Should US keep arming Israel? Poll finds most Americans want weapon shipments to stop
Most Americans want the U.S. government to stop supplying weapons to Israel, according to new polling.
A narrow majority of U.S. adults, 52%, said American arms shipments should be stopped until Israel ends its attacks in Gaza, according to a YouGov poll released on March 11. Less than one-third of respondents, 27%, said the shipments should not be halted, and 21% were unsure.
The poll, commissioned by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) — a think tank in Washington, D.C. — sampled 1,000 U.S. adults, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
The question over additional military aid revealed a strong partisan divide among respondents.
The majority of respondents, 62%, who said they voted for President Joe Biden in 2020 agreed with the statement “The US should stop weapons shipments to Israel until Israel discontinues its attacks on the people of Gaza,” while 14% disagreed.
On the other hand, 30% of respondents who said they voted for former President Donald Trump in 2020 supported stopping the shipments, while 55% opposed it.
Additionally, 60% of respondents who said they sat out the 2020 election favored stopping shipments, 17% were opposed and 23% were unsure.
“The support for halting weapons shipments is specific and unambiguous,” Mark Weisbrot, Co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said in a CEPR news release.
The U.S. has sent Israel tens of thousands of arms — including precision-guided missiles and bombs — since the Oct. 7 attack that left 1,200 Israelis dead, according to The Wall Street Journal. Many of the shipments have been green-lit through a process that avoids congressional review and public disclosure.
The poll comes as Israel enters its sixth month of its war against Hamas in Gaza, which has left over 30,000 Palestinians dead, most of whom are women and children. The high death toll has has led South Africa to file a genocide charge against Israel at the International Court of Justice, the United Nation’s highest court.
The poll also follows a November Reuters poll that found 68% of respondents agreed with the statement “Israel should call a ceasefire and try to negotiate.”
Other polls have revealed more mixed opinions, including a January Gallup poll, which found 41% of respondents believed the U.S. was doing the right amount to resolve the conflict, 39% said it was not doing enough, and 19% said it was doing too much.
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