But one question say volumes about how little liberal - and supposedly educated - Americans know about the conflict they are so eager to opine about.
67% of Democrats agreed with the statement that “a sovereign Arab country named Palestine used to exist where Israel is presently located.”
Two out of three Democrats don't know this basic fact. For Republicans, 55% thought the statement was false. For all American voters, the results were about 50/50, which is disheartening on its own.
Older respondents tended to answer the question correctly, while 68% of those ages 18-34 got it wrong.
But the percentage of people altogether who believe the lie is not at all correlated to education. 57% of those with a high school or lower education, 58% of those with some college education, 54% of those with a bachelor's degree and 56% of those with a postgraduate degree believed this fiction of an independent Palestinian state.
This is a damning indictment of the US educational system.
Another survey question is relevant. When asked, without context, whether they supported a ceasefire in Gaza. 70% said they do.
Then the survey told them that this means that a ceasefire would mean that the hostages would not be released. Suddenly, 20% of those who supported the ceasefire switched sides. (But 70% of Democrats still support a ceasefire without Hamas being defeated and without the hostages being returned.)
Now, imagine if the people surveyed knew about Hamas' promise that October 7 was just the beginning, and the terror group intended to mount much deadlier attacks "again and again" until Israel is destroyed - a story that did not get nearly as much publicity as the daily reports of civilian deaths in Gaza. There would be another large shift against a ceasefire when people get an inkling of what the conflict is really about and how depraved Hamas is.
The 70% who say they support a ceasefire are the same 70% who know nothing about the history, the facts, the context.
The people who are the most informed tend to side with Israel.
The corollary to this is that the people who hate Israel will do everything they can to misrepresent the facts and lie about the conflict in order to get people on their side.
People learn about the conflict not from school but from social media, from TikTok and YouTube, from loud and obnoxious anti-Israel activists who are committed to lie and misrepresent the issues. And it shows.
The media isn't helping matters because most journalists are at least passively anti-Israel and their coverage will minimize real facts, history and context and emphasize Palestinian victimhood.
If you think that Israel replaced a Palestinian state, of course you would be anti-Israel. This is exactly why so many social media posts represent British Mandate currency as if it was from a nation named "Palestine" and people named "Palestinian." The coin suggests a story, the reality shows the opposite, and a lot of people don't want the people to know the reality.
