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Majority of Israelis support nation-state law, new poll reveals

A new poll demonstrates that most Israelis support the recently passed nationality law, with 58 percent agreeing with the current language and 34 percent opposed to it.

By: JNS.org and World Israel News Staff

A new poll by Walla news shows that most Israelis support the newly passed nation-state law, with 58 percent agreeing with the current language and 34 percent opposed to it.

While 85 percent of those who call themselves right-wing voters support the law, so do 19 percent of left-wing voters and 49 percent of centrist voters.

While in political parties Bayit Yehudi, Likud, Shas, United Torah Judaism, Kulanu, and Yesh Atid, the law is met primarily with support, a whopping 71 percent of Zionist Union voters, 89 percent of Meretz voters, and 100 percent of Joint List (Arab parties) voters oppose the law.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explained the significance of the law, noting, “The State of Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people, with full equal rights for all of its citizens. This is the meaning of the words ‘a Jewish and democratic state.’”

“The Israeli left must search within itself,” Netanyahu continued during remarks before the weekly cabinet meeting. “It needs to ask itself why the basic term of Zionism, ‘a Jewish national state of the Jewish people in its land,’ has become a rude term for it, a rude word, a principle that one should be ashamed of. We are not ashamed of Zionism. We are proud of our state, that it is a national home for the Jewish people, which strictly upholds – in a manner that is without peer – the individual rights of all its citizens.”

The Walla poll also showed that even more Israeli voters would choose Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party than prior to the controversy over the new law.

According to the July 30 results, Likud, which currently has 30 seats, would rise to 33. Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid Party would rise by the most seats, from 11 seats to 19. Yet the most dramatic change would occur for the Zionist Union Party, which would plummet from 24 seats down to 12.