ASPEN, Colo. — Israelis generally don’t grasp the extent of the growing anti-Israel sentiment in the United States, Dahlia Scheindlin, an Israeli public opinion researcher and columnist, told Jewish Insider.

Speaking on the sidelines of the Aspen Security Forum this month hours before more than 100 House Democrats voted to cut U.S. military aid to Israel, Scheindlin said that most Israelis feel that warnings of slipping U.S. support have been repeated for years but haven’t come to fruition.

“Israelis for a long time have been told ‘you have to worry about the America-Israel relationship’ and nothing ever really happened — they sort of took it for granted that the relationship would always be there, and in many ways they still do,” Scheindlin said. “From the Israeli perspective, there’s a little bit of a sense of crying wolf. We see that in the 53% who still think that the relationship will be fine.”

She said most Israelis today view Republicans as pro-Israel and Democrats as anti-Israel and have little understanding of the range of views within both parties. And she said they don’t believe Israel’s own actions have any bearing on U.S. criticism of Israel.

Supporters of opposition parties, she continued, believe that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “personally has undermined the relationship” — but that the issues in the relationship largely end with Netanyahu.

She said that the strong support in Israel for President Donald Trump took a nosedive with the ceasefires in Iran and Lebanon, with many Jewish Israelis feeling that Trump had forced a premature end to the wars and didn’t let the U.S. and Israel carry them to their conclusion or fulfill their main objectives.

But she said that most Israelis still see issues in the relationship as a “disagreement that will pass” rather than a true crisis or turning point. She said a majority of Israelis still feel the U.S.-Israel relationship will survive — and many are too concerned with their own daily lives and the ongoing impacts of the wars in Gaza and Lebanon to give the relationship much thought.

“When you ask about the U.S.-Israel relationship, it’s somewhere between repressing it and complacent and fearful — but also they have been told year after year for quite a long time, ‘Watch out for this relationship,’ and then America continues to come through in so many ways,” she said.

Ahead of the Israeli elections in October, Scheindlin said that Israeli public opinion polling has been relatively consistent for several years, with the current governing coalition lacking a majority of 61 Knesset seats. At the same time, the coalition has recovered from its post-Oct. 7, 2023, nadir of support, and has sat consistently in most surveys between 49 and 55 seats.

“There’s some instability right now, but the basic breakdown that I just said between opposition and coalition has been really extraordinarily stable for almost two years now,” Scheindlin said. “The basic breakdown, where the current coalition has a minority and the opposition has a majority, but can’t form a coalition of only Zionist parties — those basic contours were in place before Oct. 7.”

Even through the popular 2025 war with Iran and the less-popular 2026 war with Iran and killing of Hezbollah’s leadership, the coalition’s polling has changed little, she continued.

“I don’t know what could happen between now and the elections that would give this coalition the additional six to 10% it would need to make up in order to actually win an outright majority of seats,” she said.

At the same time, given the reluctance of opposition parties to create a coalition with Arab parties, they have “constrained their own options,” she said. “It’s a strange situation where the opposition has such a firm majority in all surveys between 65 and 70 seats, mostly, and yet so much of Israeli society has conditioned itself to look only at the Zionist parties in forming a coalition that they don’t have a majority either in most surveys.”

She noted, however, that Gadi Eisenkot, currently the leading opposition candidate, has seemed to leave the door open to partnering with Arab parties.

The much-hyped merger of the parties led by former Prime Ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid hasn’t expanded the size of their bloc nor brought them significant new support.

“It was a small boost in the beginning and then it went back down and now it’s heading closer to where Lapid was polling in surveys even before, which means that most of their supporters are probably Lapid supporters,” Scheindlin said. “Bennett didn’t actually bring very much.”

Scheindlin said that the traditional Bennett constituency — center-right or right-leaning voters who oppose Netanyahu — are now supporting Eisenkot instead.

Scheindlin also told JI that she sees parallels between Israel’s current security strategy of fighting enemies on its own turf as similar to Iran’s own strategy of “forward defense” — comments she repeated on an Aspen panel about the U.S.-Israel relationship, to pushback from fellow panelists.

“The issue of reaching agreements or diplomacy has been so diminished, completely gutted for a long time that even now, when we have the beginnings of a negotiating process with Lebanon … Israelis are very skeptical that that can yield anything,” she said. 

She called the oft-repeated idea that Israel is surrounded on all sides by enemies “demonstrably untrue,” noting that the country has had peace with both Egypt and Jordan for decades, that Iraq, Lebanon and Syria no longer harbor the same animosity or capability to threaten Israel and that Israel has forged new peace deals with Gulf states.

“Are there militias? Are there terror groups? Absolutely. Those are very real,” Scheindlin continued. “But the idea that Israel is surrounded by enemy states that want to destroy it factually, and yet when that’s what you’re being socialized into all the time, then you come to the conclusion that only war is the way to deal with it — which, after Oct. 7, it’s not hard to convince people that the threat is very material and not theoretical.”

Asked about Israeli views on the path forward in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Scheindlin emphasized that there is no clear consensus view among the Israeli public with “minority support” for a two-state solution, a democratic one-state solution, a Jewish-dominated one-state solution or a continuation of the status quo.

She said the dilemma has been exacerbated by the failure of Israeli political leaders to articulate a clear plan or solution of their own. Even though the current government has been open about its interest in annexing the West Bank, she said that leaders have not been clear about what that would mean for the Palestinians living there.

Experts said on Wednesday that the Trump administration has failed to adequately tap into pro-Western sentiment among the Iranian public following the regime’s violent crackdown on nationwide protests earlier this year, arguing that the White House is missing a key opportunity to cultivate internal pressure within Iran.

Robert Satloff, executive director of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, argued that the Trump administration should expand U.S. broadcasting into Iran, improve internet access for Iranians and ease pathways for dissidents seeking refuge in the U.S. to “lay the groundwork for the day when it becomes a much more real possibility to have this sort of regime change.” Satloff outlined his proposals during a Wednesday town hall hosted by Iran International, a U.K.-based Persian-language news network. “None of [the Iranian people] are being invested in in any significant way by the Trump administration,” he said.

In February, PBS reported that over 7,000 Iranians were killed during the regime’s violent crackdowns on nationwide protests that began in December. President Donald Trump at the time urged Iranians to keep protesting, declaring that “help is on the way.” Recent surveys inside Iran have shown that roughly 89% of Iranians support a “democratic political system.” 

However, with Trump rarely bringing up the human rights abuses of the Iranian government as he seeks a diplomatic deal with the Islamic Republic, the protesters who Trump initially promised to help have been deterred by the Iran’s intensive crackdowns and the lack of a response to counter them. 

That vacuum, Satloff argued, is what Washington should be working to fill. He elaborated on the three proposals, each aimed at strengthening the U.S. relationship with the Iranian public.

First, Satloff said the U.S. would benefit from providing “better and more American broadcasting” to Iranians and ensuring that they “have internet access and that they cannot be denied this by their capricious government.” 

To accomplish this, the Trump administration should “work with private companies,” Satloff told Jewish Insider.

“Much of this requires a shift of policy, not an allocation of money,” Satloff pointed out. “That is, to embrace U.S. international broadcasting as an important asset, not to try to run it out of business, as has been the case in this administration.” Following Trump’s 2025 attempts to dismantle Voice of America, including its Persian broadcasts, a federal judge ordered more than 1,000 laid-off staff reinstated this past March. 

Satloff also argued that the U.S. should “change our visa and asylum regulations” to provide Iranians fleeing the regime with “a welcoming home” and a “base” to continue organizing against the regime.

Alex Vatanka, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, reaffirmed that the “Iranian public sentiment is anti-regime by and large,” during the panel, elaborating on the importance of the U.S. screening visa applicants carefully and avoiding becoming the “bad guys.” 

He called it “fair game” to deny a visa to someone with a background in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, but stressed the need for accuracy, warning that overbroad denials risk alienating the population the White House needs on its side. 

Panelists acknowledged that these measures won’t dislodge the Islamic Republic on their own. Satloff said that under the current state of affairs, “none of this is going to bring down the government.”

“I think the important thing for us is to change behavior,” Satloff continued, arguing that “as the Iranian people see the weaknesses of their own regime then maybe you will find more organized elements that come forward in leadership that challenges” its leadership.

“I don’t even see that foundation yet for us to work with,” he added.

Rachel Brandenburg, Washington managing director and senior policy analyst at the Israel Policy Forum, told JI that “among the reasons the U.S. would provide the Iranians with ways to circumvent an internet blackout” is to support their ability to “communicate with each other and with the world.” Brandenburg explained this is “among [the] tools that could help the Iranian people organize protests and other opposition to the regime, whether openly or privately.”

Satloff tied his proposals back to potentially dismantling the IRGC — a goal the administration has stated but, in his telling, done little to pursue. Without sustained engagement with ordinary Iranians, he argued, there may be no constituency for Washington to work with when the moment for a regime change comes.

“All of this would expand U.S. engagement with ordinary Iranians,” Satloff told JI, “which is a necessary prerequisite for any serious effort at empowering Iranians to do what President Trump said he hoped they would do — take back their country.”

The share of Israelis who believe the country’s security is a primary consideration for President Donald Trump has plummeted to a new low, according to a new poll, revealing a sharp shift in public attitudes as the U.S. and Israel diverge on their strategies and ultimate goals of the war with Iran.

The survey, conducted by the Viterbi Family Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research at the Israel Democracy Institute from May 31 to June 5, found that 44% of Israelis believe Israel’s security is a central consideration for the Trump administration, a decline from the 60% recorded in March at the beginning of the Iran war. 

The drop was even more pronounced among Jewish Israelis, where confidence fell 23 points over the same period, from 64% to 41%.

The findings mark the lowest levels of Israeli trust in Trump since the center began tracking the metric when he was elected to a second term in November 2024, highlighting a rapid erosion of Israeli public confidence as the White House intensifies its pursuit of a deal with Iran.

The polling also reveals a stark collapse in public optimism regarding Israel’s ability to achieve its key objectives in the conflict. Roughly one-third — 32% — of respondents now believe the war’s outcome will include the elimination of Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal — down sharply from the 65% who held that view in March. Similarly, the share of Israelis who believe the conflict will weaken the Iranian regime has also been cut by nearly half, falling to 28% (from 55%) over the same period.

This pervasive skepticism aligns with deep public resistance to Washington’s current diplomatic track. Even as the Trump administration continues to seek an immediate cessation of hostilities and a negotiated settlement with Tehran, a majority of Jewish Israelis (58%) maintain that ending the war under its current conditions is fundamentally incompatible with Israel’s long-term security needs.

A recently conducted survey assessing how Jewish voters view leading Israel advocacy groups finds that public opinion is divided over the effectiveness of outside engagement in American elections. 

The Mellman Group poll, commissioned by the Jewish Electorate Institute (JEI) and released last week, surveyed 800 registered Jewish voters between March 13-23. It found a narrow 39% plurality agreed that it “was more important than ever” for pro-Israel groups to play a leading role in speaking out against candidates who oppose a close U.S.-Israel alliance, while 37% of respondents feared that such advocacy risks making things worse.

The split largely was along partisan lines: While two-thirds of Jewish Republicans and 59% of Jewish independents backed strong pro-Israel political advocacy, just 28% of Democrats shared the same view. A near-majority (46%) of Democrats feared that pro-Israel electioneering could turn voters against Israel. 

AIPAC’s super PAC, the United Democracy Project, has been playing a leading role in influencing contested primaries, predominantly on the Democratic side.  

But while the group’s aggressive spending in last month’s Illinois Democratic primaries drew outsized attention in the national press, only 11% of Jewish respondents said they were paying a “great deal” of attention to pro-Israel groups’ activity in primaries. Over half of Jewish respondents (51%) said they were paying no attention at all or “not much” attention to pro-Israel engagement in politics. 

The poll also tested the public perception of the three leading Israel advocacy groups in Washington: AIPAC, Democratic Majority For Israel and J Street. AIPAC held the highest favorability rating (39%), with 29% viewing the longtime pro-Israel group unfavorably, while 32% said they were unsure. 

While Republicans and independent Jews overwhelmingly view AIPAC favorably, opinion was split among Jewish Democrats, with 29% viewing the group favorably, 37% viewing AIPAC unfavorably and 33% saying they were unsure. 

DMFI boasted the highest net favorable rating among Jewish respondents, with 32% viewing the Democratic Party’s pro-Israel group favorably while just 16% viewed it unfavorably. Its numbers were strongest with Jewish Democrats and weakest with Jewish Republicans.

J Street, which came out last week against funding Israel’s Iron Dome missile-defense system, held a net unfavorable rating, according to the poll. Just 18% viewed the group favorably, while 19% viewed it unfavorably, with a 46% plurality having never heard of the progressive group. 

Over two weeks into the war with Iran, American and Israeli leaders’ public statements about the effort and their goals remain largely in sync, with President Donald Trump praising Israel on Sunday for helping secure the Strait of Hormuz, while other countries with greater oil interests in the region have yet to offer to help.

However, the populations of the two countries have markedly different views of the war, which is popular in Israel while most Americans oppose it, which likely puts Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on different timelines. That, in turn, could impact the level of cooperation moving forward.

Assaf Orion, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, said that “it’s clear that even though this is a joint operation embarked on together, there are significant differences. In the end, it depends on Trump.”

Dan Diker, president of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, said that “it is our sense [in Israel] that Trump is on the same page about staying the course” with goals including “the complete neutering and elimination of the ballistic and nuclear programs as we’ve known them, but also to locate and get rid of the 440 kilograms of highly enriched uranium,” as well as to “assist the regime to collapse and change.”

”Without regime change, this is all for naught,” Diker added. “[Israel] simply can’t live with this messianic, jihadist regime. This is our opportunity.” 

The U.S. and Israel are cooperating more closely than ever before, Diker noted. “It’s a real partnership,” he explained. “We haven’t had that since the founding of the State [of Israel]. It had been a client, an ally, the little brother, not a full-fledged partner. [Secretary of Defense Pete] Hegseth said the only amazing air forces in the world are the U.S. and Israel — that’s quite a statement.” 

“American and Israeli leaders are on the phone every single day — the president and prime minister, joint chiefs of staff, the defense ministers — it’s incredibly tightly coordinated, because we can’t afford surprises,” he added.

That close coordination has “a great deterrent effect … it scares the living daylights out of the Iranian regime. It encourages the [Iranian] people who are still at home in Iran” to rise up against the regime, Diker posited.

Orion noted that different goals between the U.S. and Israel may include the U.S.’ aim to destroy Iran’s navy, something Israel has not mentioned, and the types of missiles they are most concerned about. Israel seeks to destroy long-range missiles that can reach its shores, while U.S. forces in the Gulf are threatened by short-range missiles.

“Within those goals, there can be differences in the level of achievement, the understanding of how much is enough,” he said. “Iran is Israel’s number one priority. For the U.S., the number one priority is China. Iran is an existential threat to Israel, but is far from it for the U.S.”

“Israel is willing to take greater risks because of that threat assessment, while the U.S. has to explain why it’s taking this risk,” Orion added.

While one may think the U.S. could endure a longer war because of its larger size and economy, and because Israelis are the ones running for shelter multiple times a day, while Americans are not, Orion said that does not appear to be the case.

“In Israel, [leaders are] saying it will take as long as it takes, expressing a kind of patience, while the U.S. government speaks out against ‘forever wars.’ They can continue, but they are less forgiving of long wars than Israel at this time. … Though the Israeli population is under fire and U.S. troops are under fire, Israel is more willing to absorb losses because of the sense that it is being threatened,” he said.

Diker said the differences between the U.S. and Israel are mostly in their political timelines: “President Trump has midterms [in November] and Israel has national elections,” set for the end of October, but may be held earlier. “Both men understand the existential nature of the moment. … Both men know their legacies can be built on destroying the world’s most dangerous regime.”

Still, Diker said, “public opinion in Israel backs the prime minister on this war and public opinion in the U.S. is deeply divided on the war … and have over 50% of the public saying they don’t know what this war is about. … That gives Netanyahu more breathing room to finish what needs to be finished even if it takes more time. … [Israel] wants to make sure this regime is destroyed however long it takes.”

Trump, however, has to “withstand political pressure from home with regard to the more isolationist wing of the MAGA movement and the Republican Party as a whole. He has to tie things up in the coming few weeks,” Diker said. 

In addition, the “real challenge” in the U.S. is “the economic war, a soft spot in American political culture. People are nervous about the stock market, the price of oil and have become very impatient.”

Looking at how the war may continue, Orion said that while the public does not know what targets remain in Iran, the IDF has said there are enough targets left to require three additional weeks — or more — of warfare.

At the same time, Israel and the U.S. have to “manage their inventory of bombs and interceptors,” Orion said. “Israel also has the Lebanese arena. [Americans] talk about how whatever they use in the Middle East can’t be used in [East] Asia.”

Diker noted that the U.S. started striking Kharg Island over the weekend, which has the potential to cut off 90% of Iran’s oil revenue. After that, he posited, there will need to be some boots on the ground, likely from the U.S., to locate and destroy Iran’s enriched uranium. If that is achieved, he said, the American role in the war will likely end.

Israel, in the meantime, will “help topple this regime in Iran. What we’ve accomplished is severe unprecedented degradation of the regime’s capabilities.” In addition, Israel will likely continue fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Orion posited that it is unlikely that Israel would continue the war in Iran after the U.S. pulls out.

”The reason the U.S. would stop would be to open the Strait of Hormuz and attacks on oil interests. If Israel continues [bombing Iran], Iran will continue [to attack oil interests],” he said. “However, if the U.S. stops in Iran, Israel may continue in Lebanon with American approval.”

Diker said he thinks it is unlikely that the U.S. would “just pack up and go home.”

”They have to get this uranium out,” he said. “Trump has to be convinced that [Iran] cannot build a nuclear weapon, and he is not convinced of that yet. They still have the uranium and the regime is still operating, somehow.” 

Amid reports of a mounting hunger crisis in Gaza, some of Israel’s staunchest defenders in the Democratic Party are now calling for Israel to do more to get humanitarian aid to Gazans — a signal that deteriorating conditions in the enclave are shifting public opinion even among those firmly in the pro-Israel camp.  

In a series of Friday statements, two major pro-Israel Democratic groups and a top Jewish Democrat in Congress raised concerns about what Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL) described as “undeniably dire” circumstances in Gaza.

“Israel must take immediate action to ensure sufficient food gets into the territory and to the people in desperate need. The world must not turn a blind eye to the fact that children are starving because of this war,” Schneider said in a statement. “It is Israel’s responsibility, and within its capacity, to address and resolve the situation.”

Israel has said the United Nations is to blame for conditions in the Gaza Strip, alleging that the agency is responsible for failing to distribute much of the assistance. The U.N. has blamed Israel for not giving agency officials the necessary approvals to reach the aid piled up on the Gaza side of Israel’s border crossings. 

Israel’s backers in Washington have generally agreed with Israeli leaders that the U.N. and Hamas, which Israel has accused of stealing aid, share the blame for the humanitarian situation in Gaza. U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee told Jewish Insider on Thursday that Hamas is the “biggest reason that people are not getting the food and medicine they need.” 

But that patience appears to be growing thin among some Democratic allies. 

Democratic Majority for Israel CEO Brian Romick said Friday that even though Hamas has no interest in mitigating human suffering in Gaza, Israel still has a responsibility to help starving children.

“Even as Hamas works to prolong this war and prevent food from getting to people in need, Israel — along with the United States, Egypt, Qatar, and the rest of the international community — must continue to work to get food to innocent children in Gaza,” Romick said in a statement. 

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) called out Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) for a post in which Fine called for the release of the hostages, writing “until then, starve away.”

“Telling Palestinians in Gaza to ‘starve away’ is an evil thing to say,” Torres wrote on X on Thursday. 

Halie Soifer, the CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, expressed “deep concern for Israel’s security, international standing and future as a Jewish and democratic state” while calling “for immediate steps to alleviate the dire and growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”

“The situation in Gaza is unacceptable and antithetical to our Jewish values, and it’s incumbent on the Israeli government, the United States and all parties to ensure that Gazans have access to food,” Soifer said in a statement. 

The rhetorical shift comes as Israeli reporters acknowledge that the humanitarian situation in Gaza has grown worse in recent weeks.

“​​Gaza may well be approaching a real hunger crisis,” Israeli journalist Amit Segal wrote in The Free Press on Thursday. “There have been tremendous lies told about Israel’s war. That doesn’t mean the threat of starvation isn’t real. It is.”  

Times of Israel editor David Horovitz wrote this week that Israel shoulders some blame for the suffering in Gaza, having refused to distribute the aid itself while at the same time putting untrained Israeli soldiers in charge of controlling access to humanitarian aid sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation — which has led to the deaths of Palestinians converging on the crowded aid sites.