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U.S. Students Have a History of Taking the Wrong Side

(Jerusalem Post) Rafael Medoff - A recent poll showed only 27% of Americans aged 18 to 29 as more sympathetic to Israel than to the Palestinian Arabs, as compared to 63% of Americans 65 or older. The reason for their hostility is their ignorance of the history and facts of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Ignorance among the younger generation about foreign affairs is not a new problem in America. In the 1930s, polls found 63% of college students favored unilateral American disarmament. In 1934, 25,000 American college students took part in a one-hour walkout from classes to demonstrate their opposition to U.S. involvement in any war. The strike mushroomed to 175,000 participants in 1935, then 500,000 in 1936 - nearly half the national college student population. President Franklin D. Roosevelt told the American Youth Congress that their positions were "based perhaps on sincerity, but, at the same time, on 90% ignorance" of the subject matter. "There is room for improvement in common-sense thinking and definite room for improvement in the art of not passing resolutions concerning things one doesn't know anything about." The writer is founding director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies.
2024-01-31 00:00:00
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