POLL: Majority of Young Americans Oppose Further Arms Sales to Israel
Jose Nino
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According to an opinion poll conducted and released by the Eurasia Group Foundation (EGF), a majority of young Americans are against the continued sale of United States arms sales to Israel.
Per Press TV, 53% of the poll respondents between the ages of 18 and 29 indicated their opposition to the continuation of weapons sales to Israel. The Jewish state receives roughly $4 billion in military aid on an annual basis, making it the largest recipient of US military aid.
“Respondents who were against selling arms to Israel said that it violates human rights through its enduring occupation of Palestine,” observed Zuri Linetsky, an EGF research fellow. For decades, there has been strong bipartisan support for Israel in Washington DC.
However, the emergence of the Ron Paul Right and pro-Palestinian Left has seen the seemingly unshakable pro-Israeli consensus begin to gradually whither away.
In a similar vein, a Pew Research poll published earlier in 2022 discovered that 61% of young Americans — under the ages of 30 — viewed the Palestinian people favorably.
When it comes to Saudi Arabia, a US ally and a country that has grown closer to Israel in the last decade, Americans are growing increasingly hostile to the US’s intimate relationship with the Gulf Arab state. The same EGF poll revealed that about 70% of respondents are against the continuation of US weapons sales to Saudi Arabia. 35% of these respondents are strongly against said arms sales.
Back in August, the Biden regime green lit a $5 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The UAE has also drawn closer to Israel in the last decade. Both the UAE and Saudi Arabia have been involved in the Yemeni Civil War — a prolonged military conflict filled with mass starvation and heavy civilian casualties.
In 2015, the Saudis cobbled together a coalition of Arab states with the aim of restoring Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi’s regime and cracking down on the insurgent Houthi movement.
Thanks to alternative media, more and more Americans are growing skeptical of Israel and its toxic influence on American politics. In previous decades, information gatekeepers could easily suppress competing narratives on Israel and the controversial nature of its founding and current form of governance. With alternative media now firmly in the mix, the unsavory nature of the Israeli state can now be constantly challenged.
As younger millennials and Zoomers come of age politically, we could witness a fundamental restructuring of US-Israeli relations further down the line. This is long overdue given how the Middle East occupies very little strategic importance to the US these days. In addition, the Middle East is perpetually unstable, so getting entangled in Israel or any other Middle Eastern countries’ geopolitical intrigue is a recipe for a foreign policy disaster.
The US must get out of the Middle East together if it wants to avoid an unnecessary conflict.
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