Politics
Two years into Gaza war, U.S. Jews increasingly denounce Israel’s actions: Survey
This change in sentiment mirrors a broader global reckoning with Israel’s prolonged assault on Gaza, launched after Hamas’s October 7 attack. From Washington to Sydney, public opinion is turning against Israel’s actions.
A recent survey revealed that 42% of U.S. adults disapprove of the government’s handling of the conflict, while support for sanctions against Israeli leaders is rising in countries such as Australia.
Even within Israel, a majority now believes that the Gaza war should come to an end.
According to a Washington Post poll, a majority of American Jews disapprove of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, with 61% saying Israel has committed war crimes and around 40% describing the campaign as genocide against Palestinians. Nearly a third believe the United States has been too supportive of Israel.
The poll also showed that over two-thirds of respondents hold a negative view of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership, while opinions about Israel’s overall military strategy remain divided.
Despite this growing criticism, most American Jews said they remain emotionally connected to Israel and view its survival as essential to the Jewish future.
A similar majority continues to support U.S. military aid to Israel, though nearly one-third reported feeling unsafe in the United States amid rising tensions.
The survey further revealed that over 80% of U.S. Jews are deeply concerned about civilian casualties in Gaza, the fate of Israeli hostages held by Hamas, the safety of Israeli soldiers, and the ongoing instability in the region.
Majorities of respondents said that Israel, Hamas, Netanyahu, and the United States all share responsibility for the continuation of the war.
According to the poll, US Jews disapprove of the prime minister, with 68% rating his leadership of Israel negatively, including 48% who call it poor. By contrast, 32% approve of Netanyahu’s leadership.
A Pew Research Centre survey finds that nearly two years into Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip, Americans’ skepticism of Israel’s operation and its government is higher than at earlier points in the conflict.
It suggests about six-in-ten now have an unfavorable view of the Israeli government, with a rising share saying Israel is ‘going too far’.
39% now say Israel is going too far in its military operation against Hamas.
This is up from 31% a year ago and 27% in late 2023. 59% now hold an unfavorable opinion of the Israeli government, up from 51% in early 2024.
16% say Israel is taking about the right approach to the conflict, and 10% say it isn’t going far enough.
A third of adults say they aren’t sure. Large shares of Americans continue to express uncertainty across several questions about the ongoing war in the Middle East and the US government’s response.
A new national survey from Pew Research Centre, conducted September 22-28 among 3,445 adults, finds that 42% of US adults disapprove of the Trump administration’s response to the conflict between Israel and Hamas, while 30% approve. Roughly a quarter (27%) say they are not sure.
Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to approve of Trump’s handling of the conflict and to say he is striking the right balance between the Israelis and the Palestinians. But the shares saying Trump is favoring the Israelis too much have risen in both partisan coalitions.
A third of adults (33%) say the United States is providing too much military assistance to Israel. By comparison, 35% say the US is not providing enough humanitarian aid to Palestinian citizens in Gaza.
Eight-in-ten Americans say they are at least somewhat concerned about starvation among Palestinians in Gaza, Israeli military strikes killing Palestinian civilians and the remaining Israeli hostages not being returned to Israel.
While more Americans disapprove (42%) than approve (30%) of the Trump administration’s response to the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. About a quarter (27%) say they are unsure.
And 36% of Americans say President Donald Trump is favouring Israel too much in the conflict (up from 31% in March), while 23% say he is striking the right balance. Few (2%) say he is favouring the Palestinians too much. More than a third — 38% — say they are not sure.
A YouGov poll, commissioned by the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN), shows the majority of Australians want Israel to end its assault on Gaza, with 69% agreeing 53% “strongly” agreeing the Netanyahu government’s military campaign should stop. 14% disagreed.
Australians are supportive of placing tough sanctions on Israel and its leaders for their role in attacking Gaza, with a new poll finding more than half of voters agree the federal government should extend sanctions placed on Russia to Israel.
The survey of 1,500 voting-aged Australians suggests the public is broadly supportive of the government playing a more decisive role in bringing the bloody two-year war to an end.
According to a poll by the Israel Democracy Institute, a majority of Israelis believe the time has come to end the war in Gaza, with the top reason being the endangerment of hostages.
The survey found that 66 percent of Israelis say the time has come to end the war a figure 13 points higher than the result from a year ago when respondents were asked the same question compared to 27% who think or are certain that the time has not yet come, and 7% who are unsure.
The top reason both Jewish (50.5%) and Arab Israeli (34.5%) respondents gave that the war should end is the endangerment of the hostages.
“The one thing that everyone could be sure of as the events of October 7, 2023, unfolded was that Israel would emerge from the Hamas attack a changed country.
It was not just the immediate trauma of the roughly 1,200 dead and 250 hostages, but also how much it upset the assumptions that Israelis had made in the years before that the country was more safe and secure than any time in its history, that the Arab world was slowly accepting the inevitability of a predominantly Jewish state and prepared to push aside concerns about the future of Palestinians, and that Israel’s high-tech prowess could not just generate prosperity but also ensure security as well,” an analysis in the Foreign Policy magazine stated.
“A final reckoning on such a cataclysmic event will take years to emerge. In the meanwhile, the most dire predictions Israel becoming ensnared in prolonged, deadly, and destructive wars with Hezbollah and Iran; a tanking economy; and a deep crisis of confidence have failed to materialize.
The conflicts with Hezbollah and Iran ended in Israel’s favour with relatively little collateral damage. Economic growth has slowed, but Israel has absorbed the shock better than many expected. Trust in the military and many of the country’s key institutions has not declined significantly, if at all.
Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has claimed over 67,000 lives in the past two years, following Hamas’s October 7 attack, which the Palestinian group insisted was a “historic response” to Israel’s actions against the Palestinians.
“We reaffirm that the Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7 was a historic response to attempts to eradicate the Palestinian cause,” Fawzi Barhoum, a senior Hamas official, said in a televised speech. The attack, according to Israeli officials, resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was repeating his previous appeals “with even greater urgency: Release the hostages, unconditionally and immediately.”
“End the suffering for all… Put an end to the hostilities in Gaza, Israel and the region now. Stop making civilians pay with their lives and their futures. “After two years of trauma, we must choose hope. Now.”
Israel’s foreign ministry said, “Two years ago, Israel faced the darkest day in its history… we pray for the return of the hostages still held in Gaza, and we stand united against terror,” “Hamas must be dismantled to end this war,” the ministry said on X. “Light will rise over darkness.”
Besides calling for the hostages’ release, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer suggested pro-Palestinian protests planned for the anniversary of “”that awful day” were disrespectful. “This is not who we are as a country,” the under-fire premier wrote in The Times.
“It’s un-British to have so little respect for others. And that’s before some of them decide to start chanting hatred towards Jewish people all over again.”
- Sri Lanka declares emergency and seeks global aid.
- Over 631 dead, 472 missing across Sumatra, Indonesia.
- Survivors describe sudden, tsunami-like flood waves.
Governments and aid groups in Indonesia and Sri Lanka worked to rush aid Tuesday to hundreds of thousands stranded by deadly flooding that has killed around 1,200 people in four countries.
Torrential monsoon season deluges paired with two separate tropical cyclones last week dumped heavy rain across all of Sri Lanka and parts of Indonesia’s Sumatra, southern Thailand, and northern Malaysia.
Climate change is producing more intense rain events because a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, and warmer oceans can turbocharge storms.
The floodwaters have now largely receded, but the devastation means hundreds of thousands of people are now living in shelters and struggling to secure clean water and food.
In Indonesia’s Aceh, one of the worst-affected regions, residents told AFP that survivors who could afford to were stockpiling supplies.
“Road access is mostly cut off in flood-affected areas,” 29-year-old Erna Mardhiah said as she joined a long queue at a petrol station in Banda Aceh.
“People are worried about running out of fuel,” she added from the line she had been in for two hours.
The pressure has caused skyrocketing prices.
“Most things are already sky-high… chillies alone are up to 300,000 rupiah per kilo ($18), so that’s probably why people are panic-buying,” she said.
On Monday, Indonesia’s government said it was sending 34,000 tons of rice and 6.8 million litres of cooking oil to the three worst-affected provinces, Aceh, North Sumatra and West Sumatra.
“There can be no delays,” Agriculture Minister Andi Amran Sulaiman said.
Food shortage risk
Aid groups said they were working to ship supplies to affected areas, warning that local markets were running out of essential supplies and prices had tripled already.
“Communities across Aceh are at severe risk of food shortages and hunger if supply lines are not reestablished in the next seven days,” charity group Islamic Relief said.
A shipment of 12 tonnes of food from the group aboard an Indonesian navy vessel was due to arrive in Aceh on Tuesday.
At least 631 people were killed in the floods across Sumatra, and 472 are still listed as missing. A million people have evacuated from their homes, according to the disaster agency.
Survivors have described terrifying waves of water that arrived without warning.
In East Aceh, Zamzami said the floodwaters had been “unstoppable, like a tsunami wave.”
“We can’t explain how big the water seemed. It was truly extraordinary,” said the 33-year-old, who, like many Indonesians, goes by one name.
People in his village sheltered atop a local two-storey fish market to escape the deluge and were now trying to clean the mud and debris left behind while battling power and telecommunications outages.
“It’s difficult for us (to get) clean water,” he told AFP on Monday.
“There are children who are starting to get fevers, and there’s no medicine.”
The weather system that inundated Indonesia also brought heavy rain to southern Thailand, where at least 176 people were killed.
Across the border in Malaysia, two more people were killed.
Colombo floodwaters recede
A separate storm brought heavy rains across all of Sri Lanka, triggering flash floods and deadly landslides that killed at least 390 people.
Another 352 remain missing, and some of the worst-hit areas in the country’s centre are still difficult to reach.
President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has declared a state of emergency to deal with what he called the “most challenging natural disaster in our history”.
Unlike his Indonesian counterpart, he has called for international aid.
Sri Lanka’s air force, backed by counterparts from India and Pakistan, has been evacuating stranded residents and delivering food and other supplies.
In the mountainous Welimada region, security forces on Monday recovered the bodies of 11 residents buried by mudslides, a local official said.
In the capital Colombo meanwhile, floodwaters were slowly subsiding on Tuesday.
The speed with which waters rose around the city surprised local residents used to seasonal flooding.
“Every year we experience minor floods, but this is something else,” delivery driver Dinusha Sanjaya told AFP.
“It is not just the amount of water, but how quickly everything went under.”
Rains have eased across the country, but landslide alerts remain in force across most of the hardest-hit central region, officials said.
WASHINGTON: The White House has said that President Donald Trump is in good health, even as people continue to question how his age may affect his performance as the country’s most powerful man.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Monday that a recent MRI conducted on President Trump was preventative in nature and revealed that he was in good cardiovascular health.
Speaking to reporters at a press briefing at the White House, Leavitt said men of Trump’s age benefited from such screenings.
‘President Trump’s cardiovascular imaging was perfectly normal, no evidence of arterial narrowing, impairing blood flow or abnormalities in the heart or major vessels,’ Leavitt said of the 79-year-old president.
‘The heart chambers are normal in size. The vessel walls appear smooth and healthy, and there are no signs of inflammation or clotting. Overall, his cardiovascular system shows excellent health. His abdominal imaging is also perfectly normal,’ Leavitt said.
Trump underwent a magnetic resonance imaging scan during a recent medical evaluation, but did not disclose the purpose of the procedure, which is not typical for standard check-ups. The lack of details raised questions about whether full information regarding the president’s health is being released in a timely fashion by the White House.
Trump is sensitive about his age and well-being. He personally attacked a female New York Times reporter on social media last week over a story she co-wrote examining the ways that Trump’s age may be affecting his energy levels.
Politics
Tajikistan says five Chinese nationals killed in cross-border attacks from Afghanistan in past week
Five Chinese nationals have been killed and five more injured in Tajikistan in attacks launched from neighbouring Afghanistan over the past week, Tajik authorities and China’s embassy in the Central Asian country said on Monday.
China’s embassy in Dushanbe, the capital, advised Chinese companies and personnel to urgently evacuate the border area.
It said that Chinese citizens had been targeted in an armed attack close to the Afghan border on Sunday. On Friday, it said that another border attack — which Tajik authorities said had involved drones dropping grenades — had killed three Chinese citizens.
Tajikistan, a mountainous former Soviet republic of around 11 million people with a secular government, has tense relations with the Taliban authorities in Afghanistan. It has previously warned of drug smugglers and illicit gold miners working along the remote frontier.
China, which also has a remote, mountainous border with Tajikistan, is a major investor in the country.
There was no immediate response on Monday from the authorities in Afghanistan to the Tajik statement.
But Afghanistan’s foreign ministry last week blamed an unnamed group, which it said was out to create instability, and said it would cooperate with Tajik authorities.
Tajik President Emomali Rahmon’s press service said on Monday that Rahmon had met with the heads of his security agencies to discuss how to strengthen border security.
It said that Rahmon “strongly condemned the illegal and provocative actions of Afghan citizens and ordered that effective measures be taken to resolve the problem and prevent a recurrence of such incidents.”
Tajikistan endured a brutal civil war in the 1990s after independence from Moscow, during which Rahmon initially rose to power. The country is closely aligned with Russia, which maintains a military base there.
Millions of Tajiks, a Persian-speaking nation, live across the border in Afghanistan, with Tajikistan historically having backed Afghan Tajiks opposed to the Taliban.
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