Watching students at America’s most prestigious universities protest against Israel is more than infuriating. It raises a disturbing question: What, exactly, are these young people learning in exchange for their exorbitant tuition?
They can recite slogans, denounce Israel and hurl accusations, but many know little to nothing about Middle East affairs and lack the most basic critical thinking skills. Examples abound, but consider the chanters of “From the river to the sea” who don’t know the names of the river or the sea in question; the genocidal meaning of the mantra; or those marching with Queers for Palestine, who don’t recognize that they would be persecuted, if not murdered, in “Palestine.”
Ignorance is not confined to American campuses; it is a global epidemic that is epitomized by one of the world’s most celebrated debating societies, the Oxford Union. Large majorities of this hallowed institution agreed that “Israel is an apartheid state responsible for genocide” and that “Israel is a greater threat to regional stability than Iran.”
These votes should have made the Oxford Union a laughingstock. Instead, they are treated as evidence of Britain’s future leaders’ moral sophistication. The results suggest that the students were more impressed by inflammatory rhetoric than informed by historical knowledge.
Like the man heading Britain’s Foreign Office, himself an Oxford alumnus, these students seem remarkably unfamiliar with both history and current affairs. One wonders whether they have ever been exposed to facts that challenge their fashionable prejudices.
I wonder, for example, how many women in the society realize that they would likely all be wearing hijabs while the men faced Mecca praying five times a day if the Muslims had not been defeated in the Battle of Tours in 732.
Have they considered that if the Muslims had won, the vanquished Anglo-Saxons would most likely have been forced to convert to Islam or die? At the same time, Jews and Christians would be treated as dhimmis, whose inferior legal status under many Muslim rulers contradicts the romanticized accounts of universal tolerance.
Do they know that Jews established sovereign kingdoms in the Land of Israel that lasted more than 400 years before the word “Palestine” was given to the region by the Romans?
Do they know that Jews have been in the land of Israel for more than 3,000 years, predating Christianity and Islam?
Do they know that no independent Palestinian state has ever existed in the territory and that Arabs only arrived in the area after the Muslim conquest?
Are they aware that in the early 20th century, the term “Palestinian” was commonly applied to Jews? The Palestine Post, the Palestine Electric Company and the Palestine Symphony Orchestra were all Jewish institutions.
Do they know that Palestinian Arab national identity developed over time and that most Arabs during the British Mandate identified primarily with their religion, clan or town?
Are they aware that Arab leaders did not want an independent Palestinian state; they advocated incorporating Palestine into a larger Syrian state?
Do they know that Winston Churchill unilaterally carved up two-thirds of the Jewish homeland to create the new nation of Transjordan?
Have they heard of the 1937 Peel Commission, which proposed partitioning Palestine into Jewish and Arab states? Do they know that Zionist leaders accepted partition in principle, despite most of the territory being allotted to the Arab state, while Arab leaders rejected it?
Do they know that Britain subsequently proposed an independent Palestine with an Arab majority under its 1939 White Paper, only to encounter opposition from Arab leaders who considered its provisions inadequate?
Have they studied the 1947 U.N. partition resolution, which Jewish leaders accepted and Arab leaders rejected? Do they know that the Arabs promised to go to war to exterminate the Jews if a Jewish state was created?
Do they know that the Arab states invaded the nascent Jewish state to divide it for themselves rather than create a Palestinian state?
Have they investigated why Palestinians became refugees during the war? Do they understand the difference between those who fled combat, those who feared advancing forces, those who listened to their leaders’ admonitions to leave and the small number who were expelled? Have they asked why Arab governments subsequently kept so many Palestinian refugees and their descendants in a state of permanent dependency rather than granting them citizenship and full rights?
Do they know that Jordan occupied the “West Bank” and Egypt the Gaza Strip for 19 years and that no U.N. resolutions called for an end to the occupations, no students protested the persecution of Palestinians, and Palestinians made no claims to self-determination?
Are they aware that Palestinian terror groups like the Palestine Liberation Organization formed and began attacking Israel before Israel took control of the disputed territories?
Do they know the difference between territories that are occupied and those that are disputed? Can they explain why Israelis do not have a right to live in Judea and Samaria, which are part of their historic homeland?
Are they aware that most Palestinians live in what was once Palestine?
Why do they believe a 22nd Arab state should be created, but one Jewish state is too many?
Do they have any reason to believe that a Palestinian state would be any less autocratic or secular than every other Arab nation?
Have they heard about Israeli efforts to replace refugee camps in Gaza with permanent housing or the Arab-led opposition that frustrated those initiatives?
Can they explain why the Palestinians rejected or sabotaged every U.S. peace initiative, turned down autonomy in 1979, failed to stop terrorism during the Oslo peace process and rejected Israeli offers of independence in most of the West Bank and all of Gaza in 2000 and 2008?
Have they heard of Israel’s 2005 disengagement from Gaza? Do they know that Israel removed every Jewish settlement and its permanent ground forces from the territory, providing an opportunity for Palestinians to demonstrate their capacity for self-government?
Are they aware that billions of dollars in international assistance flowed into Gaza? Yet, Hamas devoted enormous resources to rockets, tunnels and military infrastructure rather than building the prosperous society that could have emerged?
Have they read the Hamas Charter that makes clear the group’s mission is to kill Jews and destroy Israel? Do they know Palestine Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah have similar goals?
Are they aware that the “moderates” in the West Bank subscribe to the Palestinian movement’s historic strategy of stages, which envisions territorial gains as steps toward the eventual replacement of Israel?
Can they explain how their preferred solution would protect both Palestinian aspirations and Israeli security?
Have they studied apartheid in South Africa, where racial classification determined political rights, residence, employment and virtually every aspect of life? Can they explain how that system compares with Israel, where Arab citizens vote, serve in parliament, sit on the Supreme Court, practice professions, and enjoy civil and political rights? Do they understand why Palestinians in the disputed territories who are not citizens are not entitled to those same rights?
Can they explain how their advocacy of Palestinian rights is consistent with their silence over the denial of fundamental rights by the Palestinian Authority?
Have they read the Genocide Convention? Do they understand that genocide requires proof of intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a protected national, ethnic, racial or religious group?
If Israel’s objective were to exterminate Gaza’s population, how do they reconcile that allegation with Israel’s warnings to civilians and failure to kill more than 2% of the population despite overwhelming military superiority?
Can they distinguish civilian casualties, however tragic, from proof of a deliberate policy of extermination? Do they understand that civilian deaths are inevitable in war, permissible under certain circumstances, and do not automatically establish the case for genocide?
Can they cite historical examples of genocidaires providing food, medicine and other supplies to the people they wish to exterminate?
Can they explain why the Palestinian population grew dramatically over decades of Israeli control if they believe Israel has always pursued a policy of extermination?
And how do they reconcile their portrayal of Israel as a state dedicated to racial exclusion and ethnic cleansing with the presence of more than 2 million Arab citizens, roughly one-fifth of the population, who possess equal rights and participate in Israeli public life?
On what basis can Israel be considered a regional threat? Israel has sought peace with its neighbors since before independence. It made peace with Egypt and Jordan, established diplomatic relations with several Arab countries through the Abraham Accords, and repeatedly pursued negotiations with the Palestinians.
Iran’s revolutionary regime, by contrast, has spent decades financing, training and arming organizations committed to violence and regional destabilization.
Before Oct. 7, was Israel organizing terrorist proxies throughout the Middle East to overthrow Arab governments? Was Israel arming Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and militias in Iraq and Syria? Was Israel attempting to export a religious revolution throughout the region?
Were Israelis marching through the streets chanting “Death to Iran” and “Death to America”? Was the Israeli government seeking to impose Judaism on Muslim countries or undermine Sunni Arab governments?
Was Israel plotting to murder dissidents living abroad? Was it accused of directing assassination attempts and terrorist operations in Europe and the United States? Was it holding Americans hostage as an instrument of state policy?
Which country has repeatedly threatened to eliminate the other? Which has attacked international shipping and supplied weapons to entities that do the same?
All of these questions and answers represent the bare minimum of knowledge to understand some of the most common issues. Yet a major in today’s Middle East Studies departments would probably be unable to answer these questions accurately given the faculty’s own ignorance and antipathy toward Israel.
Those who get their information from the mainstream and social media are frequently exposed to selective histories, misleading analogies, emotionally charged images and slogans designed to provoke outrage rather than understanding. The result is a generation that often confuses certainty with knowledge and moral indignation with intellectual sophistication.
Students who claim to be fighting oppression enthusiastically support movements that reject many of the freedoms they enjoy. They denounce colonialism while displaying ignorance of Jewish indigeneity. They demand Palestinian self-determination while refusing to acknowledge Jewish self-determination. They invoke human rights while excusing or ignoring the violations committed by the organizations they champion.
And they do it all with the confidence of people who have never been required to defend their assumptions against inconvenient facts.
The old TV series “The X-Files” popularized the phrase, “The truth is out there.”
Indeed, it is. The historical record is available. The Jewish Virtual Library and elsewhere make the treaties, charters, resolutions and speeches accessible. Students need not agree with Israel’s policies to study them, nor must they embrace Zionism to understand Jewish history. They need only demonstrate the curiosity and intellectual independence that an education is supposed to cultivate.
Sadly, too many of today’s “elite” students seem incapable of distinguishing fact from fiction—and their professors appear increasingly unable or unwilling to teach them the difference.