Americans More Divided on Israel and Concerned About Jewish Community Safety Since Oct. 7

Nearly two years after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks in Israel and Israel’s ensuing invasion of the Gaza Strip, Americans are more divided on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than they were before the war, and concerns are growing about the safety of Jewish communities at home.

The partisan split in public opinion on Israel predates the current war with Hamas. Recent polling suggests, however, that some Americans have lost sympathy with Israelis over the course of the war. Israel and Hamas are beginning indirect talks over a U.S.-proposed peace plan that has drawn international support, and the shifts in public opinion could outlast the current conflict.

The war has intensified debates in the United States not only about foreign policy but also about the safety and visibility of Jewish communities, where fears of discrimination are rising alongside growing divisions over Israel. The same polls show that U.S. adults are also concerned about anti-Muslim sentiment, but that concern has not shifted in a similarly dramatic way. High-quality polling of Muslim or Arab Americans is rare, in part because of small sample sizes.

Jewish community leaders and security experts stressed the need for security during periods of heightened visibility, such as the High Holidays, after multiple attacks against Jews in the U.S. this year. Those worries became sharper when an attacker drove a car into people outside a synagogue in England on the holiest day of the Jewish year, leading to two deaths. Protecting people who gather for worship, especially those most exposed, reflects the care urged in Psalm 82:3.

In its most recent annual survey of Jewish Americans, conducted in October and November 2024, the American Jewish Committee, a nonpartisan advocacy group that seeks to broadly represent Jews in the U.S. and abroad, found that about 7 in 10 respondents said they thought Jews in the United States were less secure than a year earlier. “The number one reason given for why they feel less secure as Jews in America was the Israel-Hamas war,” said Holly Huffnagle, Director of Antisemitism Policy at AJC.

Over the last few decades, Americans of both parties have generally been more sympathetic toward Israelis than Palestinians. That has changed since the war began. American sympathy for Israelis hit an all-time low in 2025, falling below 50% for the first time in almost 25 years of Gallup’s annual tracking of this measure, driven largely by drops among Democrats and independents. Sympathy for Palestinians has also increased in Gallup’s polling, with about one-third of U.S. adults saying they sympathize more with Palestinians this year.

A recent Pew Research Center survey found that just 31% of Americans thought the U.S. was providing the “right amount” or “not enough” military assistance to Israel in its conflict with Hamas, though large shares said there was “too much” support or expressed uncertainty. Dissatisfaction with the Israeli government’s handling of the war is also widespread. About half of Americans say Israel’s military response in the Gaza Strip has “gone too far” in the most recent AP-NORC survey, up from 40% two years ago, shortly after Hamas launched its assault on Israel, in which militants killed about 1,200 people and took 251 hostages. In a Washington Post poll of Jewish Americans conducted in early September, about half said they disapproved of Israel’s military action in Gaza, and 61% said they think Israel has committed war crimes against Palestinians in Gaza.

While partisanship has long divided views on Israel, age is an increasingly noticeable dividing line. Pew found that about 4 in 10 adults under 30 thought the U.S. was providing “too much” aid to Israel, compared with about one-third of adults overall. An AP-NORC poll from March found that younger Americans were less likely to call Israel and the U.S. “close allies”: about one-quarter of adults under 30 said Israel was a close ally, compared with around half of adults over 60.

As attitudes toward Israel shift, new concerns about American Jews are emerging. In 2018, 11 Jewish Americans were killed in Pittsburgh in the deadliest attack on a Jewish community in U.S. history, and Huffnagle said that event prompted the AJC to relaunch its antisemitism survey to see whether the shooting had served as a “wake-up call” for American Jews. According to Pew, the share of Americans who say there is at least some discrimination against Jews has risen since 2021. In subsequent surveys, older Americans of both parties were more likely than younger Americans to say there is at least “some” discrimination against Jews. In 2024, Pew found that the share of Americans who said there was “a lot” of discrimination against Jews had doubled compared with 2021.

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