About half of Israelis would be in favor of a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities even without American consent, an Israeli Democracy Institute (IDI) poll found.
When asked about such an attack, 51% answered in the affirmative, with 31% opposed, and 18% responded they did not know.A larger majority – 58% – of Israeli Jews agreed, while only 18% of Israeli Arabs did.
Broken down by political views, 67% of self-identified right-wing respondents supported a military strike even without US support, 50% of centrists agreed, and only 37.5% of the Left responded in agreement.
A small majority, 54%, of respondents considered Iran to be an existential threat to Israel, while a quarter considered it to be a moderate threat, and only 13% saw it as a small one.
Out of Israeli Jews, 61% saw Iran as a major existential threat, while only 19% of Israeli Arabs thought that was so. Only 1.5% of Israeli Jews said Iran is not a threat at all, while 20% of Arabs did respond that Iran is a threat.
A majority of Israelis on the Center and Right of the political map viewed Iran as a major existential threat – 69% and 57%, respectively – while a plurality of the Left (40%) saw the threat as moderate.
The poll was conducted by the Viterbi Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research of the IDI among a representative sample of 664 Israeli adults on November 29-December 1. The margin of error is 3.59%.