Hillary Clinton slams anti-Israel protests on college campuses, says students have been fed propaganda

Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief

Former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton tears into the pro-Palestinian protest movement that has swept across American colleges, calling them ignorant and lamenting that they’re being misinformed by propaganda on social media and in the classroom.

“I have had many conversations with a lot of young people over the last many months. They don’t know very much at all about the history of the Middle East or frankly about history in many areas of the world, including in our own country,” Clinton tells MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

“With respect to the Middle East, they don’t know that under the bringing together of the Israelis and the Palestinians by my husband — then-Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, the then-head of the Palestinian Liberation Organization Yasser Arafat — an offer was made to the Palestinians for a state on 96% of the existing territory occupied by the Palestinians with 4% of Israel to be given to reach 100% of the amount of territory that was hoped for.”

“This offer was made and if Yasser Arafat had accepted it there would have been a Palestinian state now for about 24 years. It’s one of the great tragedies of history that he was unable to say, ‘yes,'” Clinton laments.

“My husband has a book coming out later this year in which he talks about how Arafat kept saying that he intended to agree, he wanted to agree, but he was pretty sure he’d be killed because Sadat was killed by extremists when he made peace with Israel. Our dear, dear friend, Yitzhak Rabin was killed by a radical Israeli when he was pursuing the two-state solution.”

“This is a very important piece of history to understand if you’re going to take any kind of position regarding what’s going on right now,” the former US secretary of state says.

Turning to how these far-left college students have been misinformed, Clinton says they are being fed “propaganda” instead of receiving an education.

“Anybody who is teaching in a university or anyone who is putting content on social media should be held responsible for what they include and what they exclude. So much of what we’re seeing, particularly on TikTok, about what’s going on in the Middle East is willfully false, but it’s also incredibly slanted, pro-Hamas, anti-Israel.”

“It is not any place where anyone should go to get information about complex matters like what is going on there… People are on social media oftentimes to press an ideological, religious, financial or partisan political agenda. You don’t get the facts, you don’t get any kind of context.”

“We have to do a better job… with young people in trying to help them understand how to filter and interpret the information they’re getting.”

“We also need to do a better job in our classrooms, particularly at the college or university level, not to fall into easy absolutes — you’re either for or against. Life is too complicated, history certainly is.”

 

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