Terrorists or Freedom Fighters?

More troubling findings on what young people think

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One by-product of the Israel-Gaza conflict is that it’s simply made it impossible to ignore the growing divides in Western societies —divides that have been stoked by mass immigration, a failing policy of multiculturalism, the rise of the radical woke left, and our increasingly left-leaning educational institutions which are, very clearly, leaving many young people with a warped view of the world.

I’ve already written about how ‘Zoomers’ from Generation-Z —the generation of young people born after the late 1990s, who have spent their entire lives online, and are coming of age amid these divides— hold a fundamentally different view of the Israel-Gaza conflict than their older counterparts.

Consistently, in Britain and America, the Zoomers are the least likely to sympathise with Israel, the most likely to sympathise with Palestine, and the most likely to think the terrorist atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7 can somehow be “justified”, a view held, remarkably, by more than half of all Zoomers in America.

Now, this week, new polling in Britain takes this further by asking a large sample of Brits what they think about Hamas. The results are both sobering and shocking in equal measure.

Asked which of the following words most accurately describe Hamas —”freedom fighters”, “militants”, or “terrorists”—18-24-year-old Zoomers are the most likely of all to say “freedom fighters”, a view 24 per cent of them hold.

In fact, Zoomers are the only generation that is evenly divided between the share viewing Hamas as “freedom fighters” (24 per cent) and the share viewing them as “terrorists” (24 per cent). A further 11 per cent say Hamas are “militants”, while the rest say they don’t know or choose ‘none of the above’.

This, once again, contrasts sharply with the views held by older Brits, with large majorities of both the Baby Boomers (57 per cent), and the even older Silent Generation (72 per cent) saying Hamas are “terrorists”.

Consistent with other findings since the conflict began, the Zoomers from Gen-Z are also the most likely to say they sympathise with the Palestinian side over the Israeli side (which 36 per cent of them do), the most likely to sympathise specifically with Hamas over Israel (which 14 per cent of them do), and the most likely to think Hamas ‘represents the views of ordinary Palestinians’ (which 22 per cent of them do).

These are certainly not the only divides to notice.