Hillary Clinton doubled down on her claims that young people get most of their news from social media and therefore are succumbing to anti-Israel propaganda regarding the killing of civilians, the starvation of the population, and destruction of Gaza Strip.
Speaking with Foreign Policy’s Ravi Argawal at the Doha Forum in Qatar Sunday, Clinton repeated what she said at a news conference event sponsored by the far-right Israel Hayom magazine, which is published by Israeli-American GOP megadonor Miriam Adelson. She told the audience then that she has encountered college students who are falling for “pure propaganda” relating to Israel in Gaza and that is why they are protesting genocide.
Argawal pressed her, knowing how much backlash the former first lady has received from her comments in the last several days, as she appeared to be saying that people across the world were duped, that they could not believe with their own eyes what has happened in Gaza for the last two years. "If Americans are shifting in their views about Israel .. that is based on some information they're not just getting from social media but from very reputable sources in the media, including Palestinian journalists in Gaza, why is that …not accurate?" Argawal asked.
"I'm not saying it is inaccurate," she said. "What I am saying … I've had many many conversations with many smart young people … in talking with them about their views — they were certainly entitled to those views base on the information they had — but they did not always know why they said they said."
"We are not going to implement the 20-point plan or any other peace plan unless people come with some sense of historical perspective and empathy of how we are going to move people toward what I believe is the only realistic outcome, a two-state solution, and we won’t get there if they say 'from the river to the sea' and you ask them what that is and they know and that has personally happened in conversations (I've had)."
"This is a larger issue of history ," she added. "We're not giving young people the context they need to be decision makers."
Ironically, Adelson, as reported by my colleague Eli Clifton in these pages, has funneled tens of millions into the Maccabee Task Force, a campaign that promotes pro-Israel propaganda and cracks down on Israel criticism on college campuses. It was behind a 2024 social media campaign against activist Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia University, where Clinton teaches.
