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Fearful and grieving, Gen Z Americans clash over Israel conflict

[October 18, 2023] By Gabriella Borter and Joseph Ax

(Reuters) - Kevin Khadavi, a Jewish student at Stanford University, got a call from his grandmother last week urging him not to wear his Star of David necklace around campus, for fear his display of Jewish identity could make him a target.

"Don't make yourself obvious," she texted him afterwards.

At Washington University in St. Louis, a Muslim student named Haniah decided to wear earrings in the shape of historic Palestine to express support for Palestinians. A fellow student spotted them and railed at her for nearly three minutes, calling her a terrorist while she fought back tears.

"If I cried, that would be a win for them," she said.

In the days since Hamas launched deadly attacks in Israel, young people in the U.S. have been gripped by fear, anger and grief as they process the violence unfolding halfway around the world and feel the divisive effects in their own social circles.

In interviews with more than a dozen Jewish, Palestinian and other members of Generation Z – those born after 1996 – many expressed frustration that nuanced opinions have been drowned out. Social media, which many say has helped advance their understanding of events, has also exhausted them and alienated them from friends.

Polling shows this generation is more skeptical of Israeli policy toward Palestinians than older Americans are. But even within their cohort, the range of opinions varies immensely – from those who justified Hamas' actions as a response to decades of Israeli oppression, to those who cast any pro-Palestinian protesters as supporters of terrorism, and even more who lament that innocent civilians on both sides are caught in a crossfire of failed leadership.

They've struggled, in person and online, with when and how to express their views about a conflict that has defied peaceful reconciliation for decades, interviews showed.

CONFLICTS ON CAMPUS

For Haniah, who asked to conceal her last name out of safety concerns, wearing her earrings felt like "the bare minimum" she could do to show support for Palestinians, who are currently under siege in Gaza as the Israeli government seeks to destroy Hamas leadership. But the campus confrontation made her doubt whether it was safe to engage with pro-Israel peers at the moment.

"It's a horrible situation on campus, honestly," she said.

Meanwhile, many Jewish students have voiced fears in the last week, as they perceive some classmates to be supporting Hamas' attack on Israelis by rallying around the Palestinian cause.

Yonatan Manor, president of Boston University Students for Israel, said failure to denounce Hamas was akin to supporting Nazis.

"This is the biggest wave of antisemitism we've seen since the Holocaust," the 20-year-old said.

Younger Americans are much less likely than older generations to support Israel. A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted on Thursday and Friday showed 34% of Americans aged 18-39 believe Hamas is responsible for the conflict, while 58% of Americans 40 and up believe so.

Support for Israel has grown among all Americans since 2014, when clashes between Israel and Hamas led to thousands of deaths, the vast majority Palestinians. But it has grown less among younger people, with only about 20% now expressing support for Israel compared to 14% in 2014; the share of older Americans backing Israel has nearly doubled to 56% from 28% in 2014, the polling showed.

For many Jewish students, the outpouring of support for Palestinians in the last week feels like an attack on their right to exist, they say. Others say they sympathize with Palestinians but argue that the horror of Hamas' attacks should trump any discussion of the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"Those conversations should happen – just not right now," Manor said. "Now is a time for solidarity with Jewish people."

But other young people said such thinking compounds a longstanding pattern of ignoring the plight of Palestinians. Several students expressed frustration at western institutions, from the U.S. government to their own schools, for supporting Israel unequivocally.

Christopher Iacovetti, a PhD student at the University of Chicago, described what he called a double standard, saying that pro-Palestinian activists are urged to denounce Hamas while Israel supporters are rarely asked to answer for Israel's attacks on Palestinians.

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Pro-Palestinian students take part in a protest in support of the Palestinians amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza, at Columbia University in New York City, U.S., October 12, 2023. REUTERS/Jeenah Moon/File Photo

He likened Hamas' attack to liberation movements like Nat Turner's 1831 rebellion - in which enslaved Black people killed dozens of white Virginians - and argued that oppressed people are justified in resisting, even if individual acts are atrocious.

"There's a difference between war aims and war conduct," he said.

'WE BOTH FEEL PAIN'

As the Middle East discourse has launched campus protests, it has also engulfed students' online world. Most students interviewed had taken to social media to express their views - and to evaluate their peers' opinions.

Many described feeling pressure to post something publicly. But they also worried they would inevitably offend someone and possibly get blocked, publicly shamed or consumed in an antagonistic political debate. Several described social media as draining in the last week.

On rare occasions, online discussions have been productive, students said. Hadia Khatri, a Muslim student at Washington University in St. Louis, said she got into an Instagram conversation with a student in her dorm who supported Israel, and they managed to agree that both sides needed better leadership.

Some said social media forced the oversimplification of what should be a more nuanced conversation, leading to the belief that people are completely polarized.

The loudest voices have been the most extreme, many said, making productive conversation virtually impossible.

The pressure to align fully with one side has been particularly wrenching for some Jews who are critical of Israel's historic stance toward Palestinians.

As images of civilians dying under Israeli siege in Gaza have emerged, some have openly joined calls for Israel to end its blockade, sometimes risking blowback from family and friends.

Jewish Voice for Peace, which advocates for Palestinian independence, has joined pro-Palestinian campus demonstrations. One member, a Middle Eastern Jewish student at Barnard College who requested anonymity for safety concerns, said the organization's ethos underscores the conflict's complexity.

"It's convenient to lean into the comfort of 'sides' and perfect labels at times like these, yet the reality is nuanced and uncertain," she said in an email.

Raffi Ivker, a Jewish student at George Washington University, said he believed neither side "has clean hands." Israel's turn to the right in recent years, he said, has made achieving peace less likely, and he expressed concern that a ground invasion of Gaza would result in more civilian deaths.

But he also was disturbed seeing pro-Palestinian protests in the wake of the attacks and said the participants appeared to be "glorifying or excusing" the murder of Israelis, which he called sickening.

Josh Joffe, a 23-year-old working at a healthcare lobbying firm in Washington, D.C., said he had experienced "cognitive dissonance" as a Jew who was taught to revere Israel, but who had come to view Israel as bearing much of the fault in the conflict.

He has only discussed that view with close friends, believing it could alienate people who are "really emotionally caught up in this right now."

Still, some students said those raw feelings could help dispel tension and establish common ground.

Khadavi, the Stanford student, was leaving class last week when he ran into a Palestinian classmate. The two hugged and told each other they were thinking of each other's families.

"Emotion absolutely plays a role in this - not as a blinding force but as an illuminating force, to try to bridge divides, to say that we both feel pain when people are killed," he said.

(Reporting by Joseph Ax in New York and Gabriella Borter in Washington; Additional reporting by Jason Lange; Editing by Paul Thomasch and Howard Goller)

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