This is quite a dismissive attitude towards the students. What makes you believe that they aren't informed about Israel's history? The more you learn about Zionism, the way Israel came into existence and the way it treated the Palestinians, the less likely you are to like this history.
There is absolutely zero justification for the way the Palestinians are treated in the West Bank and this completely invalidates all these insincere "but Hamas" arguments.
Because I know most of them were never taught that history. In the US each state sets its own education policies. Some states have good standards for teaching history and civics while others are terrible and have been for a long time.
My partner was in a Zoom book club with a group of women who were mostly in Texas. There were two women there who were educated in Oregon and most of the rest in Texas. One of the Texas women was very well self educated on history and civics, but the rest were completely ignorant of many things that the two Oregon educated women had learned in school.
I was educated in California, which had a very comprehensive history and civics education standard when I was a kid (70s and 80s). I also grew up in a household that was very plugged into both politics and history. I was literally surrounded with history books throughout my childhood.
I learned a fair bit about Israel's history because of my family and it was in the news when I was a kid, but I got nothing about Israel in school. In my lifetime the 1967, 1973, and 1982 wars happened in Israel. There was also the story of the Munich Olympics 1972 massacre.
But because my generation lived through these wars and saw it on the news, we know that Israel has been attacked in the past and they have become very belligerent to anyone who attacks them because they have had to. Israel got attacked as the British pulled out in 1948.
To Gen Z, Israel has never lived through a war in which Israel was fighting for their survival. Israel has been the strongest and dominant military in the region. To people who are completely disconnected from history before they were born, Israel looks like the bully.
This ignorance shows in interviews and studies of Gen Z. There are a few who do know the history, but a large percentage know nothing but the Palestinian side because TikTok got to them and nobody else has.
What’s another group that stole aid from the most needy in their population and used it instead to fatten themselves to terrorize a peaceful music festival and coop farms that pose no threat to them, and videotape themselves raping and pillaging and take back innocents as hostages? In the context of modern day warfare with norms against disguising war fighters as civilians.
Hamas is uniquely successful in disguising their terrorists as civilians, and their terrorist infrastructure as civilian infrastructure, in a relative scale that no other modern military or terrorist organization has ever done. It is amazing that Israel has achieved the military to civilian kill ratio that they have, given Hamas’ perfection in their art of using civilian shields.
Hamas is probably in the top 10 of worst groups today, but even currently they have competition. Look at the videos that ISIS and Al Qaeda put out. Same with the Russians. Russians have horribly tortured Ukrainian prisoners and civilians in captured territories.
In relatively recent history Stalin's USSR systematically starved Ukrainians in the 1930s and killed millions of their own people as well as sentenced many to gulags. Mao Se Tung is the biggest mass murderer in know history. In the cultural revolution tens of millions of Chinese died.
Then there are the Nazis who tortured and killed Roma, Jewish people, and other "undesirables" in the most systematic way in history. The founders of Israel included a lot of people who survived the holocaust (either by escaping before the Nazis could capture them or actually surviving the camps). The country was founded by some pretty traumatized people.
Other groups have done terrible things in smaller countries. The famines in Ethiopia happened because the food aid was getting stolen. Ida Amin wasn't a saint, neither was Quadafi.
Further back in history the Romans were famous for their cruel punishments. There were the witch trials, the Spanish Inquisition ("nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!"), the atrocities committed during the crusades, and many other horrid things people have done through history.
I could list them all night. One thing that stands out studying history is just how utterly cruel humans can be to one another.
The problem with this kind of journalism is that it interviews the small fish (a follower) instead of the big fish (a leader).
Many followers are clueless, but they place their trust in their leaders.
Even if the leaders know better, the fact that the followers are poorly educated about the history are vulnerable to get co-opted. A well educated population is much more immune to getting manipulated. They look at the attempts to bring them into their movement and walk away because they know it's based on a distortion of the truth.
Tough tactics? With the exception of Texas and Florida, virtually all the other universities are rolling over and giving these protestors free reign.
USC just cancelled graduation for cripes sakes! Columbia had to go to remote learning for the rest of the year because they can't control their anti-Semitic mobs.
I guarantee you if these cowardly University administrators starting EXPELLING these students, the violent protests and occupations would stop instantly. Even arresting them is little deterrent, as most of these protests are happening in Liberal cities who have DA's that will free them instantly with a slap on the wrist. Getting a fake arrest to these pathetic protesters just gives them more street credibility.
You got to hit them where it hurts - and threaten take away their shiny college degrees in Gender Studies and Post Colonial Interpretive Dance. That goes double for the rotten professors that are out protesting and spreading anti-Semitism poison to their students.
I have seen some stories that a number of the protesters are not students. It is kind of a hollow threat to threaten non-students with expulsion.
Boomers are pretty narcissistic as a generation too, and they didn't have Instagram and TikTok messing their brains up.
I would say the Boomers have been fairly self centered. Gen X can be too. Neither of those generations were all that focused on getting attention. They were more focused on doing their own thing and ignoring the world.
I saw it in the way neighborhoods changed in the burbs. My parents were born in the 20s and most of my neighbors growing up were born in the 20s or 30s. Everyone knew everyone else. My parents knew every family for a couple blocks and they were very introverted.
I bought a house in my 20s and most of my neighbors were Boomers. Everyone kept to themselves. Up until the pandemic, I didn't really know any of my neighbors. During the pandemic a very extroverted Boomer neighbor had some outdoor block parties and it fostered a fair bit of the neighbors getting to know one another. The ones who have kept it up since the pandemic have been the Millennials.
