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Actually, I don't think this is true at all, I think a lot of them are very well studied.
Look, I majored in Middle Eastern History, and I had no choice but to learn about this stuff, and I fell in at the time with a lot of people who became Middle East specialists of one sort or another, whether professors or government officials or NGO administrators, etc. and who keep me abreast of some of this. So I have a pretty good idea of the history, and when I talked to my kids, who have not attended any of the protests but who talk to a lot of people who have, they have not infrequently given me detail I hadn't heard before. There are smart kids in the world, much as us geezers may want to think our age gives us benefits in knowledge and wisdom.
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Maybe it's geographic. These folks think it makes sense to protest in front of an Israeli restaurant and
chant accusations of participation in genocide at its owner. Folks ain't too swift in these parts.
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The best history for non-expert readers I've seen on "Between the River and the Sea" is here: https://mondoweiss.net/2023/11/on-th...er-to-the-sea/ (note it is a generally pro-Palestinian publication, but most of the pro-Israeli ones are pretty rank hasbara).
In particular, I think the younger generation has come to understand how much hasbara is just pure disinformation, thanks to the fact that so much hasbara just uses the same techniques used by internet trolls and organizations like Cambridge Analytics that they have become so familiar with. They see though it. And right now many of them understand that the argument over "form the river to the sea" is not about the slogan but instead about the old trick of avoiding a reasoned debate with your opponents by seeking to discredit them instead.
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There is some rhetorical fuckery afoot there. But similarly, what cannot be avoided is the double standard on display before Congress two days ago, in which university presidents stumbled over their words to dissemble on why it might be, but not might not be, a violation of school code to speak in favor of Hamas depending on "context."
Speak about the trans and various other marginalized peoples as the Jews have been spoken about on campus and you'll be expelled. Why are the Jews treated differently? Is it perhaps because of a bizarre Marcusian view that one may speak in vile fashion about those deemed "oppressors" or "colonizers" (based on a hideous stereotype of Jews as uber-successful or conspiratorial,
a la Protocols of Zion). Is it that all language is actually power, and it can always be used against those in power, without limitation - the suggestion of Foucault, a discredited buffoon? I honestly don't know. But a double standard is being used.
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When I was young, some of this was done through the refusal to suggest a "palestine" exists or that "palestinians" are a recognizable group that should have rights as such - and the suggestion that using the word "palestinian" was antisemitic as a result. This old trope is coming back in Israel. This is part of why Israel arrests people for simply displaying a Palestinian flag.
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I see an intersection of two peculiar forces. One is Jewish sensitivity to anti-Semitism. Another is our nation's bizarre fixation with identity politics. It seems that Jews are trying to expand the definition of anti-semitism as broadly as possible at the same time the younger generations of college kids and those who like to protest things here are applying a rule that overly-harsh criticism of a group deemed to be "in power" must be forgiven. The oppressed must always be excused if they go too far because they are victims (and this includes kids at $90k per year colleges who sympathize with the oppressed). And on the other side, anything said in criticism of Israel is anti-semitism (akin to the lurid and appalling overuse and expansion of the concept of "racism" here over the past few years, designed to allow those who wish to use it as a cudgel to do so recklessly).
People are acting, as they seem to always be these days, unreasonably. And I think they all know it. Rather than try to hold conflicting thoughts, and see fault and valid points on both sides, they want to silence each other. This conflict might as well be any other in that regard.
We've lost the United States. A country of idiots refusing to compromise and think critically and engage opposing views genuinely is something. But it's not the USA.
