Israelis do not support US anti-gov't protests during PM visit - poll

When asked how they felt about the protests in the US in response to Netanyahu's visit, 53% of respondents stated they opposed protest action.

 People gather to protest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to California as he is scheduled to meet with entrepreneur Elon Musk, at Union Square in San Francisco, California, US. September 18, 2023. (photo credit: Carlos Barria/Reuters)
People gather to protest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to California as he is scheduled to meet with entrepreneur Elon Musk, at Union Square in San Francisco, California, US. September 18, 2023.
(photo credit: Carlos Barria/Reuters)

The majority of the Israeli public is against the idea of holding protests in the US during Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's New York visit, according to a Maariv survey published Friday morning. 

The survey was conducted by the Lazar Research Institute in collaboration with polling platform Panel4All.

The prime minister has held several high-level meetings during his trip to New York, including a meeting earlier on Wednesday with US President Joe Biden and a meeting with Turkish President Recep Erdogan. This was his first meeting with both world leaders since resuming the premiership in December of last year. 

When asked how they felt about the protests in the US in response to Netanyahu's visit, 53% of respondents stated they opposed protest action, 36% supported and 11% were ambivalent. 

When broken down by voting choice, 72% of opposition voters supported US protests (19% against) compared to only 7% of coalition party voters (85% support). 

 People gather to protest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to California as he is scheduled to meet with entrepreneur Elon Musk, at Union Square in San Francisco, California, US. September 18, 2023. (credit: Carlos Barria/Reuters)
People gather to protest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to California as he is scheduled to meet with entrepreneur Elon Musk, at Union Square in San Francisco, California, US. September 18, 2023. (credit: Carlos Barria/Reuters)

9% of opposition voters and 8% of coalition voters answered "don't know."

If elections were held today 

The survey further determined that there has been no significant change in the public's current voting choices compared to last week's survey. 

That is to say, if elections were held today, Maariv determined that the coalition would only get 53 mandates while the opposition parties would collect 67, gaining a majority in Knesset. The specific breakdown of mandates per party were:

National Unity (Benny Gantz) - 31

Likud (Benjamin Netanyahu) - 26 

Yesh Atid (Yair Lapid) - 16

Shas (Aryeh Deri) - 10 

United Torah Judaism (Yitzchak Goldknopf) - 7 

Yisrael Beteinu (Avigdor Liberman) - 6

Religious Zionist Party (Bezalel Smotrich) - 5

Otzma Yehudit (Itamar Ben-Gvir) - 5

Meretz  (Zehava Gal-On) - 4

Balad and Labor both fell below the threshold to gain any seats in Knesset.