Terrorist organizations and rogue regimes thrive on any perception that Israel is losing global support, especially from the strongest nation on Earth in the United States.

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According to Gallup, fewer than half of all Americans now sympathize with Israelis versus the Palestinians.  That’s the lowest level of support for Israel since Gallup began tracking the measure.  

Decades of terrorism, corruption, firing rockets indiscriminately at civilians and celebrating terrorism apparently make for great public relations.  

To be sure, a 46% to 33% plurality still favors Israel, and the worrisome trend itself flows from an increasing derangement among an increasingly marginalized political left with which we’re already familiar:  

Partisans’ sympathies in the Middle East situation follow a pattern similar to their favorable ratings of the two countries.  That is, Republicans broadly sympathize with the Israelis (75%) over the Palestinians (10%), while Democrats sympathize with the Palestinians over the Israelis by a nearly 3-to-1 ratio (59% vs. 21%).  Independents’ sympathies are similar to the national averages.  

Nevertheless, that’s an alarming trend that cannot remain tolerated and unrebutted.  It threatens our longstanding alliance with Israel, potentially destabilizing the Middle East, and if left unchecked will embolden terrorist organizations while betraying the values explicitly promoted by Founding Fathers including George Washington.  More recently, the U.S. has remained Israel’s stalwart ally, our support rooted in shared democratic values, strategic interests and moral commitment to opposing tyrannical regimes like Iran.  

In 2023, however, a Gallup poll for the first time showed that more Democrats expressed sympathy for the Palestinians (49%) than for the Israelis (38%).  That broke from previous decades when bipartisan support for Israel remained the norm, and underscored the degree to which extremist progressive ideology had infected their views on the conflict.  

That shifting stance toward Israel on the political left follows its embrace of radicals like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Talib who introduced toxic anti-Semitic rhetoric into mainstream politics, framing Israel as some sort of oppressor and the Palestinians as victims of some sort of colonialism.  Never mind that Israel completely withdrew from Gaza years before violence erupted from it on October 7, 2023.  

Mainstream media played a significant role in that shift in public opinion, by casting Israel’s responses to attacks as aggression, while downplaying or ignoring Palestinian tactics like using human shields.  Universities also increasingly became breeding grounds for anti-Semitic sentiment, where students get indoctrinated with revisionist history portraying Israel’s founding as some sort of act of ethnic cleansing.  Specifically, professors and student organizations promoted the “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” (BDS) movement, which cultivated deeper hostility toward Israel by encouraging others to view it as a somehow illegitimate state from its birth.  

Whatever its partisan origins and amplifications, however, declining U.S. support for Israel creates severe and far-reaching perils.  If the trend continues, it will only embolden intransigent terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as regimes like Iran, thereby weakening American standing on the global stage while jeopardizing other U.S. allies.  Terrorist organizations and rogue regimes thrive on any perception that Israel is losing global support, especially from the strongest nation on Earth in the United States.  Any shift away from democratic Israel only emboldens regimes that suppress free speech and deny other basic human rights.  

Importantly, Israel also serves an invaluable role in the troubled Middle East, providing America with strategic intelligence, military cooperation and technological advancements.  Any weakening of our mutually beneficial alliance necessarily undermines our own well-being in the region and across the globe, allowing adversaries like China, Russia and Iran to expand their menace.  

Accordingly, it’s critical that we halt and reverse that unacceptable trend.  

First, we must reassert bipartisan support for Israel.  While Republican leaders must continue to champion the U.S./Israel alliance, moderate Democrats like Senator John Fetterman (D – Pennsylvania) can play a role by resisting the radicalization of their party.  

Second, supporters of Israel must work aggressively to counter false narratives propagated by media, academia and the likes of AOC and Ilhan Omar.  That includes initiatives to promote accurate historical context and exposing the nature of the conflict, and the Trump administration is already playing a key role by ending federal support for universities and other institutions that tolerate anti-Semitism and violence.  American taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to fund universities, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) or other entities that actively promote defamatory propaganda, and Congress must advance legislation defunding those institutions engaging in such efforts against Israel.  

There’s a longstanding adage that if Israel’s enemies dropped their weapons there would be no more war, whereas if Israelis dropped their weapons there would be no more Israel.  That remains true, and the alarming trend of disregarding that truism can only embolden terrorism, weaken America and its allies and betray our values.  

To prevent that, political leaders, celebrities and citizens alike must decisively voice support for Israel, lest the trend continue and we all pay an increasingly high price.