cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/39883667
cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/6931377
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/11379
Since Israel began bombarding Gaza and starving its population of more than 2 million Palestinians in October 2023, the consensus that the Israeli government is committing genocide has steadily grown to include international and Israeli human rights groups, a United Nations panel, Holocaust scholars, and nearly 40% of Jewish Americans, according to one striking recent survey.
But in 10 words, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday waved away the findings of respected groups like Amnesty International and renowned experts like Brown University professor Omer Bartov, when she commented on why young Americans are expressing support for Palestinians.
“They were getting their information from social media, particularly TikTok,” said Clinton.
Without pointing to any evidence, the former secretary of state said young people in the US are “seeing short-form videos, some of them totally made up, some of them not at all representing what they claim to be showing, and that’s where they get their information” about Israel’s attacks on Gaza.
She added that “it’s not just the usual suspects”—without naming who those pro-Palestinian “suspects” are.
“It’s a lot of young Jewish Americans who don’t know the history and don’t understand,” she said. “A lot of the challenge is with younger people.”
Hillary Clinton blames TikTok and “totally made up” videos for young people’s views on Israel and Palestine.
She says social media influenced “not just the usual suspects” but also “young Jewish Americans who don’t know the history and don’t understand.” https://t.co/rUVXRqK2rK pic.twitter.com/hAwG7Gbhwf
— Prem Thakker (@prem_thakker) December 2, 2025Her remarks echoed those of former Obama White House speechwriter Sarah Hurwitz, who spoke recently about the challenges Zionists are presented with when they try to defend Israel to young Jewish people who have seen widely available, credible images and news out of Gaza, where Israel has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians and is continuing to restrict humanitarian aid despite a ceasefire deal reached in October.
“Anything that we try to say to them, they’re hearing it through this wall of carnage,” Hurwitz lamented last month, drawing condemnation.
Clinton was speaking at an event in New York City for Israel Hayom, the most widely read newspaper in Israel, which is run by billionaire Miriam Adelson, a megadonor to President Donald Trump. Adelson published an editorial in the Jewish Journal in November 2023 saying pro-Palestinian protesters “are dead to us,” and her late husband, Republican donor Sheldon Adelson, said in 2014 that the Palestinians are “an invented people.”
Jeremy Slevin, a senior adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), pointed to the irony of Clinton attending an event associated with the Adelsons and then claiming that “the kids are being radicalized by anti-Israel propaganda.”
— (@)
Clinton has frequently claimed that pro-Palestinian Americans, particularly students who took part in nationwide campus protests last year as they urged the Biden administration to comply with US law and stop funding Israel’s attacks on Gaza, are simply misinformed about Palestine and ignorant of history, particularly pointing to the 2000 Camp David Summit hosted by former President Bill Clinton.
The former secretary of state has repeated the claim that the Palestinians were offered a “generous deal” at the meeting and “walked away”—a “myth” that Camp David negotiator Robert Malley has debunked, warning it’s been used by Clinton and others to “justify Israel’s genocide.”
Robert Malley on the myth of “Palestinians walked away” at Camp David (July 2000):
➤ Malley says the popular story pushed since 2000 – that Arafat rejected a “generous offer” – is contradicted by the actual record. Israeli PM Barak sidelined the Palestinians for a year,… pic.twitter.com/3vlf1Rl4qj
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) November 28, 2025“She’s the one getting the history wrong,” including at the Israel Hayom event, said Drop Site News on Tuesday.
A number of observers took issue with Clinton’s suggestion that anti-Israel sentiment in the US is being driven solely by young people, with Just Security executive editor Adil Haque issuing a “periodic reminder that the biggest shift in attitudes toward Israel and Palestine has been among older Democrats.”
In 2022, 43% Democratic voters ages 50 and up had an unfavorable view of Israel. That percentage has risen sharply since Israel began its onslaught in Gaza, with 66% of those voters reporting an unfavorable view in a Pew Research Center poll this year.
Meanwhile, 71% of Democrats ages 49 and under opposed Israel in the same poll, and 62% of them had expressed opposition in 2022, denoting a less extreme shift in opinion.
“Democrats get their news from CNN more than other mainstream sources,” said Haque, pointing to the network’s recent investigation about Palestinian aid-seekers who were killed by Israeli forces. “If you’re a 60-year-old with grandkids and you read or watch CNN’s Gaza reporting, you don’t need TikTok to know that what’s happening is very, very wrong.”
Dylan Williams, vice president of government affairs at the Center for International Policy, also suggested Clinton has an inaccurate view of who opposes Israel’s ongoing attacks on Palestinians.
“I’m nearly 50. I don’t use TikTok. I listen to NPR ‘Morning Edition’ and read the Financial Times daily,” said Williams. “I’m a lawyer who has worked on Israel-Palestine issues for the last 20 years. The evidence I’ve seen that Israel committed atrocities including genocide in Gaza is overwhelming.”
Author Jason Overstreet wondered how Clinton would explain the findings of human rights groups like Amnesty International and Israel-based B’Tselem, which pointed to testimonies by Israeli soldiers and the documented destruction of Gaza’s food system when it concluded in a report in July that Israel is committing genocide in the exclave.
“I guess Hillary Clinton also thinks that Amnesty International called what’s happening in Gaza a genocide because they saw some videos on TikTok and just ‘did not know history,’” said Overstreet. “Young people’s views on Israel are based on young people knowing that Israel has committed genocide.”
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
The PMRC was formed in 1985. The trials were in the 1980s. Stop talking about this definitively because you clearly aren’t informed about this at all and on top of it ypuare being overtly sexist.
Sexist? WTF are you talking about? I haven’t once tied this to her being a woman. She was the point man on a very ill-advised Democratic attempt to appease Republican moralists. That’s my issue with her, it has nothing to do with her being a woman. That’s obviously your axe to grind, not mine.
And so what if it started in the 80s? That’s when it started, but it didn’t pick up real steam until the Republican-Lite Clinton administration. You think I don’t know what I’m talking about because you are clearly extremely ignorant of this situation, but I was on the front lines of that battle throughout the entire 90s. I worked for the largest record company in America during the 90s, when Tipper Gore was in full force as the Second Lady (1992-2000), and we were dealing with the PRMC’s unConstitutional demands every day.
The bulk and peak of the PRMC’s efforts were during the 90s. That’s simply a fact. Why would anybody have listened to Tipper Gore in the 80s, back when she was nothing but the wife of a Tennessee Senator? The only reason you know she was involved was because she was the VP’s wife, and that didn’t happen until the 90s.
But if you won’t believe me, maybe you’ll believe Google AI:
Of course, the notoriously cowardly record industry decided to censor themselves rather than resist attempts by the government to impose censorship.
Go fuck yourself, dummy.
You literally said a wife was an extension of her husband. That’s traditionally sexist.
The trials were entirely in the 1980s. Im presuming that ypu are lying about ypur age because of how well publicized they were at the time.
If you were a voter in 1977 you would know why the wives of the PMRC got their hearings in the late 1980s. You would know who they were and realize ypur claim that this was a democrat driven effort were factually incorrect.
Why are you lying about this? Is your life that small?
Okay, it’s on. I’m not lying at all, I actually know how to use Google, and I know how to read, and Wikipedia is the first thing that comes up, with ALL the basic facts.
First of all, there were no “trials,” there was ONE Senate hearing, on September 19, 1985, that was famous because Dee Snider, Frank Zappa, and Jon Denver testified, so everybody was paying attention to it. But everyone who has followed politics for more than a decade (and I’ve followed it for far longer than that) knows that Senate/Congressional hearings are just Dog & Pony Shows that NEVER lead to any meaningful changes once the political posturing is over, and the cameras are turned off. Nobody was ever charged with anything, nobody went in front of a judge, nobody was fined or went to jail. Literally NOTHING changed following that SINGLE HEARING, except that the American people were aware of the PMRC, and the issue, now.
That hearing may have been their defining moment, but it was not their peak, and it was certainly not their end. You act like the PMRC was over by the 90s, but they were just getting started. 1990 was the year they finally settled on the official warning stickers that became their only enduring influence, and that was when they really got started. Once Al Gore became VP in 1992, it turbocharged his wife Tipper’s efforts, and they harassed the entire record industry throughout the entire Clinton administration. Record companies had to carry double inventory on certain recordings, censored and uncensored, decisions had to be made on which albums would carry the stickers, etc., and that went on through the rest of the Clinton Administration, which was entirely in the decade of the 90s. This is simple historical fact, and I was in the thick of it, so don’t tell me I’m wrong.
And I obviously meant POLITICAL wives are extensions of their husbands, and likewise Political husbands are extensions of their wives. That was clear from the context that I wasn’t referring to ALL women as extensions of their husbands, that would be stupid, especially in 2025. I was really just referring to Tipper Gore as an extension of her husband, which is an extremely accurate statement. She WAS an extension of her husband, AND the entire Clinton administration during the 90s, and BTW, so was Hillary Clinton.
It isn’t a sexist statement to say a spouse is an extension of their elected spouse, especially wives. Even today, most political wives are not employed themselves, they work on their husband’s campaigns and support their office if they get elected, while political husbands are usually employed in their own jobs. When a political wife makes a speech, it’s in support of their husband or his administration. They may have their own agenda and objectives as a political wife, but they are approved by the campaign/administration. They are not just extensions of their husband’s career, but the administration he works for. You may not like that arrangement, but it is still the standard model for political couples. It may be an inherently sexist system, but is NOT sexist to point out the reality that such a model exists.
And it’s really, really, REALLY lame to resort to accusing someone of lying about their age just because they are supporting their arguments with verifiable facts backed up by real world experience, when you can’t even look up the subject properly on Google, and get the basic facts straight. If I were you, I’d be super embarrassed at your poor debate performance here. As a grade, you’d get a D, at best. You couldn’t even get the basic timeline correct. Next time, do basic research first, just a simple Google search to start.