Middle East Monitor / April 1, 2021
A new survey has found further evidence of waning support for Israel within the US with more Americans saying that they do not want the Zionist state to be a major recipient of US aid. The poll was conducted following the release of a report by Israeli human rights group B’Tselem which was headed “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid“.
In reaching its conclusion, B’Tselem said that that the threshold for defining Israel as an apartheid regime had been met and that such a determination was reached in consideration of the accumulation of policies and laws that have been devised to entrench its control over Palestinians. It cited the 2018 Jewish Nation State Law, which critics insist has formalised apartheid in the country.
Carried out by IRmep earlier in March, the poll asked whether, in light of the B’Tselem report, Israel should be a leading recipient of US aid. Of those who responded, 38.1 per cent said that Israel should not be a leading recipient of aid. Just 33 per cent said that it should continue to receive $3.8 billion per annum from Washington.
The differences are starker when looked at on a regional basis: 43.4 per cent of respondents from the north-east of the US, 39.1 per cent from the mid-west and 36.2 per cent from the west said that such a level of US aid should stop. With 36.1 per cent, those in the American south are the most likely to want aid to Israel to continue.
The poll was carried out in advance of the annual IsraelLobbyCon conference on 17 and 24 April, which this year has the theme “End US Support for Israeli Apartheid?” IRmep and the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs are co-organising the event to “explore[s] the latest research, innovations and tactics for countering the Israel lobby’s damaging policies in the US and around the globe.”
IRmep’s poll is the latest indication that, increasingly, American citizens appear to believe that systemic discrimination and apartheid by the settler-colonial state should have consequences. Successive US governments, however, continue to think otherwise.
