Antipathy toward Israel spiked to 70% among those aged 18-49
A new Pew Research Center survey released this week found that 60% of U.S. adults have an unfavorable view of Israel amid the ongoing war in Iran, though a majority of Jewish Americans and white Evangelicals continue to hold generally positive opinions of the country.
The survey, conducted March 23 to March 29 among 3,507 U.S. adults, found that the unfavorable views of Israel rose by 7 percentage points since last year and jumped by nearly 20 points since 2022.
Among those who harbor unfavorable views toward Israel, 28% described theirs as “very unfavorable,” marking a 9-percentage point increase since last year and nearly three times the number who expressed such a view in 2022.
More Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents held unfavorable views, with 80% overall expressing unfavorable views. Republicans and those who lean toward that party were more positive at 58%, though the survey observed that the 41% of Republican or Republican-leaning voters who are unfavorable also increased since last year.
Antipathy toward Israel was more pronounced among younger people. Broken down by age groups, 70% of those aged 18-49, including 57% of Republicans in that age bracket, have an unfavorable view.
Religious views and race seemingly played a major role in determining respondents’ views of Israel, with Pew noting that “Jewish Americans and white evangelical Protestants have mostly positive views of Israel, at 64% and 65%, respectively.”
White non-Evangelical Protestants were 39% positive toward Israel, Roman Catholics were 35%, black Protestants were 33% and the religiously unaffiliated at 22%. Only 4% of Muslims held a positive view.
The survey also found that distrust of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has spiked among Americans, with approximately six in 10 people — or 59% — saying they have “little or no confidence” that he will “do the right thing regarding world affairs.”
The survey noted that the number of those questioning Netanyahu this year marked an increase of 7 percentage points since 2025 and almost 20 points since 2023.
While 56% of the American Jews surveyed have “little or no confidence” in Netanyahu, 52% of white Evangelical Protestants remained confident in his handling of world affairs.
The Pew survey reflects broad trends found in similar polls, such as one from NBC News last month that found support for Israel has declined among all age groups since 2023. The sharpest decline took place among those aged 18-34, almost two-thirds of whom expressed a “negative” view of the country.
In what NBC described as a “sea change” regarding voters’ opinions on the topic, the poll of 1,000 registered voters conducted from Feb. 27 to March 3 found that 63% of voters under age 35 have a negative view of Israel, compared to just 13% who have a positive view and 23% who hold a neutral view.
A seismic shift also appears to be taking place among young American Evangelicals, and the number who support Israel and see it as crucial to the End Times had been steadily declining even before the war in Gaza, according to a series of surveys in the 2023 book Christian Zionism in the Twenty-First Century: American Evangelical Opinion on Israel.
Experts who spoke to The Christian Post in 2024 had differing explanations for such a trajectory, ranging from the antisemitic influence of cultural Marxism in American universities to greater exposure to Christian eschatological views that deviate from premillennial dispensationalism, which emphasizes the role of modern Israel in the latter days.
Jon Brown is a reporter for The Christian Post. Send news tips to [email protected]
