Original article by Stephen Prager republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
“Democratic politicians who continue to support sending weapons to Israel are acting in direct defiance of their own constituents’ wishes,” said one progressive commentator.
As its genocidal actions in Gaza become more brazen by the day, support for Israel among Americans has reached a record low.
According to a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday, 60% of voters across all parties now say they oppose the United States sending more military aid to Israel, while just 32% say they support it. The pollster said it was the greatest amount of opposition it has recorded for the US-Israel alliance since it first asked the question in November 2023.
Opposition is even stronger among Democratic voters: 75% of them now oppose sending military aid to Israel, compared with just 18% who still support it.
Also for the first time ever in a Quinnipiac poll, more voters, 37%, said they sympathized with the Palestinians—an all-time high—compared with just 36% who said they sympathized with the Israelis—an all-time low.
In recent months, Israeli politicians have begun moving forward with a plan to fully occupy the Gaza Strip and permanently empty it of its inhabitants, which international humanitarian organizations have described as an “ethnic cleansing.”
On Wednesday, every member of the United Nations Security Council, with the exception of the United States, joined in a statement backing the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification’s declaration that Israel was creating a “man-made” famine in Gaza.
Meanwhile, even Israel’s leaders have found it impossible to defend its “double-tap” strike on Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis on Monday, in which the Israel Defense Forces launched a strike on the medical facility before launching another attack shortly afterward on the journalists and medical personnel who came to respond to the destruction.
That attack killed at least 20 people, adding to the potentially well over 100,000 Palestinians who experts estimate have been killed over the course of the nearly two-year military onslaught.
According to the Quinnipiac poll, 50% of Americans now agree with the international community’s assessment that Israel is perpetrating a genocide in Gaza. This includes 77% of Democrats and 51% of independents.
When Democrats were polled last month by Gallup, just 8% of them said they supported Israel’s military actions in the Gaza Strip, a dramatic decline from October 2023, when 36% expressed support.
In recent weeks, as the images of death and starvation coming out of Gaza have grown increasingly heinous and ubiquitous, some Democratic politicians have begun to take a harsher stance against Israel.
Last month, a majority of Democrats in the Senate, for the first time, voted in favor of resolutions introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to suspend US assault weapons and 1,000-pound bombs to Israel.
Twenty-seven Democrats voted for the resolution halting assault rifles, and 24 voted for the resolution to stop the sale of bombs. Notably, the top Senate Democrat, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), voted against both resolutions.
Despite overwhelming support from their voters, the Democratic National Committee on Tuesday voted down a resolution calling for the US to suspend military aid to Israel.
“Democratic politicians who continue to support sending weapons to Israel are acting in direct defiance of their own constituents’ wishes,” said Nathan J. Robinson, the editor-in-chief of Current Affairs Magazine, in response to news of the latest polling numbers.
Previous polls have indicated that opposition to former President Joe Biden’s arming of Israel was a primary reason why Democratic voters chose to abandon the Democratic Party in 2024, potentially costing then-Vice President Kamala Harris the election.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) said the poll showed that “Democrats continuing to ignore their base on the Palestine issue is insane,” adding that if they continue down this path, “they will continue to lose.”
Original article by Stephen Prager republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
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