Middle East Monitor / July 29, 2026
Nearly half of Americans believe the US should arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he enters the country, according to a new Economist/YouGov poll.
The survey found that 49 per cent support arresting Netanyahu on the basis of the warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC), while 27 per cent oppose his arrest and 23 per cent remain unsure.
Among those who voted in the 2024 US presidential election, 74 per cent of Kamala Harris voters supported arresting Netanyahu. Notably, almost a quarter — 23 per cent — of Donald Trump voters also backed his arrest.
The findings suggest that calls to hold the Israeli prime minister accountable for Israel’s conduct in Gaza have spread well beyond the traditional supporters of Palestine.
Forty-seven per cent of respondents said they believe Netanyahu is guilty of war crimes in Gaza, compared with 24 per cent who disagreed. The same proportion said his actions had damaged relations between Israel and the US.
The poll also found that 43 per cent of Americans believe Israel is committing genocide against Palestinian civilians, while 24 per cent said it is not. Among Harris voters, 72 per cent described Israel’s conduct as genocide, compared with 22 per cent of Trump voters.
YouGov surveyed 1,559 US adult citizens between 25 and 27 July, 2026.
The ICC issued its arrest warrant for Netanyahu on 21 November, 2024, over allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Gaza. The Court also issued a warrant for former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.
The poll comes as Israel spends tens of millions of dollars attempting to reverse the collapse in American support and reshape how the public understands its genocide in Gaza.
An investigation this week revealed that the Israeli government awarded a $46.5 million contract to Clock Tower X, a company owned by former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale, to influence what artificial intelligence chatbots tell users about Israel and Gaza.
The company has created ten websites which present themselves as sources of news, research or fact-checking. They publish material defending Israel’s military conduct, rejecting accusations of genocide, discrediting Palestinian journalists killed by Israel and casting doubt on the killing of five-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab.
The apparent aim is to fill the internet with carefully written Israeli propaganda that AI chatbots may find, cite or eventually learn from.
AI services including Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini and Perplexity had cited material from Clock Tower websites. In some cases, the chatbots did not tell users that the websites had been created on behalf of the Israeli government.
The network has also entered Common Crawl, a large collection of online material used by researchers and technology companies developing AI systems. Clock Tower’s ten websites had been collected by Common Crawl 912 times between January and June.
The new YouGov findings expose the scale of the challenge facing Israel’s influence campaign. Despite spending millions on artificial intelligence, online influencers, mass text messages, advertisements and conservative media, almost half of Americans now support the arrest of the Israeli prime minister.
The figures also suggest that Israel’s deteriorating standing is not simply the result of poor public relations. A growing share of Americans appear to reject the conduct being promoted and defended by the propaganda campaign itself.
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Nearly half of Americans say US should arrest Netanyahu ahead of Trump meeting
Sharon Zhang
Truthout / July 28, 2026
About a quarter of Americans say that the US should let him walk free, compared to nearly half who want him arrested.
Nearly half of Americans think that the U.S. should carry out the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he enters the country, new polling finds, outnumbering those who say the U.S. shouldn’t arrest him by nearly two to one.
Polling conducted by The Economist/YouGov ahead of Netanyahu’s visit to the White House on Tuesday finds that 49 percent of U.S. adults say that the U.S. should arrest Netanyahu. This includes 68 percent of Democrats and 55 percent of independents.
This belief holds a double digit lead over those who say otherwise, with 27 percent saying that the U.S. shouldn’t arrest him. An additional 23 percent say they aren’t sure.Onderkant formulier
The survey also found that a plurality of Americans say that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians, with 43 percent saying as such and 24 percent denying the genocide.
The polling comes as Netanyahu has travelled to the White House for his seventh visit with President Donald Trump in his second term, and their first in-person meeting since they launched the war on Iran. The meeting was closed to press coverage. Netanyahu is also slated to attend the funeral of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) on Tuesday.
The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in late 2024. Discourse surrounding Netanyahu’s warrant, issued for crimes against humanity committed in Israel’s genocide of Gaza, has surged in recent days after New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said his office was exploring legal avenues to arrest Netanyahu if he enters the city for the United Nations General Assembly meeting in September.
In a video posted on his social media channels last week, Mamdani said that his office determined that it does not have the authority to arrest Netanyahu. But the progressive politician called on the U.S. government to join the ICC and arrest the prime minister, labelling him a “war criminal, the architect of a horrific genocide against the Palestinian people.”
“He is responsible for the killing of more than 73,000 people, for the maiming of tens of thousands of children, as those who survive undergo amputation without anaesthesia,” Mamdani said. “Benjamin Netanyahu is not welcome in New York City.” The video circulated widely, becoming one of Mamdani’s most popular videos and garnering nearly 10 million likes on Instagram and nearly 1.5 million likes on X.
Netanyahu called the video “hate speech” in response on Sunday, and said that the ICC charges are “bogus.” Israel has been engaged in a yearslong campaign to attack the ICC, and the U.S. has also recently ramped up attacks with the goal of dismantling the body.
Sharon Zhang is a news writer at Truthout covering international affairs, politics, and labour
