Why is Gen Z so pro-Palestine and anti-Israel?

Polls, hashtags, Instagram stories and college demonstrations show that my generation, Generation Z, is more skeptical of Israel than older Americans. On TikTok, where half the users are under 30, #freepalestine has 31 billion posts compared to 590 million for #standwithisrael — more than 50 times as many.

Most of these bite-sized videos seem to be filmed by teenagers who have about as much knowledge of the conflict as I do (not a lot). Yet what these kids lack in information, they make up for with passion. While older Americans may still see TikTok as the app where teens perform silly dances, it’s time they start seeing it as the media source that most shapes their kids’ worldview.

Some politicians already recognize this — hence the calls to have TikTok banned entirely. Regardless of your stance on that, here’s what’s certain: An app that has American teens convinced that they’ve suddenly become experts on Middle Eastern history and politics is worth taking seriously. 

In the wake of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, the latest TikTok trends demonstrate something that’s been growing for years: the imperialistic nature of American far-left thought. Ironically, uniquely American perspectives — often espoused in the name of anti-imperialism — have themselves become imperialistic, forcing their way into affairs where they simply don’t belong.

The first time I encountered this was when I began my college journey at American University, where I first learned that, in the eyes of my peers and professors, my #livedexperience of living in Caracas for more than a decade actually made me less knowledgeable about Venezuelan affairs than the average darker-skinned political science student.

“You can’t speak honestly about what is happening in Venezuela because you are white and rich,” I was once told. To which I remember responding that almost half of the country’s population is white and more than 90 percent live under the poverty line. There is much more I could’ve said about the cultural factors that make looking at Venezuela through the prism of American race relations inadequate, but I knew there was no point, as my fellow student had abandoned reason.

I see this same phenomenon at work in my peers’ online reactions to the Israel-Hamas war. To be fair, there are some respectable folks making sophisticated arguments for why Israel’s policy toward Palestine is detrimental, pointing out ways in which the Israeli government has sponsored injustice and calling for restraint. But a sizable faction of online activists are extending critical race theory and the Black Lives Matter movement into the Palestine-Israel conflict to such an extent that they flat out deny reality.

There are many people my age who feel (not think) that this conflict has only victims and oppressors. There are individuals who see in a foreign cause nothing but a mirror. In a way, they’re motivated more by vanity than by compassion. They want to let others know how much they care, but their expressed empathy is not often accompanied by charity.

The conflict between Israel and Palestine is long and complex. As much as some say that taking a side is obligatory, doing so without prudence is wrong. “I don’t know” is not a hateful phrase, no matter what activists say. What is hateful is to assume that one group is inherently evil. Sadly, when it comes to Israel-Palestine, this is exactly where much discourse lands.

Juan P. Villasmil is an Intercollegiate Studies Institute editorial fellow at The Spectator World and a Young Voices contributor.