New in PJ Media:
It’s simple, really. Why do so many college and university students hate Israel? Because they know nothing about it, and have bought into the propaganda they’ve been fed.
In the midst of the recent and nationwide demonstrators featuring students (and many others) denouncing Israel for its alleged crimes, Algemeiner reported that “students who care strongly about the ‘Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories’ do not have knowledge of basic facts surrounding the subject, and do not share similar concerns about other geopolitical conflicts.”
This wholly unstartling bit of information was gleaned from a survey of 230 undergraduates at University of California, Berkeley. Ron Hassner, who has the unenviable position of being Berkeley’s Helen Diller Family Chair in Israel Studies, conducted the survey, which began by presenting students with 18 issues and asking them to rate how interested they were in them.
These issues, according to Hassner, included “US-Iran relations, the civil war in Yemen, drone warfare, etc., on a five point scale, ranging from ‘I’m not that interested’ (1 point out of 5) to ‘I care deeply’ (5 points out of 5).” The survey went on from there to ask the respondents a “series of open-ended questions ‘on history, geography, and current affairs.’”F
Forty-three percent of the students were most interested in Israel’s alleged “control of Palestinian territories,” while expressing much less interest in “other Middle East occupations, such as the Kurdish struggle for independence, the occupation of Western Sahara, or the occupation of Northern Cyprus.”
That’s understandable. These indoctrinated bots aren’t inundated daily with self-righteous leftist rubbish about the massive, outrageous, world-historical injustice of the occupation of Western Sahara or Northern Cyprus. In all likelihood, they haven’t even heard of either one.
Why is that likely? Because they know virtually nothing regarding the conflict about which they claim to care very deeply: “Eighty-four percent of those in the most passionate cohort could not name the decade when Israel captured the West Bank, while 75 percent could not locate the Palestinian territories in question on a map.” Moreover, a full twenty-five percent of these programmed and propagandized student “placed the Palestinian Territories west of Lebanon, in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea.” Nor did just a few of them drive the Palestinians into the sea that they chant about wanting to fill with Israelis: “The class average for this blunder was 14%.”
The survey data also showed that “students who expressed the most interest in the Palestinian issue were less informed than more moderate peers, who ‘are more likely to admit gaps in their knowledge and, as a result, are less likely to hold erroneous beliefs.’” Thus “like the rest of the class, only 25% of passionate students placed the Palestinian Territories, correctly, south of Lebanon. But students with more moderate levels of enthusiasm provided the correct answer 28% of the time.”
There is more. Read the rest here.
VMS says
Yep, it’s just like the villagers getting motivated to grab their torches and go on a witch-hunt, and direct their ire against an older unattractive woman, merely because someone accuses her of witchcraft. And this ignorant mob mentality feeds on itself.
Ray Jarman says
Different outlook but perfectly on target.
mike says
what is missed by every poll is the actual grading of the education system and history of the world
Teachers that are not qualified to be teachers in the first place
Abinavam Narayanan Rajaramm says
Especially students of history must read the facts about Israel- Arab conflicts, study propagandas on both the sides, evaluate and finally come to the conclusions. Students should not buy or give credence to doctored hatred of any side.
Walter Sieruk says
Those non–Muslims Americans, of university and college campuses through the United States, who are protesting against the State of Israel and who likewise greatly favor Hamas are people who are ,rightly , described ,as the “useful idiots” of the leaders of Hamas and their jihadist members who are dedicated to the cause of conquest for the cause of Islam.
Those Americans who aren’t Muslims the stooges of those Hamas chefs and the other Muslim terrorist, For those of Hamas view all people who are not Muslims as inferior creatures to them and refer to them .
Behind their backs as , “Kafirs,” which is the Islamic derogatory term for “disbelievers”
It’s tragic that those non-Muslims pro-Hamas America protesters against Israel are so very deluded by Hamas that this Islamic terror / murder organization so easily manipulates and uses them as their tools.
Those poor people are ,truly, their useful idiots.
Walter Sieruk says
Many universities and colleges throughout the United States have been thoroughly infiltrated and influenced by the insidious stealth jihadists.
There may be little doubt that those stealth jihadists are backed and funded by Iran and Qatar as well as oil rich Saudi Arabia.
tim gallagher says
The situation with the Palestinians and Israel does get an inordinate amount of attention in the media, that’s for sure. It is always front and centre in the news. The “poor” Palestinains, blah, blah, so I think that it is a fashionable cause for the students. And, as is pointed out, they really know fuck all about the situation anyway, but they will go along with the crowd. For me, islam and its followers are the main enemy of civilised life, so I am a supporter of civilised Israel and don’t have the time of day for the barbaric, Muslim Palestinians. I have a totally different world view to these dopey students and I look at them and their insane hatred towards Israel with complete incomprehension. They are probably very smart in certain subject fields but, on this issue, they have shit for brains. They should wake up and realise that barbaric islam is the enemy of civilised life everywhere.