A new poll released Tuesday shows that a sizable majority of voters who backed President Joe Biden in 2020 oppose weapons shipments to Israel, the latest sign that Israel’s offensive in Gaza remains a political liability for the president’s reelection campaign.
According to the online poll, which was commissioned by the left-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research and conducted by YouGov, 52 percent of Americans agree that the U.S. should halt arms shipments to Israel until it ends its military offensive against the Palestinian militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Among voters who supported Biden in 2020, that number jumps to 62 percent. By contrast, only 30 percent of those who voted for Donald Trump in 2020 said they would support stopping weapons transfers. The poll, which surveyed 1,000 people, had a margin of error of 3.5 percent.
The Biden administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The poll comes as the Biden administration faces pressure from progressives and Arab American voters in swing states over its level of support for Israel. The country’s military offensive, which began after Hamas launched attacks against Israel in October, has resulted in widespread destruction of buildings and infrastructure in the Gaza Strip, massive displacement of Palestinians, reports of malnutrition and starvation among refugees and allegations of war crimes and abuses by the Israel Defense Forces against civilians.
Though the Biden administration has criticized the Israeli government and worked behind the scenes to nudge Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu toward a more restrained military campaign, critics have blasted the White House for its continued verbal support for Israel and its perceived slowness to showing solidarity and empathy for the plight of Palestinians.
The issue is one of the main drivers behind the grassroots campaign urging voters to mark the “uncommitted” option in upcoming primaries. The effort scored an important symbolic win in Michigan, where over 100,000 voters marked uncommitted on their ballots in the swing state to register their displeasure.
CORRECTION: The headline on a previous version of this story misstated where the weapons are being shipped. The U.S. is transferring weapons to Israel.
LINK: Majority of Biden voters oppose weapons shipments to Israel, poll says (yahoo.com)
