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The problem is that, while young people have been more pro-Palestine for a long time, historically a much smaller percentage were immersing themselves for hours a day in increasingly sensationalist, often misleading pro-Palestinian content; there historically was far less of an incentive to produce or disseminate it. So we quickly go from “pro-Palestine” to “pro-Hamas” to “pro-Osama Bin Laden” to “holocaust denial”.

This isn’t exclusively a TikTok problem, or an Israel/Palestine problem, or a young people problem, or a left/right problem. Algorithmic suggestions are extremism generating machines.

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Israel is bombing and murdering thousands of Palestinians. That is why people are supporting them, not an algorithm "problem".

Why do teenagers care about this particular tragedy and not Syria or any of the horrors in Africa? Surely it can’t be the scale of killing since there are far worse civilian death tolls in conflicts around the world.

Probably because their president isn't on tv endorsing those horrors, funding them with their tax dollars and in general having their mainstream media champion them.

To take another brutal war affecting civilians: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Saud... sure sounds like it had the endorsement of two US Presidents both from ends of the political spectrum, and it was a money sink for over $50bn in US tax dollars in 6 years (see https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-22-105988).

I'm not sure if those teens even know how to spell Yemen.

I totally hear you and think it's messed up too, but I'm not sure this line of argument makes sense.

First, it's factually inapposite, because we don't have a bunch of disproportionately pro-Saudi American companies and billionaires trying to intimidate people speaking in favor of Yemeni civilians, considering ad blitzes to gaslight and obfuscate the issues, etc. We don't have a significant pro-Saudi bias in the media such that it views the conflict there as worthy of constant reporting and also as a relatively black-and-white struggle where Yemeni civilians either are getting what they deserve or are merely unfortunate collateral damage for justifiable military actions. We don't have a strong contingency of people in this country trying to act like speaking out against the killing of Yemeni civilians is being "pro-terrorist".

Second, it's logically inane to say that someone's criticism of something is invalid because they didn't speak out or criticize some other thing that they most likely don't even know about.

What if that criticism isn't actually because of the conflict, but because of prejudices against one of the parties? There are strong anti-Islam and anti-Jewish forces at play. That sort of racism generally invalidates an argument.

So you believe that there is no valid basis to criticize Israel's actions here, and that anyone who is critical thereof must certainly be acting out of bigotry and you won't hear otherwise?

And nothing I pointed out about how differently the war in Yemen is situated in the Western consciousness (i.e. basically not at all) versus this one matters?

There are all manner of reasons to criticize Israel’s actions.

I believe that most American teens opinions on this matter are influenced by either anti-Islam or anti-Jewish messaging they read through social media, and not a genuine interest in the conflict.

I have no doubt that anti-Muslim/Arab and anti-Jewish sentiment influence a lot of peoples' views, but you seem to be taking the view in this thread that it's appropriate to assume that's the case the first time you hear of anyone's views, to speculate it's the case that "most" American teens are influenced by those lines of thinking for some reason.

> it's logically inane to say that someone's criticism of something is invalid because they didn't speak out or criticize some other thing that they most likely don't even know about.

I'm not saying the criticism of Hamas and/or Israel is invalid, I just found it worth pointing out that there are conflicts that teens somehow can make up their mind on (that's TikTok's claim, not mine) and strong enough that they take to the streets for that, while they likely haven't heard of other somewhat comparable conflicts (support by "their government", civilians dying, half the world away, ...) at all.

Maybe it's just the general media circus (Yemen _isn't_ very present in the media, after all), but "algorithm" or not, I'm considering TikTok part of that media circus.

As such, "the kids are just voicing their opinion" seems a rather shallow excuse to me: They pick up what gets amplified. Having no idea about Yemen but strong opinions on "who's the baddie" in Gaza (since folks like to talk colonialism: it's clearly the UK) doesn't sound like an independently formed opinion at all, and so I'm not willing to let TikTok (et al) off the hook.

I take that you care deeply about the civilian toll in Yemen, and aren’t just bringing it up to cynically deflect away from them main discussion here then.

Even if we take what you’re saying at face value, the notion that you can’t speak out about something that is wrong because there are other things that are also bad is preposterous.

We are talking about teens here, you basically chastising children for not taking to the streets when they were 10 years old, when the Yemen conflict started.

“Care” about a tragedy is entirely meaningless. Protest of your government’s policies to perpetuate a tragedy is slightly more meaningful. Not by much, granted. But slightly more.

Never saw a single protest when Obama was dropping a bomb every 20 seconds in 2016. I guess the noble peace prize made it okay.

“I don’t think people should care about government funded genocide now, after all they didn’t care before” isn’t really the dunk you think it is.

How many civilians died in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan? Where were the protests? Israeli leadership is seen as right wing. If they were seen as left no one would even blink an eye. Obama was wholesale slaughtering people in 7 countries.

What’s your point?

Is there something specific about Israel/Palestine that isn’t present in those other conflicts? Something about the religion of one of the belligerents, perhaps?

Again, what’s your point? Don’t beat around the bush. Make a claim and provide a rational argument to support it. If you aren’t willing/able to do that, there’s no point debating you.

> How many civilians died in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan? Where were the protests?

There definitely fucking were protests against the Iraq war o_O

Really, for all of the examples you provided, the situation is either that a) our government wasn't among the bad actors or allied therewith (e.g. Syria--do you want people to protest ISIS or the Asad regime or something? What would be the point?); b) there were protests, and there was criticism, and there was condemnation, and you seem to be ignorant of them so you assume nobody else cared either

There were definitely Syria war protests here in Seattle, 10 years ago. Substantial enough for ~1k people or so to block 2nd Ave

are you suggesting there has been a year in US history devoid of protests -- or that people were unanimously happy with Obama and every one of his strategies?

neither are true.

How dare these teenagers not protest against war 7 years ago!

Sure they care now, but where were they when they were 8???

Probably because it’s received far more widespread coverage since Israel - a wealthy, prominent country - is involved.

Syria is an old conflict and nothing has changed in many years. This particular tragedy has been stewing for a long time, and recently exploded. So, right now, the reaction is fairly well proportional to the rate of change.

It's also one where the US government and military has been itself in opposition to Assad's forces. What then would be accomplished by rallying over it?

People tend to get up in arms and out in the streets when their concerns aren't being addressed. They tend to be a lot quieter, even if they have major concerns, if they are. Sort of the concept behind "silent majority."

at least because one is one is cared more about by the media than the other. The Syrian stuff has always been a "side story" even though it's been terrible and ongoing for some time.

The Syrian stuff really started during a different media era.

Why did people care more about Ukraine than Iraq? Who cares?

Sure, and if you read what I wrote carefully, I didn’t say anything about the algorithm having anything to do with why young people are pro-Palestine.

Ww2 Japan was bombed by the United States and thousands died after they launched a surprise attack which killed thousands of Americans including hundreds of civilians.

Palestine launched a surprise attack killing thousands and now they face the same thing.

Terrible example, since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were also extremely unethical

A lot happened before those two bombs were dropped, so how would you articulate your stance about those I wonder? Axis and Allies were bombing each other all over the place. Plenty of cities (in Japan, since you hyper focused on the nuclear bombs) were devastated and wrought with bombings before.

The US didn't bomb Japan in retaliation for Pearl Harbor, but to accomplish a military objective. Also, past errors, to the extent there were any, are not valid reasons for current ones - otherwise we'd quickly have no laws or morality at all.

The Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC), which is taken very seriously by militaries, requires distinguishing between military and civilian people and assets, only pursuing military targets and objectives, and when civilians will be harmed, requires that it be in proportion to the military benefit.

Here are a couple of links. The first is the authoritative International Committee of the Red Cross's very usable LOAC page, and the second is the application of it to the Gaza war by leading experts:

https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1

https://www.justsecurity.org/89489/expert-guidance-law-of-ar...

Tiktok has a very real algorithm problem that pushes terrorism & antisemitism to millions of people. They have started to crack down since the Osama thing, but prior to that tiktok refused to remove hate and calls for violence from their platform.

#freepalestine and #standwithpalestine (as mentioned in the article) are not terrorism or anti-semitism.

No, I would say some ideological lines of thought are intrinsically leading to repeatable, predictable outcomes — parting and opposition to the society.

Take communism. There were many grassroots communist regimes in the 20th century, and certainly not all controlled by Moscow, but they all degraded into very tyrannical regimes, caste societies by following very similar paths.

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