American Public Opinion toward Israel

Amnon Cavari is Assistant Professor and Head of the American Public Opinion toward Israel (APOI) project at the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), Herzliya, Israel. He received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research focuses on the interrelationship between elite actions and mass attitudes in the United States and Israel.Guy Freedman is a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin and is the manager of the American Public Opinion toward Israel (APOI) project at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), Herzliya, Israel. His research interests are in American public opinion and public policy.

This is a first rate study of the evolution of American attitudes toward Israel since World War Two. Using quantitative survey data, the authors convincingly argue that Israel, which at one time had strong bipartisan support in the United States, has now become a partisan issue in US politics.Robert O. Freedman, Johns Hopkins University The idea that US Middle East policy has been hijacked by a small cabal of Jews is disturbingly resilient. Scrutinizing decades of US survey data, Cavari and Freedman put that fiction to rest, demonstrating the large partisan divide over Israel that actually drives US policy. Unfortunately, the growth of hyper-partisanship in the US has been matched by partisan gridlock in Israel. Any hope for Middle East peace, therefore, must grapple with the thorny issue of ideologically driven partisanship.Peter Hays Gries, University of ManchesterWho would have thought, back in 1948, that Israel would come to occupy such a central place in American public opinion or that its most fervent American supporters would come to include Evangelical Christians as well as American Jews and to include proportionally more Republicans than Democrats? Amnon Cavari and Guy Freedman have conducted a sweeping, intelligent, and thoughtful review of American attitudes toward Israel from 1944 through 2019, looking at both changes over time and differences between segments of the American population. Their book will be of interest to, and a valuable resource for students of American public opinion and voting behavior, American foreign policy, and the relations, political and otherwise, between the U.S. and IsraelRobert C. Luskin, University of Texas at AustinThe first comprehensive book on American public opinion towards Israel since the end of the Cold War. Timely, and rigorous; a must read for anyone interested in the US-Israeli relationship.Jonathan Rynhold, Bar Ilan University

• Chapter 1: IntroductionPart 1: Trends in Public SupportChapter 2: Studying American Attitudes toward Israel Chapter 3: Positive Affect in American Attitudes toward IsraelChapter 4: Attitudes about the Arab-Israeli Conflict and US Involvement in the Region Part 2: Assessing the Divide in Public SupportChapter 5: Demographic Divisions Chapter 6: Partisan DivideChapter 7: Affective Sources of Attitudes Chapter 8: The Nature of the Partisan Divide over Palestinian IndependenceChapter 9: ConclusionAppendix: Surveys used throughout the bookReferences