Nearly as many college students support Hamas as Israel amid the raging Middle East war, a new poll claims.
The online survey conducted by Intelligent.com of 609 university students found that 22% of respondents sympathize with Hamas, while 26% side with the Israeli government.
That means about 1 in 5 college students support a militia group designated a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union for its war against the Jewish state.
Meanwhile, 82% said they sympathized with Palestinian civilians, while 72% felt sympathized with Israeli civilians, according to the survey.
The findings help explain the pro-Hamas and anti-Israel protests sweeping many university campuses, even though Hamas began the war with Israel with a stealth invasion on October 7, killing some 1,200 people and taking dozens of hostages.
A law professor at Cornell University, where a student was recently arrested for threatening Jewish students online, said he was not surprised by the surprising support for Hamas among college students.
“Support for Hamas students is the direct result of years of deceitful and pervasive anti-Israel indoctrination on college campuses by thousands of activist professors and administrators under the banner of BDS. [boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel]. “Students don’t hear both sides, they just hear that Jews are oppressors,” said William Jacobson, founder of EqualProtect.org.
A pro-Palestinian protest at Harvard University on October 14, 2023, after Hamas attacks against Israel. Photo by JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images
“The BDS-driven campus war on Israel creates and feeds into anti-Semitism fueled by the racialization of the conflict that falsely portrays Jews as white oppressors. “Racial doctrines like ‘critical race theory’ and ‘intersectionality’ are the mother milk of anti-Semitism on campuses, force-fed to students under the euphemism of ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.’”
He also noted that Cornell graduate students working on campus just voted to join the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America union, a labor group that passed a resolution in 2015 endorsing the BDS movement against Israel.
The survey asked: “How much do you sympathize with [a lot, a little]”: Israeli civilians, Palestinian civilians, Israeli government, Hamas.
The survey, which allowed people to choose more than one answer, found that 82% sympathized with Palestinian civilians, 72% with Israeli civilians, 26% also said the Israeli government and 22% said Hamas.
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Meanwhile, the survey found that 86% of college students say they learned about the war between Hamas and Israel through social media, 62% through news articles, 52% by talking directly to others, 58% watching television and 17% through podcasts.
A protester at Brooklyn College calling for CUNY to be against Zionism at a rally on October 12, 2023.Paul Martinka
While misinformation is common on social media, a third of students say they don’t check the information they read or hear about these topics very often, the survey found.
“With the vast amount of information accessible online, there is always the risk of erroneous or biased information, which can distort perceptions,” Eric Eng, a college admissions expert and founder and CEO of Admission, said of the findings.
Nearly three-quarters of the students surveyed said they had some or a lot of knowledge about the recent Israeli-Palestinian conflict, while a quarter said they were not very informed about it.
Teachers and students at a pro-Palestinian rally outside CUNY in Manhattan on October 18, 2023. Stephen Yang for NY Post
Ten percent of students say they have attended protests or rallies related to the war between Hamas and Israel, while 14% say they have made a public statement.
Nearly half of students (45%) said they feel pressured to talk about the conflict.
But 70% of students say they are worried about the possible consequences of speaking out about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and 34% say they are “extremely” or “very” worried.
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They fear being verbally attacked, losing friends, being “cancelled” and being physically attacked, according to the survey.
Overall, 1 in 5 students or 19% say they feel less safe on campus since the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7 and Israel’s response.
Protesters carrying pro-Palestinian signs and flags at a protest on the Columbia University campus on Oct. 12, 2023. AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura
While this is a small sample of the survey, 78% of Jewish students say they feel less safe on campus since the start of the latest war between Israel and Hamas, as do 7% of Muslim students. .
56 percent of Jewish students also say their mental health has worsened, as do 21 percent of Muslim students.
The survey of 609 college students was commissioned by Intelligent.com and conducted online by polling platform Pollfish from Oct. 27-31. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
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Source: vtt.edu.vn