• How opinions towards Israeli aggression among young adults in America have changed since October 7th
• Why US elites have renewed calls to ban TikTok
According to the Harvard CAPS-Harris poll, the majority of Americans aged between 18 and 24 agree that Israel “Should be ended and given to Hamas”. The poll conducted from December 13–14, 2023, and had 2034 people across the United States polled. The poll was supervised by the chairman of The Harris Poll, an American research and analytics company that has been tracking the sentiments of adults since 1963. The age range of the poll was 18–65+. Every other age bracket other than the age range of 18–24 had voted for there to be two states, one for Israel and one for Palestine. Another shocking study within the poll showed that 50% of people aged 18–24 support Hamas over Israel. Another astonishing study within this poll also says that 67% of people aged 18–24 believe Jews as a class are oppressors.
How the opinions on Israeli support have shifted since October 7
The Harvard Caps-Harris Poll had previously launched a poll in October, when at the time only 26% of 18-24 year olds polled supported the notion that Israel should be ended and given to Hamas and the Palestinians. This poll was carried out on October 18–19, with a similar number of people polled: 2116 compared to 2034. This 26% is a far lower figure than the recent figure from a week ago that represents the current public opinion. It must also be noted that the October poll happened less than two weeks after the October 7 attacks, when a massive vacuum of understanding existed about what truly happened on October 7th and was filled at first with western media lies and uncertainties. Moreover, the death toll by the time the December poll was done had reached above 18,000. This unequivocally shows that there has been a very strong reaction from 18- to 24-year-olds because of the mass death toll the Gazan people have had to suffer and the footage and news that have been circulating. From hospitals purposefully being targeted with Israel not even trying to blame the resistance anymore to attacking Southern Gaza, a region Israel had first classified as a safe zone for civilians to move to, to the repeated lies that the Israeli regime has tried to propagate only to backfire on them. The average young American is waking up to the reality of Israel’s atrocities and delving into understanding why the West stands still for a genocide that is in front of them. Through being awake to the atrocities and genocide and doing independent research, they have understood that the land between the Red Sea and the Jordan River does indeed not belong to the Zionists, nor are they deserving of it. The support for the idea that Israel should be replaced by an armed Palestinian resistance group that is designated a terrorist entity by the US means that the mainstream media in America has become void in influencing those of the younger generation and the youth have seen through the exaggerations and double standards that they portray. One main way this can be done is through social media.
Civilians were shot by Israeli soldiers as they tried to flee Al Shifa hospital while babies died in their incubators because of the lack of power, crimes like these which have drawn condemnation from the UN and WHO, went unnoticed by the western mainstream media
US elites and lawmakers have renewed calls to ban TikTok
When we look at the mass censorship of social media posts and the unjust shadow banning of accounts that simply show sympathy to the Palestinian people, it’s important to note that although there are a lot of matching strategies among tech companies on how to censor Palestinian content, Meta has so far held the lion share of censorship in this repression campaign. It has randomly removed Palestine-related content, disrupted live streaming, restricted comments, and suspended accounts. Both X, formerly known as Twitter, and TikTok users have not seen the kind of repression and frequency of repression that users of Meta have seen. What’s also important to note is that according to a recent study, 44.4% of TikTok users are in the age bracket of 16–24, whereas for Instagram, it was around 25% starting August. Young people tend to get their news from social media more than the mainstream, while those who are older tend to do the opposite and, unfortunately, tend to be more receptive to accepting the mainstream news. This plays a role in the types of content shown and posted on social media platforms such as Instagram and X. X has about 28.35% of their users being 18–24, according to a recent report. This is still far below the proportion of TikTok users, and therefore we can be led to believe that the proportion of pro-Palestinian or non-mainstream sources of news appearing on TikTok is far higher than on X and Meta apps.
In October, US Senator Marco Rubio said TikTok downplays Hamas terrorism, while Senator Marsh Blackburn renewed her call to ban TikTok on October 30th, also citing Hamas. Meanwhile, Jeff Morris , a former executive of the malicious dating app Tinder, took his anti-TikTok tirade on Twitter and said students are getting ‘wrong information’ about Hamas and Israel. Yet none of these individuals have explained how TikTok exactly does what they claim. This renewal of anti-TikTok sentiment is out of fear of the younger generation going against the elitist status quo of being supportive of Israel to being sympathetic to not just the Palestinian cause but also the right to armed resistance. This is the first time the discussion on banning TikTok has once again come to the surface of this magnitude since 2022, when the US banned it on government devices to avoid the risk of Chinese data collection. The response from US lawmakers, senators, and corporate elites has shown that there is a growing fear among the older ruling class that perhaps one day their current foreign policy pedestal and moral standpoints could become mere feelings rather than actionable sentiment.
A victory for the Palestinian resistance
Before October 7th, when the majority of Palestinians in Gaza had no access to clean water or medicine, 57% of people in Gaza were living under poverty, with extreme poverty reaching a third. It was incumbent upon the Palestinian resistance forces in Gaza to make the unjust world that had created their suffering and put them in the concentration camp they were living in aware that they were alive and still worth remembering. It was the resistance that forced the Palestinian plight to come back to the international stage, and even with all the propaganda, betrayal, and blood spill, on the international level, they have done what no one thought they could: lay the soil of recognition, sown the seeds of hope, and now they are waiting for the plants of freedom.
