A sweeping new survey has found that negative views of Israel have hardened significantly across the world, with majorities in most countries expressing unfavorable opinions of the country and deep skepticism toward its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
The findings, drawn from a Pew Research Center poll conducted between February and May of this year, surveyed more than 44,000 adults across 36 countries spanning Europe, Asia, the Americas, the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. Majorities in most of the countries surveyed express an unfavorable view of Israel and little or no confidence in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
A median of 67 percent of adults across the 36 countries hold an unfavorable view of Israel, while just 25 percent express a favorable opinion. The poll was conducted largely after the United States and Israel launched a military campaign against Iran in late February, a development that likely shaped responses in many of the surveyed nations.
The hostility is most acute in Muslim-majority countries. In Turkey, 97 percent of respondents expressed an unfavorable view of Israel — the highest figure of any country surveyed — while Pakistan registered 95 percent and Malaysia 89 percent. Sentiment in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where pollsters were able to survey but not in Gaza, was similarly bleak, with 85 percent viewing Israel unfavorably.
European nations also showed strongly negative sentiment. In Italy, the Netherlands and Spain, around half of adults or more said they hold a very unfavorable view of Israel. Sweden and Spain both came in at 78 percent unfavorable, followed closely by the Netherlands at 76 percent and Italy at 75 percent. Even in countries with historically closer ties to Israel, such as Germany and the United Kingdom, the figures stood at 73 and 69 percent respectively.
The United States bucked the global trend only modestly. Sixty percent of Americans expressed an unfavorable view of Israel, up from 53 percent in 2025, while the share holding a favorable view fell from 45 to 37 percent.
Across much of the world, the survey reveals a pronounced generational and ideological divide. In many countries — predominantly in North America and Europe — younger people hold more negative views of Israel than older respondents. The ideological gap is particularly stark: in the United States, 83 percent of those who identify as liberal hold an unfavorable view of Israel, compared with 37 percent of conservatives — a 46-point chasm that represents the widest left-right divide of any country in the survey. In Australia, the gap between left and right stands at 39 percentage points, and in Greece at 38 points.
The trend lines are also moving in one direction. Unfavorable views of Israel have grown more common since 2025 in 13 of the 24 countries where comparable data exists. In Argentina, for example, a minority of 46 percent held negative views last year; today that figure has risen to a majority of 55 percent. Only Greece registered an improvement in perceptions of Israel, and even there only 30 percent of the public expressed a positive opinion.
Views of Netanyahu track closely with attitudes toward Israel. Majorities in most surveyed countries say they have little or no confidence in the Israeli prime minister to act responsibly in world affairs. In more than a dozen countries — including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, Pakistan, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and the United Kingdom — more than half of adults said they have no confidence in him at all.
Kenya and the Philippines are the only countries surveyed where more than half of the public expresses confidence in Netanyahu. Positive sentiment was also relatively higher in several sub-Saharan African nations, including Ghana and Nigeria, though even there confidence levels have declined over the past year.
Confidence in Netanyahu dropped significantly in 13 of 24 countries with trend data since last year. South Korea recorded the sharpest shift, with the share expressing little or no confidence rising from 64 to 76 percent. Italy saw the share expressing absolutely no confidence in the prime minister climb from 45 to 62 percent in a single year.
The survey results underscore the degree to which Israel’s international standing has deteriorated since the outbreak of the Gaza war in October 2023, with the trend accelerating rather than stabilizing as the conflict continues and expands into new theaters.
