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Strong majority of Americans support Israel-Hamas hostage deal
Nearly three-quarters of the American public supports short-term humanitarian pauses in the fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza in order to allow for the release of hostages, a survey from the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) found.
Some 72% of respondents favored humanitarian pauses, as did 69% of Jewish Americans.
On the other hand, 20% of respondents were in favor of an immediate, unconditional ceasefire, an outcome favored by 16% of Jewish Americans.
60% of all respondents and 64% of Jewish respondents said that the release of all hostages held by Hamas should be a precondition for a long-term ceasefire. Hamas being removed from power was viewed as a precondition to a long-term ceasefire by 51% of Americans and 58% of Jewish Americans. In a similar vein, 46% of the general public, and 61% of Jewish Americans identified Hamas’s “disarmament” as a precondition for a ceasing of hostilities.“It’s clear that the vast majority of Americans understand that an end to the fighting must be tied to releasing the hostages and making Israel safer by removing Hamas from power,” said Mimi Kravetz, the Chief Impact and Growth Officer for Jewish Federations of North America. “Understanding these fundamental and widely held views is critical for our policymakers as they work to represent their communities.”
The researchers surveyed 1,290 American adults, 843 of whom were Jewish, on November 19 and 20, 2023.
The respondents consisted of a random subset of those who participated in a previous JFNA survey of 3,777 Americans including 2,199 Jewish Americans, which was conducted between October 29 and November 1.
The war’s strong emotional impact on American Jews
JFNA reported new data from that survey, revealing additional support for Israel’s war effort as well as that the war had a strong emotional effect on Jewish respondents. That survey found that Hamas deserved the greatest amount of blame for obstructing peace according to 39% of Americans and 50% of Jewish Americans. 10% of Americans and 13% of Jewish Americans blamed other Middle Eastern countries such as Iran, while 15% and 4% respectively said Israel deserved the brunt of the blame.
On the question of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, 76% of respondents and 91% of Jewish respondents replied in the affirmative, 13% and 4% respectively said Israel did not have the right to exist as a Jewish state, and 11% and 5% respectively said they did not know or were not sure.
The emotional effect of Hamas’s shocking attack on October 7 and the subsequent war has been significant, with 88% of Jewish respondents saying they had been emotionally affected by the war – 57% by “a great deal.”
Roughly half of American Jews said that there are two or fewer degrees of separation from someone who had been killed, injured, or displaced due to the war. About 30% of Jewish participants said the war has made it harder for them to feel comfortable sharing their views with non-Jewish friends.
When asked how they would best describe Hamas’s initial attack, all respondents most commonly replied with “terrorism,” “barbaric,” “massacre,” and “war crimes.” In contrast, the terms most associated with Israel’s response were “justified” and “self-defense.”
While the research reveals strong levels of support for Israel among the American public, more demographic-specific research has found that support for Israel among young people is far weaker. A Harvard CAPS/Harris poll in October found that over a quarter of Americans aged 18-24 believed that the best solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict would be for Israel to be “ended and given to Hamas and the Palestinians.”
The key element of Saudi Arabia’s plan for Gaza is the removal of Hamas from power and its disarmament, without relocating Palestinians to Arab states, a source within the Saudi royal family told KAN News on Thursday.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is set to host a meeting of Arab leaders on Friday to discuss the initiative, which is being positioned as an alternative to the proposal put forward by former US president Donald Trump. The summit will include leaders from Egypt, Jordan, and five Gulf states, KAN reported.
A senior Egyptian official added: “The US administration has conveyed to Arab states that it is open to alternative plans regarding Gaza, beyond Trump’s initiative.”
Donald Trump’s controversial vision for Gaza’s future
Earlier this month, Trump outlined a controversial vision for Gaza’s future, which included relocating Palestinian residents.
Speaking to Fox News, he said: “We will build beautiful and safe communities for 1.9 million Gazans. Maybe five communities, maybe six, or perhaps two. But we will create safe communities for them, a bit farther from the dangerous place they are in now. In the meantime, I will own the land. Think of it as real estate development for the future.”
Last week, it was reported that Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar were planning a joint summit to discuss Gaza’s future.
US President Donald Trump told King Abdullah of Jordan that Hamas must release all hostages, including all Americans, by Saturday and asked for the King’s assistance in ensuring that Hamas and leaders of the region understand the severity of the situation, the White House said Wednesday.
Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff stated that Hamas is a terrorist organization that should not be allowed to be part of the government in any part of Gaza.
“This is an unhealthy situation. They need to go,” Witkoff added.
“Donald Trump said everything we need to know; Saturday, 12:00,” Witkoff concluded, referring to the deadline by Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for Hamas to return all hostages.Trump tells Jordanian king that US will ‘take Gaza’
Trump told Abdullah that the US is going “to take Gaza” in a meeting between the two on Tuesday.
“Palestinians will live safely in another location that is not Gaza,” he said, adding that the US wasn’t going to buy Gaza but rather “run it very properly.”
Trump asked under what authority the US would take Gaza, and he said under US authority. However, he said that the US would not personally develop Gaza.
This isn’t a metaphor anymore. Since October 7, the comparison between Hamas and the Nazis passed from a rhetorical device to an entrenched belief among the Israeli public.
A Jerusalem Post exclusive survey on Tuesday found that 51% of Israelis believe Hamas’ treatment of hostages is comparable to Nazi war crimes, while another 30% acknowledge similarities but stop short of full equivalence. Meanwhile, 11% reject the comparison outright, and eight percent remain unsure – which, in today’s reality, is just a polite way of saying, “I’d rather not answer that.”
Let’s be clear: This isn’t just emotion talking. This is not Israelis grasping for the most sensational historical reference they can find.
The numbers point to something profound: An awareness that Hamas isn’t just any terrorist organization but a movement informed by decades-old ideology whose roots reach all the way to Nazi propaganda. The notion of Hitler’s impact ending in some Berlin bunker is a Western mirage. Here, in Israel, where that same ideology was resurrected in blood and fire on October 7, nobody has the luxury of such illusions.German historian: Hamas atrocities an ‘ecstatic act of antisemitic slaughter’
Dr. Matthias Küntzel, a German historian and one of the leading experts on Islamist antisemitism, has spent years documenting how Nazi Germany actively spread antisemitic propaganda in the Middle East during World War II. In an interview with Makor Rishon, he explained how Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, personally collaborated with Hitler, helping to recruit Arab fighters for the Waffen-SS and ensuring Nazi antisemitism was embedded in the Arab world long after the Third Reich fell. Küntzel makes of the reaction to October 7 the evidence for this legacy, calling the Hamas atrocities an “ecstatic act of antisemitic slaughter.” Therein lies the difference between terrorism and genocide: one kills to attain political leverage, another for the mere, uncontainable joy of it.
This is not a theory, this is what Hamas says. Their 1988 charter is steeped in Nazi ideology, replete with references to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the same antisemitic conspiracy theory that Hitler relied on to justify his Final Solution. It doesn’t speak about occupation, it speaks of Jews as global manipulators that need to be wiped off the face of the earth.
ISGAP senior researcher Professor David Patterson put it starkly in his book From Hitler to Hamas: A Genealogy of Evil: Hamas doesn’t just want Israel gone, it wants Jews dead, everywhere.
He claims that while the Nazis framed their war as racial purification, Hamas frames it as religious duty. “The Nazi needed a Final Solution. The jihadist needs an apocalypse.” That’s why they burn children alive and then chant “Allah Akbar” over the ashes. That’s why they decapitate babies and distribute the footage like a recruitment video. That’s why they don’t even pretend to have a vision for governing Gaza—they are too consumed by their lust for Jewish blood to think beyond the next massacre.
For more than half of Israelis, these facts make the Hamas-Nazi comparison self-evident. This is a war against a force that wants Jewish existence erased. That understanding is shaping the way Israelis view the war. If Hamas is the new Nazis, then negotiating with them is as preposterous as asking Churchill to sign a ceasefire with Hitler in 1942. If Hamas is the new Nazis, then the only way forward is the one the Allies took in 1945: unconditional surrender, and total eradication.
Of course, 41% of Israelis demur, and some argue that the Holocaust was a uniquely industrialized genocide, and that Hamas, brutal though it is, doesn’t have the wherewithal to match that. That view is held particularly by opposition voters, only 47% of whom completely buy the Hamas-Nazi analogy, whereas 60% of coalition voters do. The queasiness is understandable—the profession of historians is unanimous in cautioning against turning every brutal regime into a Nazi clone.
But there is also a political calculation involved. Some are concerned that extending the Nazi comparison too far will harm Israel’s case diplomatically, alienating the allies already showing reluctance to support the war. Of course, there’s the unspoken fear that as long as Israel leans heavily onto the Holocaust analogy, it invites others to link the actions of the Israeli army with those of Nazi Germany – an obscene inversion already used on European campuses and in some American ones, by antisemites.
That said, that reluctance does nothing to change anything in the present situation. Hamas built itself on Nazi ideology, and it acts as such. Their not having the gas chambers means nothing, and that makes them no less than a genocidal movement, just their modus operandi is different. October 7 was not a war crime-it was the Holocaust on a small scale. That’s what Hamas fighters thought they were doing, and that’s why their sympathizers across the Arab world still call Hitler a hero.
The difference between 1942 and 2025 is that this time, the Jews aren’t helpless. The question now is whether Israel – and the world – has the stomach to act accordingly.
If history teaches us anything, it is this: Nazis don’t negotiate. They get destroyed.
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