A new University of Maryland "Critical Issues" poll shows that support for Israel continues to decline among Democratic voters.

According to the poll, which was organized between March 27 and April 5, 1,203 American voters across the United States were asked about their opinions about the country. According to the newspaper, the first question is, "You may have been following recent developments in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza." “Which of the following do you think comes closest to describing the way you see Israel”, the answers narrowed down to four available answer options: Is Israel a “vibrant democracy”; or a "democracy imperfect", or a "state with restricted rights for minorities", or a "state with an apartheid-like segregation".

Fifty-six percent of respondents answered that they did not know, but among those who did have an opinion, only 22% said Israel was a "vibrant democracy," 31% said it was an "imperfect democracy," and 16% said it was "a country with restricted rights for minorities." , and 31% said “It is an apartheid-like country.”

When a political party splits, the poll reveals a stark partisan divide on the issue. Forty-one percent of Republicans said Israel was a "vibrant democracy," while only 20% said it was "an apartheid-style country." 44% of Democrats said it was "an apartheid country", while 34% said it was an imperfect democracy.

The timing of the poll came at the height of Israel's unprecedented and ongoing protests against judicial reform proposed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and which - according to all experts - threatened to significantly weaken the judiciary, grabbing headlines in the US. These protests also coincided with the escalation of violence by the Israeli occupation authorities in the occupied Palestinian territories.

And although the protests largely ignored Israeli military rule over millions of Palestinians in the Palestinian territories (and the blockade applied) to the Gaza Strip, "they drew attention to threats to democracy even within the borders of pre-1967 Israel," according to a University of Maryland survey in collaboration with The “Ipsos Institute” in Washington, which was supervised by Professor Shibley Telhami (of Palestinian origin) and his colleague Stella Rose, which was published on the website of the “Brookings Institute” in Washington on Tuesday, April 25, 2023.

"It is difficult to know if these protests have any impact on the way Americans view Israel, and if they do, in what direction?" Whereas these protests have drawn attention to the authoritarian ambitions of the right-wing (Israeli) government It may also have highlighted the existence of a free environment, at least for hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens, to freely protest and reject the government's plans.

Telhami and his colleagues ask, "Do Americans view Israel as a vibrant democracy, or as much less than that?" And he answers by saying: “To find out the answer, we sent some questions in the Critical Problems Survey of the University of Maryland with the Ipsos organization, as the survey was conducted (on this content) from March 27 to April 5, 2023, surveying 1203 participants by the Probabilistic Knowledge Panel from Who by Ipsos (margin of error 3.2%).

The researcher points out that “Among Democrats, the story was strikingly different: the largest number of those who expressed an opinion, 44%, said it was a “segregated country like apartheid South Africa,” followed by 34% who said it was a “democracy imperfect” that Remarkable because the use of the term "apartheid" in mainstream discourse in America, though increasingly heard of, remains largely uncommon and even taboo in many circles.

Clearly, public attitudes toward Israel are changing. The term "apartheid" seems to have become a popular term among many Americans, especially Democrats, and even the BDS movement, which has faced significant obstacles in the American mainstream, seems to have a lot of support among Democrats who have spoken out.