Fully 66% of Americans say Israel has no choice but to eradicate the Gaza terror organization.
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
A strong majority of Americans are in Israel’s corner in its war with Hamas, according to polls taken last week after the terrorist organization invaded Israel October 7 and murdered some 1,400 men, women, and children in the Gaza envelope.
A Rasmussen Reports poll asked 1,007 likely voters between October 8-10 if they agreed or disagreed that Israel has no choice but to seek the complete eradication of Hamas in Gaza. A full 66% agreed, and only 19% disagreed.
This, despite when being asked who they felt was more to blame for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a much smaller majority, 53% said Palestinians were more to blame, while 10% said Israel, and 24% answered that the two sides shared the blame.
Israel has been bombing military targets in the Gaza Strip since the first day of the war and has told its Arab residents in the northern part of the enclave to go south since Friday so that innocent civilians won’t be in the line of fire when its land forces go in to eradicate Hamas, an invasion that is expected at almost any hour.
An Economist/YouGov survey taken over the same time period had similar numbers in apportioning blame, with 39% saying the Palestinian side was at fault for “the escalation in violence,” 10% answering Israel, but only 19% saying both sides were to blame. The rest, almost a third, were unsure.
The older age groups, 45-64 and 65+, were far more likely to blame the Palestinians (47% and 60% respectively), with only miniscule numbers blaming Israel (8% and 4%). The favorite answer in the younger groups of 18-29 and 30-44 was “not sure” (43% and 40%), with the second-favorite (23% and 20%) being to blame both sides equally.
A factor to be considered in these responses is that only 37% overall answered that they had heard “a lot” about “the escalating violence in Israel and Palestine.” Forty-five percent had only heard “a little,” and 18% said they had heard “nothing at all” about it.
This poll also showed that while there was no outright majority backing Israel in general regarding “the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” very few supported the Palestinians outright.
Out of the 1,500 questioned, 42% said their “sympathies are more with” the Israelis and 22% said they were about equal with the Palestinians. Only 9% said they were more sympathetic to the Palestinians. More than a quarter (27%) were unsure.
In terms of U.S. policy, a strong majority of 61% said it should be a “very important” or “somewhat important” goal to protect Israel. Those who said it was “not too important” or “not at all important” were in the single digits, 8% and 6% respectively.
One American aircraft carrier strike group is already in the Mediterranean to “show the U.S. commitment to Israel” and serve as a deterrent to Iran and its Lebanese terror proxy, Hizbollah, from getting involved in the current war, as senior U.S. officials have said. A second strike group is being sent now, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said Saturday, to show America’s “ironclad commitment to Israel’s security and our resolve to deter any state or non-state actor seeking to escalate this war.”