Hillary Clinton terms US campus protests propaganda and lack of knowledge about Middle East history

Former US States Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, has slammed campus protests across the country, over the Gaza war, saying the young people (students) do not know much about the history of the Middle East.

Clinton also termed students ignorant and alleged they were being misinformed by propaganda on social media.

In an interview with MSNBC, Hillary Clinton agreed with host Charles Joseph Scarborough, who said, “mainstream students were getting propagandised whether it’s from their professors, or whether it’s from the communist Chinese government, through TikTok, calling the President of the United States ‘genocide Joe’.”

In response, Clinton said, “I have had many conversations, as you’ve had, with a lot of young people over the last many months now, and… they don’t know very much at all about the history of the Middle East, or frankly about history in many areas of the world, including in our own country.”

“Propaganda is not education,” she said, adding, “propaganda… whether it’s TikTok, or in the classroom, is actually the opposite of education.”

“Anybody who is teaching in a university or anyone who is putting content on social media should be held responsible for what they include and what they exclude. So much of what we’re seeing, particularly on TikTok, about what’s going on in the Middle East is wilfully false, but it’s also incredibly slanted, pro-Hamas, anti-Israel,” Hillary Clinton said.

Students in both the United States and Europe have been holding demonstrations calling for an immediate permanent ceasefire and for schools to cut financial ties with companies they say are profiting from the oppression of Palestinians.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign in Gaza has killed nearly 35,000 Palestinians, according to Gazan authorities, and triggered a catastrophic humanitarian crisis and famine threatening the enclave’s 2.5 million residents.

The war began when the militant group Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.