Why Gen Z Loves Palestine

The kids are not alright: The brutal Hamas attacks on innocent Israelis earlier this month revealed the radicalism of rhetoric long-festering at elite college campuses.

• At Harvard, a coalition of student groups published a letter claiming Israel was “entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.”

• The president of the New York University Student Bar Association argued that “Israel bears full responsibility for this tremendous loss of life.”

• George Washington University students projected the phrase “Glory to our martyrs” on the side of the school library.

• Students for Justice in Palestine, which boasts hundreds of chapters on campuses across the country, stated the Hamas attacks were “a historic win for the Palestinian resistance.”

The numbers: More than two-thirds of Americans say the U.S. should side with Israel over Hamas. But on college campuses, young Americans are far less likely to support Israel in this conflict than their older peers—nearly half said the Hamas attacks could be justified.

Why? The academy and the political Left condemn Israel as an extension of white Western settler-colonialism — and Palestinians are, by proxy, yet another example of the oppressed victims of Western imperialism.

• Black Lives Matter: It’s not uncommon to hear left-wing activists argue that Zionism is “racism, settler-colonialism, white supremacy, apartheid” — and to link the Palestinian resistance to homegrown “liberation” movements here in the U.S.

• The worldview: Some would argue that Israelis are neither white nor Western. But to the left, those are minor details. An ideology that views the world through a binary lens — oppressive white colonizers and oppressed nonwhite subjects — is inevitably going to be hostile to a country like Israel.