Fairly common for anti-Israel people to point out the negative poll numbers Israel has among the youth. Some thoughts on why this is misread. 1) Opinions change. 18 y/o who don't know anything about Israel will have a negative view if all they see is bombed out buildings on TV. But that very same demographic will simply forget Israel exists within 2 years if it's out of the news. The people who love Israel, however, are going to love it into the future. Point is, there's no real way to know how this plays out long term. 2) People love a winner. Remember how anti-Israel sentiment exploded after 10/07? When the Jewish people was hurt worse than it has been in decades. Rule of life: everyone kicks you when you're down, everyone is missing when the shoe drops. It's the way of the world. But conversely, the opposite is also true. Remember how everyone wanted to be MAGA and Trump's friend the weeks before the election because he was winning? Same thing could happen if Israel decisively wins this war. 3) The blues are just showing their true colors. If you've been following Israel since 2008 (you haven't, that's ok), they have already lost support from the Dems. It's not some great revelation, Obama actively undermined Israel. IL survived, the US relationship has never been better. 4) Let's say the polls hold into the future. So what? Israel needs to stop fighting to protect itself? You don't let yourself be killed in order to keep strangers on the internet happy. Israel can't afford friends who demand from it pacifism. 5) Israel does not need financial aid. Israel will not cease to exist if the US stops sending subsidies that are used to buy US weapons. Bibi wants to wind this aid down, I've been publicly speaking about it for 5 years atp. I don't really know what will happen in the future, but the argument that Israel should lay down its arms because the most left-wing progressive generation dislikes the Jewish State just doesn't make sense. Either they get over it, or they don't. Either way, Israel has to do what it has to do to survive. Some will argue that Israel can't survive bad polls in the US. This is fairly naive. First, because it assumes that DC FP is fully responsive to the polls. But US was far more pro-Israel than the DC establishment for decades and that never stopped the deep state. If Israel is a useful ally, US FP will use it--popular or no. And second, because it's laughable to think that Israel's depends on the US to survive. The US is Israel's closest ally. Israel is immensely benefited by this relationship. But Israel survived for 30 years before it became friends with the Americans, and it was a poorer and weaker country back then. Israel survives, to a very large extent, because it punches way above its weight militarily. Since the day the Jewish State was founded, it's neighbors try to destroy it every 10-20 years. The survival of the Jewish people has so far been preserved by its warrior ethos, by the ingenuity of its populace, and by the hand of providence. Negative opinion polls among 18 year olds are not going to change that.
