The discourse has eroded into a binary that one critic describes as “Israel bad; Palestine good.”
There’s a tension in the air on college campuses right now, and it’s impossible to ignore.
Since Oct. 7, when the brutal Israel-Hamas War erupted, students have rallied at Ivy League institutions, community colleges, and big public universities in every corner of the U.S. — often in support of the Palestinian people and a ceasefire. In many cases, they’ve engaged in emotional displays of commiseration for those in Gaza who’ve endured a barrage of Israeli aggression. But some of these demonstrations have turned ugly: Reports of violence, harassment, and antisemitism are on the rise, the Biden administration said earlier this week.
So what’s behind the impassioned stance of these outspoken students — and how are their opinions shaking up the political status quo? Let’s take a dive into the discourse.
Taking a controversial stand
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that this generation of college students is highly engaged and more than willing to organize for a cause they believe in: They became politically conscious during the Parkland shooting protests and crowded the streets during the Black Lives Matter movement. But many view this wave of student activism as distinct, for its sheer ferocity and for how sharply it has divided progressives. Critics say the hardline stance taken by some protestors excuses gruesome acts by Hamas and shows a disturbing lack of sympathy toward the Israeli hostages and their Jewish peers. Their commitment to this point of view has stunned even liberals who have historically embraced most social justice causes.
“The conversations happening on campuses right now around Israel and Gaza don’t really hold space for nuance,” says Peter Hamby, a political journalist who hosts the popular Snapchat segment Good Luck America. For the most part, the discourse has eroded into a binary that he describes this way: “Israel bad; Palestine good.”
All this has led some to wonder where this surge of pro-Palestinian sentiment comes from — and whether it’s emblematic of a new strain of “radical” Gen Z organizing.
Hamby thinks the divisive political environment young Americans have grown up in is at least partly responsible for shaping the way they think about this conflict. “They’ve come up amid a lot of extreme partisanship,” he says. “In the Trump era, where there’s good guys and bad guys, they’ve taken those politics and applied them to this conflict.”
How does that translate? Israelis are cast as the colonizers, and the Palestinians as the oppressed. In this schema, there’s no gray area, no room to excoriate Hamas on the one hand and Israel’s brutal occupation on the other.
You can see this in the statements from groups like the Students for Justice in Palestine. In the wake of the Hamas attack — where 1,400 Israeli civilians, including children, were murdered — the chapter at the University of Virginia declared that it “unequivocally supports Palestinian liberation and the right of colonized people everywhere to resist the occupation of their land by whatever means they deem necessary.”
That posturing puts them at odds with even the most progressive politicians in Congress, from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who was quick to condemn Hamas while backing a ceasefire, to Sen. John Fetterman, who has made his support for Israel clear — and is now facing a left-wing backlash because of it.
A surprising political divide
While it may be true that part of Gen Z’s ideological split from older Americans on Israel has to do with today’s polarization, there’s another factor to consider: Israel’s lurch to the right in recent years.
Under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the government has grown more militant, as Vox reports. In 2014, after three Israeli teens were murdered, the country responded by invading Gaza and killing more than 2,200 Palestinians. In 2021, another outbreak of violence resulted in fatalities on both sides, with again more Palestinians left dead. All the while, Israeli settlers in the West Bank have grown more hostile, in some instances “terrorizing communities,” a U.N. envoy said earlier this year.
All this has made it hard for liberals to look away. That bears out in polling: In April 2023, a Gallup survey found that for the first time in the research organization’s history, Democrats expressed more sympathy for Palestinians than they did for Israelis. That’s a major shift, but it’s something that’s been building for years and may have been hiding in plain sight, says Angus Johnston, Ph.D., a professor and historian studying student activism.
Students have staged large-scale protests at universities for well over a decade in support of “BDS,” a movement promoting boycotts, divestment, and sanctions against Israel. But there’s been a lot of “institutional suppression” of these demonstrations, Dr. Johnston says. (One instance played out in 2016, when then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order requiring state agencies to divest from any organization supporting BDS, a move blasted by the ACLU. “It’s very simple: If you boycott Israel, New York will boycott you,” Cuomo said at the time.)
“Colleges have shut them down, and state governments have attempted to restrict what can be advocated for on campuses around BDS,” Johnston tells us. “I think one of the results of that has been to stifle the kind of open and honest debate and discussion around Israeli government policy.”
It may also be why these protests have become so charged, Johnston says. Young people haven’t been able to establish a shared language around this issue, and many of them are learning for the first time that people they may have considered allies — in lockstep on most liberal causes, like voting rights or police reform — may feel very differently about this conflict.
“That’s jarring,” Hamby says.
And in the age of social media, Johnston says, there are fewer private spaces for this discourse to develop. A speech to 30 people in a quad can now be streamed by millions of viewers; a statement intended for your 1,200 peers can be disseminated instantly all over the globe.
“It’s become harder to have those small-scale conversations where you really come to understand the humanity in somebody else’s position,” Johnston says.
