With over 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza killed by the U.S.-backed Israeli military in just the past five months and millions more starving due to Israel’s blockade, powerful new polling results have shown that the majority of Americans think that the U.S. should stop sending weapons to Israel amid its genocidal assault.
According to polling of 1,000 adults done by YouGov, commissioned by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), 52 percent of Americans say the U.S. should halt weapons shipments to Israel. This includes over 6 in 10 Americans, or 62 percent, who say they voted for President Joe Biden in 2020, signaling a huge rift between Biden’s extreme pro-Israel policies and his base.
Those who voted for Donald Trump were more inclined to think that the U.S. should continue its weapons shipments, though 30 percent of those voters still said they should be stopped, the polling found.
Crucially, the polling found that 60 percent of people who did not vote in the presidential election agree with the idea, while only 17 percent disagreed — among a group that CEPR pointed out will be crucial for Biden to sway if he wants to win over Trump in the general election this year.
Overall, only 27 percent said that they disagreed that the U.S. should stop sending weapons to Israel, meaning that there is a 25-point gap between those who agree with the proposal and those who oppose it. In other words, a mere 27 percent of Americans say they agree with the current policy of sending weapons to Israel as it wages its massacre.
“A majority of Americans now believe that — due to the horrific humanitarian disaster in Gaza — the U.S. should block new arms shipments to Israel. I agree,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) in response to the polling. “There should be no more U.S. money for the Netanyahu war machine.”
CEPR noted that the poll asked about stopping weapons shipments specifically, rather than asking about a “ceasefire,” in order to garner more specific results about Americans’ thoughts on the policy.
“Ceasefires can mean different things to different people, but the support for halting weapons shipments is specific and unambiguous,” Weisbrot said in a statement.
The poll was conducted February 27 to March 1, as the Palestinian death toll surpassed 30,000, Israeli forces carried out their horrific “flour massacre,” and Biden officials began shifting their rhetoric to call for a “ceasefire” when they were really referring to a “pause” in the violence, in what appears to be a cynical attempt to sway voters without any shifts in policy as Biden faces a massive protest vote wave.
CEPR pointed out that U.S. officials have the ability to stop the genocide whenever they want.
“We have the power to stop this. Everyone knows that the U.S. could end this today if we wanted to. This is Josep Borell, the highest official of the European Union in charge of foreign policy, telling the United States government that they need to do something, like cut weapons transfers to Israel, to stop the mass killing of civilians by the Israeli military,” said Weisbrot on social media. Weisbrot linked a video in which Borell said, “if you believe too many people are being killed, maybe you should provide less arms.”
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