AP-NORC Poll: Secular US Jews Far More Critical of Israel
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- AP-NORC poll surveyed 1,022 Jewish adults June 11–17 with a margin of error of plus or minus 5.0 percentage points, finding the deepest splits over Israel fall between Jews who identify through religion and those who identify through culture or family ties.
- Religiously affiliated Jewish adults are more supportive of the war: roughly half call Israel's Gaza operations justified and only about 1 in 4 say Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians.
- Religiously unaffiliated Jewish adults judge Israel far more harshly: about 4 in 10 say Israel committed genocide, just 2 in 10 call the operations justified, and 74% say they feel "not too" or "not at all" emotionally attached to Israel.
- Younger Jewish adults, regardless of religious affiliation, are less likely to see Israel as central to their Jewish identity, though majorities across age groups cite remembering the Holocaust as important to being Jewish.
- The rift is personal: 55% of Jewish adults say they've felt offended by someone's Israel comments since Oct. 7, 2023, roughly 4 in 10 have disagreed with family members over Israel, and about 3 in 10 have cut off contact with someone because of it.
- Only about 3 in 10 religiously Jewish adults identify as "Zionist" "extremely" or "very" well, versus 6% of religiously unaffiliated Jews, while 45% of secular Jews say "Zionist" describes them "not very well" or "not well at all."
Why it matters: The poll quantifies a fault line within American Jewry — not just left/right but religious versus secular — with direct stakes for Jewish organizational politics and U.S. policy debate. Among the roughly 3 in 10 US Jews who identify culturally rather than religiously, 74% feel emotionally detached from Israel and about 4 in 10 call its Gaza campaign genocide, complicating any assumption of monolithic Jewish political alignment on Israel.
