When Kamala Harris sat down with CNN’s Dana Bash last month, Bash asked a question: “Would you withhold some U.S. weapons shipments to Israel? That’s what a lot of people on the progressive left want you to do.”
Harris sidestepped the question, talked about a ceasefire, and ultimately said that she would not change course from the Biden administration’s policy of arming Israel as its war on Gaza enters its 11th month.
But polls of the American voting population show that she’s ignoring more than just the “progressive left”: A majority of voters support ending arms transfers to Israel, and support for an arms embargo is growing.
“The reality is that the public is far more in favor of stopping arms sales to Israel than opposed,” Yousef Munayyer, head of the Palestine/Israel Program at Arab Center Washington D.C., told The Intercept. He pointed to a June poll from CBS that showed 61 percent of all Americans said the U.S. should not send weapons to Israel, including 77 percent of Democrats and nearly 40 percent of Republicans.
Poll results have been consistent for months.
Since the start of the war in Gaza, a majority of Americans have expressed support for some form of restrictions on the U.S. sending weapons to Israel in repeated public surveys. Americans are even more overwhelmingly in favor of a ceasefire.
Among the most consistent string of polls on the issue of weapons transfers to Israel has come from CBS News, which partnered with YouGov to carry out its survey. About two weeks after the October 7 attacks by Hamas, as Israel’s bombardment had already killed more than 2,000 civilians in Gaza, a CBS poll of more than 1,800 Americans found that 52 percent of American adults said the U.S. should not send weapons to Israel. The totals included large majorities among both Democrats and independents, and 43 percent of Republicans.
In April, CBS News/YouGov asked the same question in a new poll and found that an even larger number of Americans (60 percent), including 68 percent of Democrats, said they felt the U.S. should not send arms to Israel. The poll was conducted days after an Israeli strike killed seven aid workers in a clearly marked World Central Kitchen convoy.
And in June, when more than 30,000 Palestinians were killed and as Israel continued its operations in Rafah where many of Gaza civilians had been sheltering, spurring the “All Eyes on Rafah” social media campaign, a third CBS News poll seemingly solidified Americans’ opposition to military aid to Israel with 61 percent of American adults calling for a halt on weapons transfers to Israel, including 77 percent of Democrats.
Stopping arms transfers also polls highly in key swing states, according to recent polls.
A poll published this week by the libertarian think tank Cato Institute found that the majority of likely voters in some Rust Belt swing states are in favor of conditioning military aid to Israel or are against sending aid altogether. The tallies showed 61 percent in Wisconsin expressing support, along with 56 percent in Michigan and 51 percent in Pennsylvania.
Another poll from August, commissioned by the Institute for Middle Eastern Understanding Policy Project and conducted by YouGov, showed that a majority of voters in Pennsylvania (57 percent), and a significant share of voters in swing states Arizona (44 percent) and Georgia (34 percent), said they would more likely vote for Harris if the U.S. withholds arms to Israel.
An additional swing-state focused poll earlier this year, commissioned by Americans for Justice in Palestine Action and conducted by YouGov in May, also found 2 in 5 Democrats and independents in Wisconsin, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota said that an immediate and permanent ceasefire and conditioning of aid to Israel would make them more likely to vote for then-candidate Joe Biden.
“This is not a ‘progressive left’ issue — the vast majority of Democrats support ending arms sales to Israel,” Munayyer said. “This is a mainstream position, as I think it should be for any sensible person watching what is happening in Gaza, that we should not continue funding this, we should not continue supporting this.”
Despite the popularity of cutting Israel off from American weapons, the Biden administration has continued to pump billions in military aid, including thousands of 2,000-pound bombs, to Israel, approving a $20 billion weapons package just last month. His administration has ignored calls from Democratic senators to halt aid, as well as credible evidence of human rights violations committed by the Israeli military. Biden briefly halted transfer of munitions in May as Israel prepared for an offensive in Rafah where 1 million Palestinians had sought refuge, but later reversed his position after pressure from the pro-Israel lobby within the party. At the Democratic National Convention, party officials denied a main-stage speaker slot from more than 200 “Uncommitted” delegates and ceasefire delegates committed to Harris who are in favor of an arms embargo. Harris’s CNN interview seemingly dampened the cautious optimism of those who hoped for her to depart from her boss’s policies.
Even with the renewed energy from across the Democratic party since Biden dropped out of the race, Harris continues to be in a dead heat with former President Donald Trump. This week’s New York Times and Siena College national poll had 47 percent of likely voters supporting Harris, with Trump garnering 48. Both candidates are expected to be asked about their approach on the war in Gaza during Tuesday’s highly anticipated debate on ABC.
The most commonly cited U.S. law by proponents of an arms embargo has been the Leahy law, enacted in 1997, which prohibits the State Department from sending military aid to any foreign security force that is found to violate human rights law. Also, in March, a group of Democratic senators, including Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., cited the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, which prohibits military aid to countries that block humanitarian aid.
They were reacting to allegations and evidence that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Cabinet had been obstructing U.S. humanitarian aid from reaching Gaza.
Polling data over several months has shown a shift in American opinion regarding U.S. military aid to Israel. Data from various sources indicated that a majority of Americans believed that military aid should be conditioned on Israel meeting human rights standards, and a significant number supported halting weapons transfers to Israel.
There was also support for withdrawing military aid if Israel did not accept a ceasefire deal, especially among Democrats and swing voters. Additionally, polls showed that many Americans believed the U.S. should restrict military aid to Israel to prevent its use in military operations against Palestinians.
Support for a ceasefire has become a more mainstream position among Democratic leaders in the U.S. However, critics argue that it is sometimes used as a way to shift blame from the U.S. for the ongoing conflict in Gaza.
Gallup polls have shown a gradual increase in disapproval of Israel’s military operations in Gaza among Americans, especially among Democrats. Other countries, such as the United Kingdom, Italy, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, and Spain, have also taken steps to suspend military support to Israel.
The issue of restricting arms to Israel has been a popular move among Democratic voters for years, with concerns initially focused on Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, settlement expansion, and human rights violations by the Israeli military in the occupied territories. In 2020, presidential candidates Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, and Julian Castro expressed support or interest in conditioning aid to Israel so that it would not support further annexation of land in the occupied West Bank.
During the 2020 election night, J Street, a liberal Jewish lobbyist group, conducted a poll which revealed that 57 percent of American Jews would like to restrict military aid to ensure it cannot be used for annexation. In 2021, J Street backed a Democrat-backed bill aimed at preventing aid to Israel from being used for human rights abuses against Palestinians, destruction of Palestinian property, or displacement of Palestinians from their land.
“I’m not saying everyone should just make their policy decisions based on what the polling says on any given date,” Duss said. “But this is a consistent trend, this is what Democrats clearly think.”
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