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The Young American Left and Attitudes About Israel

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Abstract

Over the last two decades, a rift has emerged on the US political left regarding the State of Israel. Public polling has shown that young people and the ideological far left have developed distinctly negative views toward Israel. In the fall of 2020, we surveyed 3500 US adults, including oversampling of 2500 adults aged 18–30. We first explore the young left’s views toward Israel in comparison to how they view other foreign countries, and in comparison to how older adults and more conservative adults view Israel. We then ask whether their negative views toward Israel are explained by an issue prioritization of the Israel/Palestine conflict (no). Finally, we ask whether the young left’s negative attitudes toward Israel are focused on Israel’s politics and government or on other features of the country, such as its cultures and religions (it’s both). Overall, the young left evaluates Israel like it evaluates US adversaries such as Russia and Iran, whereas the center and right evaluate Israel like they evaluate other US allies, such as Mexico and India.

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Notes

  1. Sean Sullivan and Anne Gearan, “Biden is Increasingly at Odds with Other Democrats Over Israel,” The Washington Post, May 19, 2021.

  2. Anthony Zurcher, “Israel-Gaza: The Democrats’ ‘Tectonic’ Shift on the Conflict,” BBC News, May 21, 2021; Catie Edmondson, “Sanders Introduces Legislation to Block a $735 Million Arms Sale Package to Israel,” The New York Times, May 20, 2021.

  3. Andrew Desiderio, Lara Seligman, and Nahal Toosi, “U.S.-Israel Politics Heat Up on the Hill as Liberals Try to Stop Arms Sale,” Politico, May 19, 2021.

  4. Lisa Lerer and Jennifer Medina, “Tensions Among Democrats Grow Over Israel as the Left Defends Palestinians,” The New York Times, May 15, 2021; Peter Beinart, “Liberal American Attitudes Are Starting To Shift On Israelis And Palestinians,” All Things Considered, interviewed by Audie Cornish, National Public Radio, May 21, 2021.

  5. Matt Murphy, “Markey Backers ’Upset and Disappointed’ By His Stance on Gaza Conflict,” The Boston Globe, May 13, 2021.

  6. Pew Research Center, “Republicans and Democrats Grow Even Farther Apart in Views of Israel, Palestinians,” January 2018.

  7. YouGov is a leading firm specializing in representative online surveys. YouGov is widely used in scholarly research, such as for the National Science Foundation-funded Cooperative Election Study (Ansolabehere et al. 2021).

  8. See, for example, Lydia Saad, “Key Trends in U.S. Views on Israel and the Palestinians,” Gallup, May 28, 2021; Carroll Doherty, “A New Perspective on Americans’ views of Israelis and Palestinians,” Pew Research Center, April 24, 2019.

  9. “Republicans and Democrats Grow Even Further Apart in Views of Israel, Palestinians,” Pew Research Center, January 23, 2018.

  10. Lydia Saad, “Key Trends in U.S. Views on Israel and the Palestinians,” Gallup, May 28, 2021.

  11. Ellen Knickmeyer and Emily Swanson, “Poll: Many Democrats want more US support for Palestinians,” Associated Press, June 23, 2021.

  12. Kathy Frankovic, “Israel and the Palestinians: Where do America’s sympathies lie?” YouGov, May 19, 2021.

  13. Shibley Telhami, “Most Americans, including half of young Democrats, disapprove of Biden’s handling of recent Gaza crisis,” Brookings Institution, July 29, 2021.

  14. E.g., Tamara Cofman Wittes and Daniel Shapiro, “How Not to Measure Americans’ Support for Israel,” Atlantic, January 26, 2018.

  15. US Agency for International Development, “Foreign Aid Explorer: The official record of US foreign aid”.

  16. Ken Roberts, “Among Top 10 U.S. Trade Partners, There Are Just Three Bright Spots,” Forbes, November 13, 2020.

  17. Amnesty International, “Amnesty International Report 2020/21: The State of the World’s Human Rights,” April 7, 2021; Human Rights Watch, “World Report 2021,” January 23, 2021; US Department of State, “2020 Country Reports on Human Rights Practice,” March 30, 2021.

  18. Pew Research Center, “Republicans and Democrats Grow Even Farther Apart in Views of Israel, Palestinians,” January 2018.

  19. Frank Newport, “American Jews, Politics and Israel,” Gallup, August 27, 2019.

  20. Pew Research Center, “Jewish Americans in 2020,” May 11, 2021.

  21. Although not the focus of this section, we repeat the analysis for political evaluations and show the chart in the Online Appendix (Figure S5).

  22. Emmanuel Akinwotu, “‘He just says it like it is.’: why many Nigerians support Donald Trump,” The Guardian, October 31, 2020.

  23. “Nigeria: Deadly Mass Forced Evictions Make Life Misery for Waterfront Communities,” Amnesty International, November 14, 2017.

  24. “‘Shoot the Traitors’: Discrimination Against Muslims under India’s New Citizenship Policy,” Human Rights Watch, April 9, 2020.

  25. Natalie Gallon and Matt Rivers, “At Least 88 Politicians have been Killed in Mexico since September,” CNN, May 30, 2021; Nina Lakhani, “Mexico World’s Deadliest Country for Journalists, New Report Finds,” December 22, 2020.

  26. Rebecca Shimoni Stoil, “How The GOP Became A ‘Pro-Israel’ Party,” FiveThirtyEight, December 8, 2017.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Harvard University, Cambridge, USA

    Laura Royden

  2. Tufts University, Medford, USA

    Eitan Hersh

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  1. Laura Royden
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  2. Eitan Hersh
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Correspondence to Eitan Hersh.

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Royden, L., Hersh, E. The Young American Left and Attitudes About Israel. Cont Jewry 42, 23–42 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12397-022-09417-2

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