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by WILL FOLKS
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While America’s politicians remain firmly beholden to the interests of Israel – as evidenced by the recent joint war waged against the Islamic Republic of Iran – American citizens are growing increasingly skeptical of the Jewish State and its leaders.
According to new polling data from the Pew Research Center, 60% of American adults currently have an unfavorable view of Israel – up from 53% in the same survey a year ago. Conversely, only 37% of American adults view Israel favorably – down from 45% last year.
That’s a whopping -23% favorability gap – punctuated by a -15% swing over the past year.
Going back to 2022, the shift is even more tectonic. That year, 55% of American adults held a favorable view of Israel compared to 42% who viewed the Jewish State unfavorably – a gap of +13%.
In other words, over the course of the last four years there has been a staggering -36% shift in public perception… against Israel. Also, the percentage of Americans who hold a “very” unfavorable view of Israel (28%) has nearly tripled over the last four years, meaning the issue is escalating in intensity.
Talk about losing hearts and minds…
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Pew found significant partisan distinctions in its polling, noting more Republicans and Republican-leaners had favorable views of Israel (58%) compared to those with unfavorable views (41%).
“Still, the share of Republicans with a negative view has ticked up since last year, driven by those under 50,” Pew researchers noted. “Today, 57% of Republicans ages 18 to 49 have an unfavorable opinion of Israel, up from 50% last year. Large majorities of Republicans 50 and older continue to view Israel positively.”
As for president Donald Trump – who has seen his approval ratings tank following the launch of the Iran War – Pew found that more than half of Americans (55%) “lack confidence in (the) President to make good decisions when it comes to the relationship between the U.S. and Israel.”
That number hasn’t “shifted much” since August 2025 – the last time Pew asked the question.
As with the broader question related to perceptions of Israel, the partisan divide on the Trump question also ran deep – with more than three quarters of Republicans (73%) saying they did have confidence in Trump’s ability to “make good decisions about the U.S.-Israel relationship.”
Only 16% of Democrats felt the same…
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While it’s clear the joint war against Iran – and the Epstein Files saga which preceded it – have hurt Trump in the polls, it appears Israel is also taking a beating.
Frankly, that’s not surprising. As FITSNews has consistently pointed out, American taxpayers have invested hundreds of billions of dollars into defending Israel, supporting its offensive operations and engaging in offensive operations on its behalf.
What have we gotten in return?
Questioning the efficacy of these tremendously costly endeavors is the absolute right/responsibility of every free-thinking American citizen (and certainly every American taxpayer). Unfortunately, such independent thought has increasingly come under attack for being anti-semitic – a deliberately deceptive demonization gleefully embraced by far too many politicians, pundits and media outlets on the right.
“I have never (and will never) dispute Israel’s right to defend itself – or even wage aggressive war against its enemies, if it believes such campaigns are necessary,” I noted a decade ago. “I’m just asking them to pay for it themselves.”
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RELATED | WAR WEARY: TRUMP DISAPPROVAL SOARS
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Nearly three decades ago, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress – boldly declaring that the days of the U.S. government propping up his government were drawing to an end.
“I believe that we can now say that Israel has reached childhood’s end, that it has matured enough to begin approaching a state of self-reliance,” Netanyahu said on July 10, 1996.
“We will build an Israel of self-reliance,” he added.
Thirty years later, that clearly still hasn’t happened… and Americans are getting sick and tired of paying the freight for this unkept promise.
Pew surveyed 3,507 American adults regarding their views on Israel between March 23-29, 2026. The poll’s margin of error is plus or minus 1.9%. Keep it tuned to FITSNews as we continue providing coverage of the war in Iran and the broader geopolitical realities underpinning it… as well as those instances in which we as South Carolinians have the ability to do something about it all.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.
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7 comments
The angst towards Israel is misdirected. It’s like getting mad at another person’s lawyers who does a better job of getting results for his client than your lawyer does for you. Don’t get mad at the other guy’s lawyer – he’s doing his job for his client. Get mad at YOUR lawyer because they are not protecting and pursuing your interests, but are instead conceding to the other guy’s interests over and over. We should be pissed off at OUR leaders for not saying “no” more often to Israel when they’re doing a full court press for us to expend massive amounts of money – that we borrow- and risk our service members’ lives for things that don’t always matter as much to us as it does to Israel.
The other lawyer who might be getting results likely plats golf with many SC state judges, too. Known this to be the case quite often as it is often blurted out.
Hard to do with folks like yourself willing to reflexively vote for ANYTHING with an “R” next to the name on election day
Yes a few polls here and a few polls there done among a few thousand communist liberals among 350,000,000 other legal Americans.
Stupid people believe these polls, which by the way had Hillary Clinton smoking Trump ass in previous elections.
If zionism doesnt scare you, nothing will
I will say here what no other will and no other can because they do not have it in their hearts so it does not come up to their mouths.
The solution to the Middle East’s problems is LOVE.
Not hippie love, not promiscuous sexual love, and certainly not the love of money which is the root of all evils.
Pure Christian love.
Love thy neighbor as thyself. Love your enemy. If your enemy hungers, feed him. If he thirsts, give him a drink.
Easy for me, a Coptic Orthodox Christian, to tell Jews and Moslems to love each other after all these hatreds and wars?
THE OPPOSITE. Both hate me or think of me as a useful idiot.
And I have been plenty victimized by each. Yet, I love both.
If I can love them both after what they did to me, why can’t they love each other?
If only N Korea, China, or someone else, would loan Iran a few nukes, perhaps there might be a chance for world peace.