Poll: Only 23% of Americans comfortable discussing Israeli-Palestinian conflict without fear of reprimand

According to a survey released Tuesday by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, only 23% of Americans feel "very comfortable" Sharing their views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict "without fear of reprimand."

The quarterly National Speech Index, designed by FIRE and conducted by the Dartmouth Polarization Research Lab, surveyed 1,000 Americans from July 7-20, with a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

The poll found that 31% said they feel somewhat comfortable discussing the conflict, while 31% reported being not very comfortable and 14% said they are not comfortable at all. When asked about their comfort level discussing the war in Iran, 29% of respondents said they were very comfortable.

Respondents were also asked how often in the past month they had watched what they said or censored their comments, questions or words. Only 8% said they had done so nearly every day, while 32% said, "occasionally, a handful of times."

Nathan Honeycutt, FIRE's manager of polling and analytics, said: "Ideally, everyone should be comfortable expressing their opinions about key topics of debate, but most Americans don't appear to feel that way."