photo by: Creators Syndicate

Keith Raffel

President Ronald Reagan once said, “If we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, as Jefferson cautioned, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed.”

I fear that the young pro-Palestinian Arab, anti-Israel protesters erecting tents on college campuses, blocking bridges in California and marching in Chicago are not as informed as they should be.

Current third-party presidential candidate Cornel West, a professor at Union Theological Seminary, says of Palestinian Arabs, “We will never forget you. Your dignity and your decency will never be swept away by any form of colorism, genocide or ethnic cleansing.”

Colorism? Almost half of Israel’s Jews trace their ancestry to the Arab and Muslim world, and another 3% to Ethiopia.

Genocide? Since 1948, the number of non-Jews in Israel, overwhelmingly Arab, grew over 16 times. It’s the Hamas Covenant of 1988 that embraces genocide when it says the organization’s purpose is to “obliterate Israel” and to fight a Jihad against “the warmongering Jews.”

Ethnic cleansing? During and after Israel’s 1948-49 War of Independence, around 700,000 Arabs left or were expelled from what is now Israel. Over the next 50 years, almost 900,000 Jews were pushed out of Arab lands. Israel still has over 2 million Arab citizens. In 1945, there were over 800,000 Jews living in the Arab world. Today, the number has shrunk to below 10,000.

A favorite chant of pro-Palestinian Arab protesters is “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free.” Why hasn’t an independent Palestinian Arab state been established?

In 1947, after World War II, the United Nations voted to partition Palestine, the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, into “independent Arab and Jewish States.” In 1948, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Transjordan (as Jordan was then known) joined local Arab militias in an effort to destroy the newly independent Jewish state. In the war, Israel fought off the invading armies. Transjordan seized the West Bank of the Jordan River and Egypt the Gaza Strip even though those territories were supposed to form the heart of an independent Arab state.

In 2000, Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, rejected the Israeli proposal for a Palestinian Arab state. Two years later, former President Bill Clinton stated, “I regret that in 2000 Arafat missed the opportunity to bring that nation into being and pray for the day when the dreams of the Palestinian people for a state and a better life will be realized in a just and lasting peace.”

What about Palestine being free? The last elections in the Gaza Strip and West Bank for the Palestinian Legislative Council were held in January 2006. Since then, there have been nine legislative elections in Israel. After the 2021 election, an Arab party joined the ruling coalition there.

Three weeks after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack that began the current war, the Stanford Daily, a student newspaper, ran a column stating that “Israel was the creation of a settler-colonial project.” Settler colonials? Jews are indigenous to the Holy Land. A 1993 archeological find confirmed the existence of a King David and successors. Jesus, who was born and died Jewish, was preaching to his co-religionists there 2,000 years ago. Jews were there when the land was conquered and colonized by the Babylonians, Seleucids, Romans, Crusaders, Ottomans and British.

Immediately after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee led a group of student groups in issuing a statement holding “the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” Over 1,200 Israeli citizens and residents and foreign visitors were murdered in the attack and another 251 hostages were seized. The attack was found by a U.N. report to have comprised “a catalogue of the most extreme and inhumane forms of killing, torture and other horrors” including “rape and gang-rape.” Really? The attackers have no responsibility for these outrages?

Why don’t more young people know these facts? Why do they embrace untruths about colorism, genocide and ethnic cleansing? One reason might be that about one-third of Americans between 18 and 29 rely on TikTok for news. A research report from Northeastern University shows pro-Palestinian Arab posts on the app significantly outnumber pro-Israeli posts. It’s probably no coincidence then that 18-29-year-olds are the only cohort with a negative view of Israel, according to a July survey by Pew Research.

Certainly then, some blame can be put on TikTok and such. But even more belongs to how and what young people are taught. It’s the job of high schools and colleges to teach history and critical thinking. The truth is often nuanced. As the great Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes recommended, one should take what’s popularly understood and “wash it with cynical acid.”

Of course, I resolutely support the right of Americans to protest peacefully. The Supreme Court has held the First Amendment applies even to the speech of the uninformed. Still, I do wish the pro-Palestinian Arab protesters knew more of the facts. Of course, I wish I did, too. I’m working on it.

Back when I was counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, I worked with Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. A former Harvard professor, he used to say, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”

— Keith Raffel is a syndicated columnist with Creators.