Support for Israel "continues to decline" among US liberals and young people | News from Israel

In February 2017, Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said he was concerned about "the decline in support for Israel in the Democratic Party", informing his Jewish American audience that the problem was "a strategic issue" for Israel.

"I could not sleep after seeing a poll two weeks ago," she added.

A new US poll on the same subject will not help Shaked to stay calm. The results indicate that the main trends identified in recent years show no signs of slowing down; Israel's reputation is deteriorating among members of the population such as Democrats, younger voters, African Americans and Hispanics.

The fact that the American public opinion towards Israel is still positive masks an increasingly partisan gap; The Economist / YouGov survey found that only 25 percent of Democratic voters considered Israel an "ally" of the United States, compared with 57 percent of Republicans.

According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the survey "shows that support for Israel is directly related to gender, age, economic status and political outlook, and is strongest among older men, wealthy men and women. conservative, and the weakest among young people, liberals, minorities and women ".

But are such polls a cause for concern among supporters of Israel? "There is certainly a segment of the Israeli Jewish public who are worried about the country's declining reputation," Edo Konrad, an Israeli journalist for +972 Magazine, told Al Jazeera.

"But the majority of Israeli Jews have either become indifferent to the overall political situation, or have supported the Netanyahu government's tendency to hyper-nationalism," Konrad said.

Partisan fracture

This imbalance is one of the drivers of the "partisan division" towards Israel and the Palestinians that the Pew Research Center declared in January as "larger than ever since 1978" – a division that slowly changing the political landscape of the world. WE.

Bernie Sanders' candidacy for leadership of the Democratic Party is an example of a change of speech about Israel. The polarized reaction to Donald Trump's appointment of David Friedman is another.

These developments result from different factors, from years of popular activism in Palestine to the legacy of Netanyahu's efforts to support Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential race and undermine Barack's negotiations Obama on Iran.

In addition, as noted by Tamara Cofman Wittes, a Brookings Institution specialist, and former US envoy Daniel Shapiro in January, "some Americans have come to examine the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the lens of human rights. ;man".

"In recent years and months," Al Jazeera's Zena Agha, American policy scholar Al Shabaka, told Al-Shabaka, "support for Israel has become a partisan issue with many liberal actions in Gaza, in the West Bank and Jerusalem, but also by questioning blind support for Israel itself.

"This represents a real problem for Israel, which has put all its eggs in one basket – a basket that dangles precariously on the far right arm," said Agha.

This extreme right-wing stance comes at the level of activism – for example, the invitation to former football hooligan and Islamophobic activist Tommy Robinson of pro-Israel groups based in the United States. United States – only at the state level.

In recent years, Netanyahu has visited Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, or welcomed them. Netanyahu warmly welcomed the electoral victory of Brazilian right-wing candidate Jair Bolsonaro, who pledged to visit Israel and move his country's embassy to Jerusalem.

"It is hard not to conclude that the [Israeli] The government considers that the far right in the United States and elsewhere is a partner in the battle against extremist Islam and the "infiltrators", "said an editorial in Haaretz on October 30" and sees its reinforcement as a sign of approval to continue the occupation and expel asylum seekers ".

According to Konrad, "Israeli politicians have made the conscious decision to turn away from American liberal Judaism in favor of far-right Jewish personalities such as [Republican donor] billionaire Sheldon Adelson, as well as xenophobic nationalist leaders like Orban ".

Liberal-left distance and the growing adoption of the far right are trends that can continue or even accelerate. Among the Democrats, popular changes are beginning to take shape – consider the new "group of activist democrats" who are preparing for the election in the House, or the 10 letters and joint statements of lawmakers since June 2015 highlighting the rights of Palestinians.

"As long as Israel continues to commit atrocities against Palestinians and violates its rights, it will continue to lose progressives and liberals around the world," said Agha. "The only way for me to see the trend reverse is if Israel itself changes course."

For the moment, however, there is little precious sign of such a change. Such a trajectory is risky for Israel, especially with regard to the effect on American Jews, the traditional pillar of support.

"American Jews, for the most part, are leftist democrats who attach importance to civil liberties and minority rights, while maintaining their support for the state of Israel," he said. Konrad said.

"But with the Israeli government building alliances with authoritarian and anti-Semitic leaders around the world and maintaining a military dictatorship over Palestinians in the occupied territories, the American Jewish community realizes that its political interests and those of Israel do not necessarily align, "he added.

Eyal Nadav, editor-in-chief for Israel's Foreign TV Channel on Channel 10, wrote to the press last week in which she stressed that "foreign policy is not based on the short term, but rests mainly on long-term relationships ".

"What will happen the day after Orban, Duterte, US President Donald Trump and others leave office?" Does Israel have friendly relations with these people? [future] leaders or public political support relationships? "

Agha believes that Palestinians also have an opportunity "to be able to capitalize on these developments", including "aligning Palestine with similar and shared struggles around the world, the rights of Indigenous Peoples in the Americas and Oceania to Blacks. liberation and the end of mass incarcerations and police brutality in the United States ".

Agha, like other Palestinian analysts, as well as activists, is wary of the disparity between developments at the base, which "have not yet filtered to the corridors of power."

However, she told Al Jazeera, if the Palestinians "worked with candidates and progressive representatives," then it would be possible "to make support for Palestine an integral part of their vote and their expectations once elected ".