Christians drive youth support for Israel

Stephen Richer, Contributor
13/3/2012

Last week’s AIPAC Policy Conference could lead one to think that young voters are overwhelmingly pro-Israel. The three-day Israel love fest attracted 1,600 students from 500 schools. Add to this number the young voters at AIPAC who already graduated from college (including yours truly), and the 18 to 29 year old count makes up an impressive percentage of the conference’s 13,000 attendees.

But young voter support of AIPAC’s Policy Conference can’t be taken as reflective of the general population. So where does the average young American stand on Israel?

A lot has been written on a subset of this topic: young American Jews. Peter Beinart is well known for the hullabaloo he started in the summer of 2010 when he claimed that young American Jews are increasingly disconnected with Israel as a result of the “downward moral spiral” of both the American Zionist establishment and Israel itself (“The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment”). As evidence, Beinart pointed to a study by Republican pollster Frank Lutz, as well as findings by scholars Steven Cohen (Hebrew U) and Ari Kelman (UC Davis) who said that “non-Orthodox younger Jews, on the whole, feel much less attached to Israel than their elders.” Those scholars asserted that only 54% of non-orthodox Jews under 35 are “comfortable with the idea of a Jewish state” (as compared to more than 80% of non-orthodox Jews over 65). Another poll found that only 20% of young Jews labeled themselves as “highly attached” to Israel (Slate).

Beinart’s conclusions are not universally accepted in the Jewish community; the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise and The Israel Project recently released a survey of 400 American Jewish college students which found that:

90% agree that Israel is the spiritual center of the Jewish people.
83% said caring about Israel is an important part of being Jewish.
73% said American and Israeli Jews share a common destiny.
89% have warm/favorable feelings toward Israel.
78% sympathize with Israel vis-a-vis the Palestinians.
84% think America should support Israel.
(Mitchell Bard, The Jerusalem Post)

Beinart promises to respond – forcefully and, allegedly, conclusively – in his book The Crisis of Zionism, due out on March 27, 2012.

But as important as this debate may be to America’s Jewish community, it doesn’t factor significantly in the assessment of overall American youth sentiment toward Israel – Jews only make up only a bit over 2% of the country’s population.

Far fewer statistics exist for non-Jewish American youth voters, but what’s out there seems pretty good for Israel supporters. According to a Gallup poll taken in February 2011, 58% of 18 to 34 year olds responded “Israel” when asked “[Are your] sympathies in Middle East Situation More With Israelis or Palestinians?” Only 19% said “Palestinians,” and 22% said “both/neither/no opinion.” Though it is true that this 58% ranks below 35 to 54 year olds (63% sympathize with Israel) and the 55 and older segment (67%), it still compares favorably with recent past polls of the entire American public, which have averaged about 58%.

For many in the pro-Israel movement, this impressive support for Israel from the non-Jewish community – at rates even higher in some polls than the Jewish community – comes as no surprise. Reporting for The Times of Israel, Debra Rubin writes “Unsurprisingly, there are more non-Jews than Jews advocating for Israel on campus.” Rubin then quotes Israel on Campus Coalition executive director Stephen Kuperberg as saying, “Non-Jewish students vastly outnumber the number of Jewish activists motivated to support Israel. On campus, just as it is in the rest of the United States, if the only support Israel has comes from Jews, we would be in very bad shape.” As evidence, people making remarks similar to Kuperberg’s simply need point at polls of the general American populace (like the Gallup one above) and groups like CUFI (Christians United for Israel) which, though only in existence for six years, attracted 500 students to its last annual conference.

Perhaps Beinart is right that the young Jews of America are drifting from Israel. I don’t know.

But even if Beinart is right, his conclusion doesn’t jeopardize young American support for Israel. Groups like AIPAC and CUFI have done enough to reach out to non-Jews (specifically Christians) to ensure that young Christians will likely lead the United States to another 60 years of pro-Israel sentiment.

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