New polling says Americans no longer support Israel in the war against Hamas.

 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. New York Post/AP.

New polling says Americans no longer support Israel in their war against Hamas. New York Post. Polling from Gallup says that 55% of Americans now disapprove of Israel's actions in the war with only 36% approving. This is a dramatic chance as in November, 50% approved of the war with 45% disapproving. The polling comes as relations between Israel and the United States is under pressure due to Israel planning an offensive in the dense urban city of Rafah. Biden's approval for handling of the war was only at 27%. Republicans remain more supportive of the war than Democrats but support has fallen there as well. 

My Comment:

I will never understand the pro-Hamas position on this war. It makes zero sense to me and even if you discount the actions of Hamas on October 7th, I still can't understand why anyone would ever support Palestinians. They have been murdering people and being incredibly violent despite losing every war they have fought with Israel. 

I think a large part of the problem is that Hamas is losing and losing hard. They haven't accomplished much of anything since October 7th. There have been no follow up attacks and they have not threatened Israel in a major way since the attack. And they have been largely unable to do much to prevent the invasion by the Israelis. 

The true atrocities that Hamas committed have also fallen out of the public consciousness. They raped, murdered and destroyed across Israel but they haven't done a thing since then since they are losing the war. In a way, Israel is a victim of its own success. 

Hamas has the advantage of having a major amount of propaganda in their favor. Indeed, TikTok is utterly infested with pro-Hamas shills. What is amazing to me is that a lot of people fall for it, Hamas propaganda is even more unbelievable and obvious than pro-Ukraine propaganda, and that is really saying something. But given how effective Ukraine's propaganda it's not surprising that Hamas is succeeding here as well. People just don't think anymore. 

Part of it too, is that people expect every war to be Desert Storm. They assume that because a war lasts more than a couple of months without a resolution that instead of being how war works, they assume that Israel is committing a "genocide". I haven't seen anything of the sort, if anything Israel is handling Hamas with kid gloves. I would have carpet bombed the whole country to the point not a single building was standing. 

Regardless, this is very bad news for Biden, who has failed to balance the pro-Israel and pro-Hamas factions of his party. He has also lost influence with Israel. Netanyahu obviously doesn't respect Biden and Biden will not be able to get him to back down. If Biden decided to end support for Israel, his pro-Israel supporters will abandon him, but his pro-Hamas people already have.  

I don't see the war ending anytime soon. Hamas still holds Israeli civilians as hostages and as long as that is the case there can be no end to the war. And Israel has absolutely no reason to back down, they are winning the war. Only in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, where the US Navy is finding out the limits of their abilities, has there been any success on the pro-Hamas military side. 

The entire situation reminds me of the Vietnam war. In that war America won basically every major battle against the North Vietnamese but still lost the war because all of the propaganda is the other way.  Israel is doing the same thing here, they are winning the battle but losing the war, at least in terms of support here in the United States.