Amid the deluge of news about Donald Trump’s erratic reign, multiple wars and climate change, a development of monumental importance has gone largely unnoticed: US public opinion has turned against Israel.

Disgust at Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza and the perception that prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu dragged Trump into the disastrous war on Iran precipitated this dramatic shift. The UN reported on May 18th that 72,769 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th, 2023. During the same period, 1,096 Palestinians have been killed by Israelis in the West Bank.

Unconditional US support for Israel could be a thing of the past. As Chris Van Hollen, a Democratic senator from Maryland wrote in The New York Times this week, “The American people … do not want to be complicit in ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, or what human rights organisations and scholars have determined to be genocide in Gaza.”

A Pew Research Center poll released on April 7th found six in 10 Americans hold an unfavourable opinion of Israel. That rises to 80 per cent in the Democratic Party, long the political home of Jewish-American voters. Rejection of Israel’s actions is particularly strong among young people, with 84 per cent of Democrats under age 50, and 57 per cent of young Republicans, expressing negative views of the Jewish state.

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