Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Israelis Still Prefer Hillary to Donald Trump — Even After AIPAC

Donald Trump’s speech to America’s largest pro-Israel lobby did not help his standing among Israelis, a new poll shows.

The March Peace Index, a monthly poll of Israeli attitudes by the Israel Democracy Institute think tank, showed that 40 percent of Israeli Jews thought Democratic front runner Hillary Clinton would be “better for Israel,” versus 30 percent for Trump, the Republican front runner. In addition, 43 percent of Israeli Jews feel Clinton would better serve American interests, as opposed to 28 percent for Trump.

The poll was taken from March 28 to 30, about a week after Trump addressed the national conference of AIPAC, the United States’ largest pro-Israel lobby. Trump’s speech, which struck traditional pro-Israel notes, drew an enthusiastic response from the crowd amid scattered protests. Previously, Trump had said he would be “neutral” on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Israelis also favored Clinton over Trump before the AIPAC conference. A survey in early March by the Israeli news website Walla found that Israelis preferred Clinton to Trump by a margin of 38 to 23 percent. IDI’s February poll, however, found that 60 percent of Israelis believe a Trump administration would be friendly to Israel.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.