Many of those students self-righteously chanting “from the river to the sea” — a phrase that calls for the eradication of the one Jewish state and its replacement by a twenty-third Arab state — turn out not to know very much, and sometimes nothing at all, about Israel and the Palestinians, though they are quite sure that Israel is Very Bad and Palestinians are Very Good. Jews, they appear to believe, just arrived in the area for no apparent reason and “stole” the land of the Palestinians, who, quite understandably, have been trying for decades to get it back. That’s all these students know. Why confuse them with facts? A recent piece in The Wall Street Journal has some remarkable observations about the colossal ignorance of these pro-Palestinian protesters, as I wrote about previously here. Ron E. Hassner, a professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote the following: “From Which River to Which Sea?,” by Ron E. Hassner, Wall Street Journal, December 5, 2023:
When college students who sympathize with Palestinians chant “From the river to the sea,” do they know what they’re talking about? I hired a survey firm to poll 250 students from a variety of backgrounds across the U.S. Most said they supported the chant, some enthusiastically so (32.8%) and others to a lesser extent (53.2%).
That’s 86% of college students who either don’t understand or actively support a call to destroy Israel.
But only 47% of the students who embrace the slogan were able to name the river and the sea. Some of the alternative answers were the Nile and the Euphrates, the Caribbean, the Dead Sea (which is a lake) and the Atlantic. Less than a quarter of these students knew who Yasser Arafat was (12 of them, or more than 10%, thought he was the first prime minister of Israel). Asked in what decade Israelis and Palestinians had signed the Oslo Accords, more than a quarter of the chant’s supporters claimed that no such peace agreements had ever been signed. There’s no shame in being ignorant, unless one is screaming for the extermination of millions.
But we cannot blame many of the students. They never learned basic facts to begin with, and therefore they are receptive to antisemitic lies.
Would learning basic political facts about the conflict moderate students’ opinions? A Latino engineering student from a southern university reported “definitely” supporting “from the river to the sea” because “Palestinians and Israelis should live in two separate countries, side by side.” Shown on a map of the region that a Palestinian state would stretch from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, leaving no room for Israel, he downgraded his enthusiasm for the mantra to “probably not.” Of the 80 students who saw the map, 75% similarly changed their view.
An art student from a liberal arts college in New England “probably” supported the slogan because “Palestinians and Israelis should live together in one state.” But when informed of recent polls in which most Palestinians and Israelis rejected the one-state solution, this student lost his enthusiasm. So did 41% of students in that group….
And what would these students make of the fact that 76% of the Palestinians in Gaza support Hamas after the October 7 attack? Or that, in the West Bank (a/k/a Judea and Samaria), 62 percent of Palestinians have a “very positive” view of Hamas, and 68 percent “extremely support” the attacks of October 7? How many of them would change their mind about supporting the Palestinians if they were to discover that so many of them support Hamas not despite, but because of the atrocities, it carried out on October 7? How many of those ignorant young people know what those atrocities were? To wit: the beheading of babies, the burning alive of children, the rape, torture, mutilation, and murder of girls, the gouging out of eyes and cutting off of genitalia, the slicing off of breasts, the children murdered in front of their parents and parents in front of their children. How would that knowledge change their minds about Israel’s right to destroy Hamas in the way that it is now doing?
There’s a whole lot of self-satisfied ignorance going around on campuses today. Not just among today’s college students, whose knowledge of history is equivalent to that possessed by an eighth-grader in 1960, but also among the faculty, who have to spend so much time on DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusivity) issues that it’s a wonder they have time to keep up with much beyond their own fields of specialized study.
It won’t be easy to remedy this situation. Talking up the problem of this “gross ignorance of history” by our politicians and media pundits would help. Let NPR devote a month’s worth of programs to the problem of steep declines in students’ knowledge of history and geography. Let editorials thunder about the surpassing ignorance that is not bliss, but rather the bane of our existence. State boards of education can insist that in order to receive a high school degree, a student must pass an examination demonstrating a basic knowledge of history and geography.
Imagine if every high school senior, having studied the required unit on the modern Middle East in a course on World History Since 1945, were to be asked to draw an outline of Israel within the 1949 armistice lines, with that nine-mile-wide waist from Qalqilya to the sea, and then to write in the appropriate places on a world map the names of the twenty-two Arab states .They would be expected to learn the extent of the territory Israel now possesses (about 10,000 square miles), and of the territory those 22 Arab states include (roughly, 14 million square miles). Suppose, further, they had to learn the Ottoman Empire’s dates and about its timely demise, and the decision of the Great Powers to assign several of those former Ottoman territories to become part of the League of Nations’ Mandates system, further be asked to learn what territory was originally meant to be included in Mandatory Palestine (i.e, “from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea”), and who attacked whom on May 15, 1948. Then they would learn what caused 700,000 Arabs — decades away from being called “Palestinians” — to leave the area known as Mandatory Palestine until May 14, 1948, when it became the independent state of Israel. They would also be expected to learn what caused 850,000 Jews to flee to Israel from close to a dozen Arab lands. Then they would be taught which side first threatened war in May 1967 (those hysterical Cairene crowds addressed by Nasser, who predicted the “great victory” that would soon be theirs), and which side launched a surprise attack in October 1973. Finally, they would be expected to learn what the Hamas Charter declares, and in what ways the Palestinian Authority differs in tactics and timing from Hamas, but not in its ultimate goal. That material is not too taxing, and the results — a lot fewer ignoramuses shouting down Israel and giving a thumbs up to Hamas — will be well worth it.
SKA says
The more monumental ignorance of these students is not just of the recent history, geography and politics of the Middle East. Rather it is their almost complete ignorance of the Bible and Israel’s ancient history.
OLD GUY says
Look at the photo, these students if they are students come probably from muslim countries or are converts to islam. This is what happens when our colleges and universities lower their admission standards to accept ethnic and foreign students on campus. It also results in the lowering of the education are children receive and that we pay dearly for.
gravenimage says
True, Old Guy–then there are the “useful Idiots”–Infidels who join in with Jihadists because it is trendy.
somehistory says
This is the kind of people they are supporting, and on whose behalf they are rioting, mobbing teachers, attacking others….because hamas is working with iran, hezbollah, .
From the AP
“Top White House cyber aide says recent Iran hack on water system is call to tighten cybersecurity”
“Neuberger, who serves as a top adviser to President Joe Biden on cyber and emerging technology issues. “We need to be locking our digital doors. There are significant criminal threats, as well as capable countries — but particularly criminal threats — that are costing our economy a lot.”
The hackers, who U.S. and Israeli officials said are tied to Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, breached multiple organizations in several states including a small municipal water authority in the western Pennsylvania town of Aliquippa. The hackers said they were specifically targeting organizations that used programmable logic controllers made by the Israeli company Unitronics, commonly used by water and water treatment utilities.
Matthew Mottes, the chairman of the Municipal Water Authority of Aliquippa, which discovered it had been hacked on Nov. 25, said that federal officials had told him the same group also breached four other utilities and an aquarium.
The Aliquippa hack prompted workers to temporarily halt pumping in a remote station that regulates water pressure for two nearby towns, leading crews to switch to manual operation.
The hacks, which authorities said began on Nov. 22, come as already fraught tensions between the U.S. and Iran have been heightened by the two-month-old Israel-Hamas war. The White House said that Tehran has supported Houthi rebels in Yemen who have carried out attacks on commercial vessels and have threatened U.S. warships in the Red Sea.
Iran is the chief sponsor of both Hamas, the militant group which controls Gaza, as well as the Houthi rebels in Yemen.”
Damaging the water supply….and they don’t care whether those affected are chanting, rioting, mobbing or not.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/top-white-house-cyber-aide-says-recent-iran-hack-on-water-system-is-call-to-tighten-cybersecurity/ar-AA1ldUX5?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=fab97ed6d8df4fc0be8f180778724ba8&ei=48
tgusa says
Inform the students that Israel is treating the surrender monkey hamas criminals better than muslims treat their sisters. “Islamic Republic of Pakistan: Muslim murders his sister in honor killing over her ‘inappropriate’ relationship”
Yep.
tgusa says
“self-righteously chanting “from the river to the sea”
In semi-related news the military audience at the Army Navy football game were chanting f joe biden, from the river to the sea. Ok, I added the second part.
somehistory says
I listened to a little bit of an interview on a FOX program. The interviewee was an Israeli man and he said that people should be saying “24/7 “”Free the hostages.'”
That would have been awesome, instead of chants in favor of terror and holding hostages until the ghouls can regroup, re-arm, move, hide and do more raping of the hostages.
Chanting that river/sea thing is cover for the things the terrorists are doing and have done, It’s really, “more rape, more terror, more mutilation, more murder”
tgusa says
From the rapist to the murderer, more more more/spit.
tgusa says
“The interviewee was an Israeli man and he said that people should be saying “24/7 “”Free the hostages.’”
Good luck with that. Sadly, one could bark at the moon or give medicine to the dead and get more humanitarian results.
gravenimage says
+1
Devasur says
And the best don’t care.
gravenimage says
Devasur, the quote “the worst are full of passionate intensity” comes from Yeats’ seminal poem “The Second Coming”.
It reads in part:
“…The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity…”
Which is similar to what you said.
Here is the full piece:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming
Well worth reading, and as apt today as it was in 1919.
Rob Porter says
Devasur – If they don’t care, then they’re not “the best”.
gravenimage says
True–they may “lack all conviction”, but if they genuinely don’t care at all then they are anything but the best.
gravenimage says
The Worst Are Full of Passionate Intensity
…………………………………….
Fine piece from Hugh Fitzgerald–and grimly apt title.
VictorMc says
Yes to all this. You simply can’t beat stupid. They always have an answer for you. But the overall position is that the (basically) educated and sophisticated Europe is swapping their (heavily Jewish cognoscenti) for deeply ignorant Arabs & others from Africa and all over the world who are only one gene away from the trees. I never thought I would be glad about my old age. I can’t watch it.
I have corresponded with the aliyah department in Jerusalem who cannot cope with the paperwork for people who want to live in Israel. Much of the paperwork is fraudulent and forged (NB: Ukraine & Russia)
and of course, bribery is rampant
Mick says
The River Jordan has dried up, the Med has been polluted and over-fished by EU states, and besides the Palestinians are restricted to fishing in a triangle of roughly 20 x 20 x 20 miles. Except when they are banned..
The number of fishermen has dropped from 10k to ca 3k since 2000, per the UN- OCHA.
Yaakov Holansky says
Sounds about right. Don’t forget the UN is run by unelected bureaucrats who know whats best for the World. They think they replaced G-d, Sovereign Nations and the People who actually live there!
gravenimage says
The idea that the ‘poor Palestinians’ are being oppressed by the EU–which sends them a fortune in aid–and so they have to murder Israelis is just grotesque.
Yaakov Holansky says
An excellent, on point, editorial that in and of itself should be required reading by students, Educators, School Administrators, Bureaucrats involved in education, Elected Officials, and the Media.
Michael Maguire says
“were to be asked to draw an outline of Israel within the 1949 armistice lines,”
Wouldn’t it be even more educational for them to draw an outline of Israeli within the Mandated line as dictated in the Mandate for Palestine 1922.
In 1922 the entire territory, between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea, was given to World Jewry as their National Homeland under the legally recognised and binding Mandate for Palestine 1922 issued by the League of Nations. That decision was made following discussions at the San Remo Conference in 1920 when representatives of the Jewish peoples and the Arab peoples met with the victorious principle allied war powers of WW1 (Britain, the U.S., France, Italy and Japan.) The purpose of the San Remo conference was to agree on how the territory, ruled for the previous 400 years by the Turkish Ottoman Empire, was to be allocated between the native peoples of those lands having legitimate claims to them.
gravenimage says
The more general point is that these fools know next to nothing about what is really happening in the region.