Today there is constant debate over US foreign policy in the Middle East. One important aspect of this debate centers around the issue of Israel???s existence as a state, and the nature of that state. More specifically the question that will be examined asks how Muslim opinions will differ from non-Muslims when concerning Zionism. I hypothesize that Muslim opinions on the subject will not only be much stronger than non-Muslim opinions but they will also identify much more strongly with the Palestinian minority due to the fact that many Palestinians are Muslims. Conversely, non-Muslim opinions will probably tend to be more neutral towards the issue due to either lack of personal sentiment towards the issue or due to not being well informed. As a distinct category, Jewish people would be expected to respond as strongly as Muslims, except in favor of Israel, because of a strong personal connection to the issue. Overall this paper will try to discover if this hypothesis holds when applied to students at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. It will do so by examining a cross-section of all of these groups of students and based on the results of these examinations it will try to provide a better general idea about how this specific group group of students views this issue and if the hypothesis is proven true or false. This examination will go beyond a simple vote of support for or against the State of Israel, but look at levels of support for different versions of that State
