Israel burying the mangled corpse of its favourability rating?
by Duns Scotus
Everybody in the Third World already hates or has a deeply cynical view of Israel, viewing the Zionist State as a extension of European colonialism or US neo-colonialism.
But how has the ongoing "situation" in Gaza affected Israel's wider standing in the West, an area that it has traditionally relied on for essential diplomatic, financial, military, and moral support?
How has the slaughter or over 50,000 Gazans (70% women and children), the destruction of 70% of the buildings in Gaza, and the apparent attempt to inflict mass starvation on the rest of the population fed through into the poll ratings of what is often called the "only democracy in the Middle East"?
The numbers for Israel look extremely bleak.
Already the mainstream media, traditionally very careful about criticising Israel, have turned with, for example, important UK newspapers, like the Financial Times, The Guardian, and The Independent, all condemning Israel.
Also, Israel has been sanctioned by the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ), a generally powerless body, but one that has soft power that impacts on wider public opinion.
Also, Israel has been sanctioned by the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ), a generally powerless body, but one that has soft power that impacts on wider public opinion.
Also, as much Western power is in fact soft power that relies on building moral cases against supposedly "tyrannical" opponents, like Iran, Russia, or North Korea, it becomes problematic, to say the least, when Western governments attempt to turn a blind eye to human rights abuses by Israel, as they have done in the past.
In other words, how Israel is viewed in the West is not just a matter of random opinion, but creates a "structural" problem in geopolitical relationships. Israel, much more than the well-established "pariah" nations already mentioned, depends on having extremely positive PR.
This is reflected in the enormous attention and energy that Israel gives to how it is perceived in the West. But even this effort, known as "hasbara" (Hebrew for "explanation" or public diplomacy) has opened it up to criticism. This is because Israel now has an established track record of repeatedly lying in its try-hard hasbara efforts and running underhanded influence ops, involving smears, threats, and blackmail. This means that its propaganda efforts are now creating increasing negative backwash.
In other words, how Israel is viewed in the West is not just a matter of random opinion, but creates a "structural" problem in geopolitical relationships. Israel, much more than the well-established "pariah" nations already mentioned, depends on having extremely positive PR.
This is reflected in the enormous attention and energy that Israel gives to how it is perceived in the West. But even this effort, known as "hasbara" (Hebrew for "explanation" or public diplomacy) has opened it up to criticism. This is because Israel now has an established track record of repeatedly lying in its try-hard hasbara efforts and running underhanded influence ops, involving smears, threats, and blackmail. This means that its propaganda efforts are now creating increasing negative backwash.
This unrelated picture is put here simply to break up the text, obviously.
Of course, most people are extremely low information, so it takes time for these negative impacts to filter through to what is known as "public opinion," which can also be distracted or side-tracked by other issues, but the pattern is now unmistakable:
Israel is torching its image with the Western public even more than it is destroying Gaza.
In a May 2025 YouGov poll only 12% of Britons believed the UK should be supportive of Israel, with 41% thinking the UK should be more critical, while 59% believed Israel was committing human rights abuses in Gaza. This was a major swing from earlier polls, but also interesting is the fact that even some who still support Israel or are in uncommitted, now believe that it is committing human rights abuses, which it is, of course, by any objective analysis.
Germans who feel they have to support Israel for, ahem, "historical reasons," seem to be shaking off their decades-old "inverted anti-Semitism," with Israel’s favorability dropping to 30%, a massive decline from previous years.
In a recent PIPD Poll, 49% of Germans supported a ban on arms trade with Israel, while 33% believed that Israel was committing "genocide," an often nebulous term, but one which has a unmistakable stench that is increasingly associated with Netanyahu, Likud, its allies, and the Zionist State.
In a recent PIPD Poll, 49% of Germans supported a ban on arms trade with Israel, while 33% believed that Israel was committing "genocide," an often nebulous term, but one which has a unmistakable stench that is increasingly associated with Netanyahu, Likud, its allies, and the Zionist State.
Support for banning arms the trade with Israel is at 65% in Italy, 62% in Belgium, 51% in France, and 50% in Sweden, while associating Israel with genocide was at 49% in Italy, 46% in Sweden, 43% in Belgium, and 34% in France.
According to a 2025 YouGov "general sentiment" poll, “every single European nation surveyed has an overwhelmingly negative view of Israel.”
A Morning Consult "trends" poll, from 2024 into 2025) saw Israel’s net favourability drop by 18.5 percentage points globally, going from -17.1 to -29.8 in the UK and -39.9 to -62.0 in Japan.
America is, of course, behind the curve as it is a society much more open to foreign influence operations, while also having a large and influential Zionist lobby, supported both by Jews and evangelical Christians. But there are even signs here that support is collapsing.
In 1991, Israel, before its extremist Likudist phase, had a favourability rating of 79%, By 2023, decades of Zionist excesses, mediated by effective hasbara operations, had managed the decline down to 58% favourability. This shot up in the wake of the Hamas attack on Israelis on 7th October 2023, but has subsided down to 54% today, according to a Gallup poll in February 2025.
This shows that Israel has more than used up the "victimization dividend" caused by the attacks. Meanwhile, Palestinian favourability in the US has risen to a record high of 32%. Among younger Americans (18-34), support for Israel has plummeted to 29%, with 48% now sympathizing with Palestinians.
A Pew Research Center poll from March 24-30, 2025 showed that 53% of U.S. adults expressed an unfavourable opinion of Israel, up from 42% in March 2022, while the share with "very unfavourable" views has doubled from 10% to 19% over this period.
As yet, these mood swings have yet to have much hard power impact on Israel, but already moves are under way to restrict arms shipments and even impose sanctions on extremist elements in the Israeli government.
The long term view, however, is that even with a radical change in direction towards more humanitarian policies, rebuilding goodwill for Israel in Western countries would not only be an uphill task, but would be like climbing a mountain during an avalanche.
The long term view, however, is that even with a radical change in direction towards more humanitarian policies, rebuilding goodwill for Israel in Western countries would not only be an uphill task, but would be like climbing a mountain during an avalanche.
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