Pew poll: 44% of Muslim Americans view Hamas favorably

Forty-four percent of Muslim Americans expressed a favorable view of Hamas in a new Pew Research Center survey, a substantially higher share than among the other religious groups examined, the New York Post reported.

The poll, published Thursday, found that 17 percent of Black Protestants viewed the Palestinian jihadist group favorably, compared with 8 percent of Catholics and 4 percent of White evangelical Protestants.

Muslim respondents were also less likely than members of the other groups to hold favorable views of Israelis. Twenty-six percent said they viewed the Israeli people positively, compared with 74 percent of White evangelical Protestants, 55 percent of Black Protestants and 51 percent of Catholics.

The survey also pointed to a broader generational shift, with younger Americans across religious groups more likely to view Palestinians favorably than Israelis, according to the Post. Attitudes toward Israelis are said to have deteriorated among both Republicans and Democrats in the past decade.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the findings broadly resembled polling conducted among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

Writing on X, he argued that Pew’s results raised serious questions about the prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace, citing Palestinian polling on Hamas, the October 7 attacks and a two-state solution.