Nearly 80 percent of Britons see Israel as a threat to world peace, survey finds

Nearly four in five Britons consider Israel a serious threat to world peace, according to a survey published last week by the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen). The share holding that view climbed from 48 percent in 2005 to 78 percent this spring, two and a half years into the war in Gaza and shortly after Israel and the United States attacked Iran.

British attitudes have hardened steadily over the past three years. By autumn 2024, one year into the Gaza war, 73 percent of Britons already viewed Israel as a serious threat to world peace. A separate YouGov poll in July, commissioned by the Council for British-Arab Understanding, found that only 17 percent of the British population believes Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza.

Israel's campaign in Gaza has killed at least 74,643 Palestinians, including more than 22,000 children, and wounded 175,962 more. Around 10,000 additional people are missing, and most are presumed dead under the rubble.

The killing has continued despite a ceasefire that began on 11 October last year. Since then, Israel has killed 1,613 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded more than 5,833. Separately, more than 4,000 Lebanese were killed in Israel's offensive against Hezbollah earlier this year.

The conflict with Iran has also reached British households through the economy, pushing up the cost of energy, food and mortgages. Last week the Bank of England raised its base rate from 3.75 percent to 4 percent, its first increase in more than three years, adding to payments for mortgage borrowers and to the cost of taking out or renewing a home loan. Before the war with Iran began, economists had expected rates to fall.

Perceptions of the United States have deteriorated as well, with 74 percent of Britons now regarding the country as a serious threat to world peace. NatCen, the largest social research institute in the UK, linked the rise to bitter public disputes with Nato allies over Greenland and to the February 2026 decision to join Israel in a bombing campaign against Iran.

The shift is striking over the longer term. In 1994, under President Bill Clinton, only 22 percent of Britons saw the US as a serious threat. By 2005, two years after President George W Bush led the invasion of Iraq, the figure had risen to 47 percent. The report said it was "undoubtedly novel" that a clear majority now sees Britain's most important post-war ally as a threat to global peace.

The survey, the annual British Social Attitudes study that NatCen has run since 1983, making it the UK's longest-running survey of social and political attitudes, also measured other perceived threats. Russia topped the list, with 89 percent of Britons viewing it as a serious threat to world peace, compared with 62 percent for China. Around 75 percent saw Iran as a threat, up from 67 percent in the spring of last year.

The report concluded that Britain "has moved psychologically from a post-Cold War society at peace, to one that has come to accept permanent geopolitical competition as the new strategic reality", a shift it attributed to the continuing war in Europe, Israeli threats in the Middle East, intensifying competition between the West and China and an increasingly belligerent United States.