A new poll has confirmed other recent polls indicating that Americans continue to strongly support Israel over the Palestinians: 57 percent of Americans defined themselves as Israel supporters, whereas only 8 percent described themselves as Palestinian supporters. A further 34 percent were undecided. The poll, conducted during January 10-12, also found the following:

·        55 percent of respondents said that Palestinian leaders were responsible for the recent Gaza violence, compared to 11 percent who said Israeli leaders were responsible, and 23 percent who said that both Palestinian and Israeli leaders were responsible for the violence.

·        56% of American voters blame the Palestinians for the recent conflict in Gaza, compared to 18% who blame Israel.

·        73 percent of Americans believe the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is about ideology and religion, compared to only 19 percent who believe that the conflict is about land.

·        91 percent of Americans believe that getting to stop Palestinians shooting rockets into Israel is “extremely or very important,” to bring peace in the Middle East.

·        90 percent of Americans believe it is important for Palestinians to stop teaching hatred of Israel

·        87 percent of Americans believe it is important to stop Iran from arming, funding and training terrorists. (Etgar Lefkowits, ‘Americans still strongly support Israel,’ Jerusalem Post, February 5, 2009)

ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “This poll demonstrates that Americans remain strongly supportive of Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians, understand the security dilemma and threats to its survival with which it must deal and – far better it seems then our political leaders – understand that the Arab war on Israel is largely an aggressive war of religious ideology, not a mere territorial dispute.

“While the recent conflict in Gaza has been cited as slightly reducing peak levels of support for Israel registered in recent years –there has been a dip of a few percentage points in those describing themselves as Israel supporters and a rise of a few percentage points among those describing themselves as Palestinian supporters – it is also important to note that more Americans understand the religious-ideological origin of Arab aggression than before: a survey last year found nearly 25 percent of Americans regarding this as a territorial conflict. Now, only 19 percent of Americans believe this to be the case. Also, more generally, more Americans blame Palestinians for the conflict. In 2006, 45 percent of Americans were found to blame Palestinians for the violence; now 56 percent of Americans do.”

“Additionally, in terms of overall American attitudes, these results are consistent with past high levels of support for Israel and low levels of support for Palestinians. For example, February 2006 Gallup poll found that 59 percent of Americans supported Israel, while only 15 percent supported the Palestinians. In this poll, the support for Israel remains nearly as high (57 percent) while support for Palestinians has fallen from 15 percent two years ago by nearly half to 8 percent.”