New Survey Shows That the Students Who Hate Israel the Most Know the Least About It

The Left’s Long March Through the Institutions has been a resounding success. Most of our nation’s colleges and universities, including — indeed, especially — those who enjoy an outsize influence on American politics and culture, have long ago ceased to be centers of higher learning and have become centers of far-Left indoctrination. Marxist sloganeering and agitprop masquerades as genuine intellectual inquiry, and so it’s no wonder that once American youth graduate from their once-renowned institutions, they happily take jobs in government or social media that involve stripping free speech and self-defense rights from Americans. They also hate Jews and Israel, in large numbers. But in emblematic of what American academia has become is the fact that those who hate Israel the most know the least about it.

Algemeiner reported recently 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 fact comes 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 this survey, which began by presenting students with 18 issues and asking them to rate how interested they were in them.

Hassner explained that these issues 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.’”

According to Hassner, 43 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 twaddle about the massive, howling, world-historical injustice of the occupation of Western Sahara or Northern Cyprus. They likely haven’t even heard of either one.

That’s a reasonable conclusion to come to in light of the fact that they know virtually nothing about the conflict that they do profess to care, and care very deeply, about: “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%.”

Strikingly, 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.”

In fact, “the most passionate students were also the least likely to leave questions unanswered and ‘the most likely to offer a wild guess,’ marking them as the most overconfident respondents.” And this pattern continually recurred “in all answers related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” Hassner noted: “Only 16% of students who ‘care deeply’ about the Palestinian issue provided the correct decade for the Six Day War and only 17% were able to guess that the population of Israel was somewhere between 8 and 12 million people. The others offered guesses ranging from as low as 100,000 persons to as high as 150 million persons.”

Hassner professed not to know why ignorance and passion about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict correlated so markedly: “While acknowledging that his survey could not answer why students were driven to profess strong opinions on issues they were not particularly knowledgeable about, Hassner posited that ‘it does indicate, strongly, that education and moderation go hand in hand.’” He added: “The questions that students answered most accurately involved Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Morocco, all countries for which they expressed moderate but not extreme interest. If misinformation is both a cause and a consequence of political passion, then good teaching is the antidote.”

Yes. The students who are most passionate about hating Israel know the least about the conflict because they are suffering from a social contagion, not acting upon a reasoned conclusion. Those who actually study the issue, if they do so thoroughly and honestly, will come out supporting Israel. Our nation’s colleges and universities are doing their level best to prevent that outcome.

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darev

4 months ago

We already knew they were useless idiots being used by Islamists and if the Islamists win will immediately be thrown from rooftops and hung from cranes.

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From a Remote Location

4 months ago

And it is because so many of our young are malformed in this and so many other ways (including slavish following of every leftist platitude that Taylor Swift spews) that there should be an IMMEDIATE push to ABOLISH the 26th Amendment and RAISE the minimum voting age to 30 or older. After all, Prohibition was eventually repealed, and the legal drinking age raised from 18 back to 21 (plus the idea of mandated eugenic sterilization for the “feeble-minded” being thrown out the window – not to mention the scourge of Jim Crow), so . . .

Last edited 4 months ago by From a Remote Location

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Peter

4 months ago

Reply to  From a Remote Location

These bastard zero woke choke generation should consuder poor cgeerleader killed by mozlem illegal immigrant fake refugee fake asylum seekers. Who are these deadbeats coming to our country to tell us what to do, what to wear, trying convert us to satanic verses to win points with their ullah?
Strange religion if you can call it that. They’relike gay men convert convert convert.

0

Staff Sgt

4 months ago

These students aren’t the voice, they are ignorant, wet behind the ear puppets. They would probably side with anybody. They are all about video games, certain rap music implementing the wrong things, unmoral sex, drugs and shaming, not to mention not having any clue what’s going on in the world!!!!! These are woke students who need hard lessons in life to wake up and if that don’t work, than prayer, spanked or just left behind!

Last edited 4 months ago by Staff Sgt Chaos

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turtlebrat

4 months ago

Reply to  Staff Sgt

These college students are ignorant brainwashed robots who were taught by commie teachers from K to college and cannot think for themselves and are a danger to the Republic. Sad but true. So what to do about them? Difficult to deprogram but it can be done. Reality has a way of wising people up.

7

Creole Gumbo

4 months ago

The nearly universal accepted use of the term “The Palestinians” to describe the Arabs has gone a long way in perpetrating the myth that these people once had a countty and that the Jews stole it. THESE PEOPLE ARE NOT ” TTHE PALESTINIANS” BECAUSE THERE NE ER WAS A COUNTRY CALLED PALESTINE FOR THE JEWS TO KICK THEM OUT OF.” The use of this incorrect term has gone a long way in generating sympathy for these descendants of immigrants from neighboring Arab countries such as Jordan and Egypt.

Whenever this issue arises I begin the discussion with asking for clarification on the term “The Palestinians” and whether there ever was a country called Palestine. Most sympathesizers cannot tell you who the head of that country was or when it existed. This usually leads to them allowing you to give them a history lesson.

STOP CALLING THEM “THE PALESTINIANS.”

7

Stephen Honig

4 months ago

Hate is learned and the Muslims start when they’re in kindergarten.

3

Indigo Red

4 months ago

Reply to  Stephen Honig

Much earlier than that. It starts before birth and continues unabated by the family.

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Walter Sieruk

4 months ago

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.

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