2024-05-09 06:48:21
Most US university students do not participate in anti-Israel protests on campus and do not view the war between Israel and Hamas as their main problem.
This is evidenced by a Generation Lab poll reported by Axios.
The survey found that students ranked the war in the Middle East as the least important of nine options, with only 13% ranking it as an issue that was important to them.
The most important to them are health care reform (40%), education funding and access (38%), economic justice and opportunity (37%), racial justice and civil rights (36%), climate change (35%) and control over weapons and safety (32%).
Only 8% of 1,250 respondents said they had taken part in anti-Israel protests or counter-protests.
While 45% of those surveyed support protests against Israel, students strongly condemn many of the more provocative tactics used during the protests. For example, 90% think blocking Israeli supporters on campus is unacceptable, 81% favor prosecution for vandalism or illegal occupation of buildings, 67% condemn the occupation of campus buildings, and 58% say refusing to follow a university order to leave is illegal.
Regarding the culprits for the current situation in Gaza, 34% pointed to Hamas, 19% to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, 12% to the people of the State of Israel and 12% to US President Joe Biden.
Cursor previously reported that Biden compared the October 7 massacre to the Holocaust.
In addition, US Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona recently commented on the unprecedented wave of anti-Semitism in American universities.