A majority of Israelis would support an attack on Iran even without the support of the United States, a poll released Wednesday by the Israel Democracy Institute has found.
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The IDI survey further showed that 54% of respondents consider the Islamic republic to be a major threat to the Jewish state.
Nearly a quarter of respondents view Iran as a "medium danger" while 13% regard the regime as a "small danger."
The IDI continued also asked participants whether they agree or disagree that "Israel should militarily attack Iran's nuclear facilities even without American consent."
IDI's Israeli Voice Index: 62% of Israeli Jews think that Iran poses an existential threat and 58% would support an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities without American consent.
Also – 56% of Israelis support vaccinating children for COVID. Read more: https://t.co/POJDHtJtdM— Israel Democracy Institute (@IDIisrael) December 8, 2021
Overall, 51% of Israelis would support an attack on Iran even without a "green light" from the US, compared to 31% of those who would oppose such.
A high rate – 18% – did not know how to answer the question, according to the IDI.
There was a large gap between the opinions of Jewish Israelis and Israeli Arabs over the Iran questions.
IDI found that "whereas a large majority (61%) of the Jews think Iran constitutes an existential danger to Israel to a large or very large extent, only a minority (19%) of the Arabs think so.
"A segmentation of the Jewish sample by political camp shows that on the Left, the highest rate (40%) regards the existential danger to Israel from Iran as medium; in the center and on the right, a majority views the existential danger as large (57% and 69%, respectively)."
Asked whether Israel should move to strike Iran's nuclear facilities regardless of US support, the poll found that "a small majority (51%) agreed that Israel could attack Iran even without a 'green light' from Washington and only less than a third (31%) thought the opposite." Some 18% did not know how to answer the question, the think tank said.
Again, there was a significant gap between Jews and Arabs on this question, with a clear majority of the former (58%) agreeing that Israel should attack without American consent compared to only 18% of the latter.
The data was published as part of IDI's Israeli Voice Index for November 2021. The survey was conducted on the internet and by telephone from Nov. 29 to Dec. 1, 2021, and included 614 Hebrew-speaking respondents and 150 Arabic-speaking respondents constituting a representative national sample of the entire adult population of Israel aged 18 and older. The survey, conducted by the Midgam Polling Institute, has a sampling error of 3.59 percentage points.
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