A Pew Research Center survey released on Tuesday found that most respondents in 20 of the 24 countries polled hold negative views of the Jewish state and of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
India, Kenya and Nigeria were the only countries polled that maintained net positive views of Israel. (Less than half of Argentinian respondents had unfavorable views of Israel, but only 26% said they had positive ones.)
Very unfavorable or somewhat unfavorable views of Israel now predominate strongly in countries, including Japan (79%), Australia (74%) and Poland (62%).
U.S. respondents continue to be some of the most pro-Israel in the world, with 45% of Americans holding somewhat or very favorable views of Israel, but an even larger number (53%) hold unfavorable views.
Global opinion of Netanyahu is significantly dimmer than that of the country he leads.
“Outside Kenya and Nigeria, no more than around a third of adults in any surveyed country have confidence in Netanyahu to do what’s right regarding world affairs,” the surveyors found.
In seven of the countries polled, more than half of the respondents said that their level of confidence in the Israeli prime minister to “do the right thing regarding world affairs” was “none at all.”
The survey polled some 28,333 adults in 24 countries internationally from Jan. 8 to April 26 and 3,605 adults in the United States from March 24 to March 30.
As in previous public opinion surveys, the Pew researchers found that younger respondents had more negative views of Israel than older adults did in many countries, and that the United States is one of the countries where that gap is most pronounced.
The political right also tends to favor Israel more than the political left in many countries.
The difference is starkest in the United States and Australia. In both, there is a 44-point gap in favorability towards Israel between those who identified as right-wing versus left-wing.
The poll also asked Israelis if they feel their country is respected in the world.
The same number of respondents (58%) say that the Jewish state is “not too” or “not at all” respected, as they did when Pew asked the same question in 2024.
“But the share of Israelis who say their country is not at all respected has increased nine points since then, from 15% to 24%,” Pew noted.
The researchers also found that there was no difference between Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs in how likely they are to say that the country is respected internationally.
