republican Party support for Israel.

Support for Israel has long been a bipartisan stance in the United States. Back in 2018, according to a Gallup Poll conducted that year, some 64% of Americans supported Israel and only 21% said they leant towards Palestine. 

The next year, while support for Palestine remained the same, only 59% of respondents said they supported Israel, which sparked major concerns for the Israel Lobby.

Fast forward to 2025 and the latest Gallup poll shows that only 32% of the US public back Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, most of whom are Republicans, with only 8% of Democrats supporting the Israeli assault.

Perhaps the most notable takeaway from the Gallup Poll however, were the opinions of young Americans, which appear to cut across Party lines in opposition to Israel. Overall, only 9% of respondents aged 18 to 34, said they supported Israel’s military actions in Gaza, while only 6% said they had a favorable view of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Recently, the right-wing Zionist Anti-Defamation League (ADL) conducted a survey and claimed to have found that 46% of the global adult population had entrenched anti-Semitic beliefs, up from 26% of adults harboring those same attitudes in 2014. 

It should be noted that the ADL has been shown to include pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel views as “anti-Semitism”, which is what led to recent reports in which it concluded exponential spikes in “anti-semitic incidents”. The ADL’s reports indicate that the Zionist movement is certainly in a state of crisis.

The key takeaways here are that Americans who are women, young people, Democrats or people of color are overwhelmingly opposed to Israel. This was, just years ago, unimaginable to be speaking about the majority of the US population now standing in opposition to Israel.

A recent Pew Poll from a few months back also indicated that despite the continued Republican Party voter support for Israel, when you look specifically at Republicans aged between 18 to 49, half of them viewed Israel unfavorably. 

Although the Pew data didn’t reveal the Gallup age range of 18 to 34, the evidence supports the notion that this demographic holds the most unfavorable views of Israel.

In response however, the Israeli government appears to be only bothering to focus its efforts on winning over young Republicans, not caring so much for Democrats that appear as a lost cause. This indicates an admission that in the future, Palestine-Israel is going to be a partisan issue in the United States.

When we also put into consideration that younger Americans get their news from social media, new media and independent commentators/journalists, more so than they do the major news outlets, it indicates that what they have already seen will have made up their mind as to where they stand on the issue. 

Those who have been exposed fully to the live-streamed genocide in Gaza are overwhelmingly the young people of the United States. For them, Palestine has become the issue of a generation. 

The big fear now for the Israel Lobby is that they are fully exposed and the younger generations will eventually grow up, making the population overwhelmingly pro-Palestine if no seismic shift occurs.

(The Palestine Chronicle)

– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.