Agencies-Gaza post
New polls show more democrat voters support BDS than oppose it in the U.S.
More Democratic voters in the US support the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement than reject it, according to two new polls; and a massive majority of Americans, including Republicans, are opposed to laws criminalizing boycotts against Israel.
The votes add a new extent to what is already seen as a gap between where American voters stand, especially in the Democratic Party, and where the Biden government and lawmakers stand on the Israeli-Palestinian cause.
According to the surveys, conducted in May and in June by the University of Maryland’s Critical Issues Poll, 33 percent of Democratic voters back BDS while 10 percent dislike it; the majority, 37 percent, stated they did not know, while another 20 percent said they neither supported nor opposed it.
“One of the most controversial issues in American political discourse about the Israeli-Palestinian issue has been the question of boycotts of Israel, especially the boycott, divestment, sanctions (BDS) movement. We sought to probe attitudes on this issue,” Shibley Telhami, director of the University of Maryland’s Critical Issues Poll, noted for the Brookings Institute on Tuesday.
The resistance against the BDS movement still to be strong in the Republican voter base, with 50 percent of respondents saying they are against it.
However, when asked whether they backed laws criminalizing the boycott against Israel, 68 percent of all respondents including a slight majority of Republicans said that they were against such laws.
The data point reflects a major disconnect between voters and legislators, who across the country in dozens of states have worked to give laws that illegalize any boycott against Israel.
