Skip to content
61%
“Many American Jews sharply disapprove of Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza, with 61 percent saying Israel has committed war crimes and about 4 in 10 saying the country is guilty of genocide against the Palestinians,” according to a Washington Post poll. “The findings are striking given the long-standing ties between the U.S. Jewish community and Israel, suggesting the potential for a historic breach over the Gaza war.”
60%
Gallup: “Americans’ approval of Israel’s military action in Gaza has fallen 10 percentage points since the prior measurement in September, and it is now at 32%, the lowest reading since Gallup first asked the question in November 2023. … Disapproval of the military action has now reached 60%.”
“There’s probably a couple of kinks in that slinky.”
— Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), quoted by Politico, on President Trump’s proposal for the U.S. to “own” the Gaza Strip.
$632 billion
Major companies in the arms industry saw a 4.2% increase in overall revenue in 2023 with sharp rises for producers based in Russia and the Middle East, a new report said Monday, reported the Associated Press. The report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, or SIPRI, said revenues from the top 100 arms companies totaled $632 billion last year in response to surging demand related to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
$5 million
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel will pay $5 million to any Gaza resident who returns a hostage plus safe passage out of the war-ravaged territory, Bloomberg reports.
12,756
“The United Nations reduced estimates for the number of women and children killed during Israel’s war in Gaza by nearly half, inviting new scrutiny for figures that come from the militant group Hamas,” USA Today reports.“Of the 34,735 people who have died in Gaza since the war began, according to data published May 6 by the UN, more than 9,500 were women and more than 14,500 were children. … But in updated data published two days later on May 8, the UN significantly reduced the figures to 4,959 women and 7,797 children among the 34,844 people reportedly killed in Gaza.”
60%
A new Wall Street Journal poll finds a plurality of American voters “think Israel has gone too far in responding to the October attacks by Hamas, and a growing share believes the U.S. isn’t doing enough to help the Palestinian people. … The new poll found that 60% of voters disapprove of Biden’s handling of the war, 8 points more than in December, with 31% approving of Biden’s actions.”
6
Number of schools serving as shelters bombed in Gaza in three weeks of fighting. Israel, like Bashar al-Assad in Syria and Vladimir Putin in Russia, claims the hits were the result of “errant rocket fire” from the other side. The UN says it supplied the coordinates of the girls’ elementary school most recently hit to Israel 17 times. The United States agreed after the strike to send more ammunition to Israel, as the governments of Chile, Peru, Brazil and Ecuador withdrew their ambassadors to the country in protest of the civilian killing.
Neither side has a strategy other than terrorizing the civilian population of the other side.
— Uri Avnery, peace activist and Tel Aviv resident, who says that young Israelis are so tired of wars breaking out with no resolution that they are beginning to whisper about emigrating.
