Hillary Clinton is facing a deluge of criticism after stating that young Americans’ growing support for Palestinians is influenced by “totally made-up” videos on TikTok and suggesting that American youth - including young Jews - “don’t know history and don’t understand” Israel’s war on Gaza.
Speaking on Tuesday at a summit hosted by the right-wing Israeli paper Israel Hayom in New York City, the former Democratic presidential candidate expressed her concerns that “smart, well-educated young people” in America and around the world are getting a lot of their information, including about Israel and Palestine, from social media platforms like TikTok.
The former US secretary of state described it as “serious problem for democracy”, remarking that when she attempted to have “reasonable discussions” with young people, it was challenging because “they did not know history, they had very little context, and what they were being told on social media was not just one-sided, it was pure propaganda".
While I concede it’s not only possible, but in fact, likely that many people are unaware of the 10 volume set of War and Peace size novels which recount the history of conflict in the Middle East, I find it incredibly out-of-touch that she can’t understand that the starving and murder of an entire ethnic group is considered abhorrent by a large amount of the youth.
We don’t need to know every facet to know genocide when we see it. I’m so tired of the constant Israel propaganda here in the states. You’d think they were the superpower and we were completely beholden to them in every way with the amount of kowtowing our politicians do. It’s insane.
Even if you read the history of Palestine for the last 100 years it only reinforces that Israel is a far-right apartheid state hellbent on the extermination of the inhabitants of that land in the name of Jewish supremacy.