Why Do Young Americans Support Hamas? Look at TikTok

With rising sympathies for Palestinians, I do wonder how much longer this support will continue.

An understanding of events of October 7 starts with an understanding of the historical context of Palestine and Israel: most of the coverage of the events of October 7 deal with the symptoms of the violence and not the source. An understanding of the source of the violence, by no means justified, is needed.

This history starts with an understanding of Zionism, an ideology that is racist, not in its origin, but in the way it manifested itself in the land of Mandatory Palestine. And this racism is part of the settler colonial movement where the logic of the elimination of the Native was activated. These elimination policies were in the DNA of the Zionist encounters with the Natives of Palestine in the late 19th century. They wanted as much of the land of Palestine as possible with as few of the Palestinians as possible. There was always the demographic dimension as well as the geographic dimension in the earliest policies of the Zionist movement and into what later became Israel. The more space the Zionists had, the less space the indigenous people had. These elimination policies could take different forms: genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and they take different forms in different places. What happened in Gaza cannot be taken out of this context of Zionists/Israeli elimination and the ethnic cleansing of half of the population of Palestine that took place in 1947-1949 and the destruction of over 500 villages. The ruins of some of these same destroyed villages where the attackers originated from, and were next to the kibbutzim that were attacked. None of this justifies the violence that took place on October 7 but is needed to understand the source of the violence. The source of this violence is the racist ideology, of a racist Zionist ideology that needs to eliminate the Native. Zionism is not unique in this regard and is similar to other European colonial settler movements that desired to eliminate the native populations on the land they colonized.

I think the funniest example is this pair of questions:

There was an explosion at a Gaza hospital. Do you think the explosion was caused by an Israeli airstrike or by a terrorist rocket that went off course? 45% say "Caused by Israeli airstrike", 55% say "Terrorist rocket that went off course"

But then...

Given that US intelligence and Israeli intelligence have said and shown evidence that the hospital explosion was caused by an off-course terrorist rocket do you think the explosion was caused by an Israeli airstrike or by a terrorist rocket that went off 61% say "Caused by Israeli airstrike", 39% say "Terrorist rocket that went off course"

Mentioning the involvement of intelligence services makes people less likely to agree with their explanation! (This seems to affect age groups up to 44 to some degree.)

Never. If you're response is anything other than "under no circumstances", then there's a serious problem there...

My take on it has always been that this is the result of allowing crazy fucks to become professors at universities. It is now beyond obvious just how damaging this has been. We have allowed our youth to be indoctrinated by crazy idiots for decades. Given this context nothing I see today surprises me.

The damage will take decades to repair.

It seems like you sincerely can't understand why he'd be seen as heroic. Here's an account of his last moments. For context, the Bolivian government had captured Guevera, but wanted to make it look like he'd been killed in a firefight, rather than executed.

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A few minutes later, Sergeant Terán entered the hut to shoot him, whereupon Guevara reportedly stood up and spoke to Terán what were his last words: "I know you've come to kill me. Shoot, coward! You are only going to kill a man!" Terán hesitated, then pointed his self-loading M2 carbine at Guevara and opened fire, hitting him in the arms and legs. Then, as Guevara writhed on the ground, apparently biting one of his wrists to avoid crying out, Terán fired another burst, fatally wounding him in the chest. Guevara was pronounced dead at 1:10 PM local time according to Rodríguez. In all, Guevara was shot nine times by Terán. This included five times in his legs, once in the right shoulder and arm, and once in the chest and throat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che_Guevara#Execution