Support for Israel is waning in the Democrat Party. The Times of Israel’s editor, David Horovitz, posted an important yesteday article showing that Israel is rapidly losing support among Democrats in the United States. Support for Israel among Republicans appears to be holding steady though. The polling was done by U.S. pollster, Frank Luntz.
According to Horovitz:
Three quarters of highly educated, high income, publicly active US Democrats — the so-called “opinion elites” — believe Israel has too much influence on US foreign policy, almost half of them consider Israel to be a racist country, and fewer than half of them believe that Israel wants peace with its neighbors.
47% of Democrats agreed with the characterization that Israel is a “racist” country, while only 13% of Republicans agreed. Luntz noted that Israel will soon no longer have bi-partisan support in the U.S. Furthermore, many Democrats are becoming ideologically aligned with the Palestinians.
Luntz believed that the findings are disastrous for the Jewish homeland:
He said he “knew there was a shift” in attitudes to Israel among US Democrats “and I have been seeing it get worse” in his ongoing polls. But the new findings surprised and shocked him, nonetheless. “I didn’t expect it to become this blatant and this deep.”
He is traveling to Israel this week to discuss the findings with government officials.
Another dimension of the problem for Israel is that American Jews are reflexive supporters of the Democrat Party. This means that American support for Israel in the Republican Party rests largely with evangelical Christians. Prominent GOP establishment figures, like James Baker III (form Sec. of State, and Sec. of the Treasury), are known to have no love for Israel.
