I’ve begun to understand why college students are so anti-Israel, and most of the time, I don’t believe it’s their fault. The combination of having information taught in classes that is so deeply saturated with anti-Israel content and the sometimes blind trust my peers have toward the authority of professors is difficult to challenge.

One such example: a required class for my undergraduate Journalism degree called “Cross Cultural Journalism” intends to “provide journalistic tools for the coverage of diverse ethnic, gender, ability and ideological groups inside and outside the United States.”

One week focuses on International Politics and Conflict, however instead of focusing on the ways these events can be represented journalistically, the two classes were spent watching the documentary “Mayor” following Musa Hadid, previous mayor of Ramallah, through two years of his service. 

While the documentary was interesting to watch, showing it in a classroom uncritically pushed narratives about a complicated geopolitical issue in arguably inaccurate ways. In not showing information from the contrasting perspective to give both sides of the story and show the ways different sides of journalism can affect a story, my professor used this movie to push her personal world view on her students.

With large amounts of context missing, in conversations about the legal status of the West Bank and its Arab inhabitants, Israel was named an occupational force whose main target is to kill all Palestinian citizens. 

Accusing Israel of occupying land they have no claim to is popular, however it neglects the decades of legal disputes of the Gaza and West Bank territories. This type of language highlights a clear bias and agenda the documentary portrayed, and in showing it to her class, my professor duly portrayed. In never admitting to having a bias, she was able to present this movie as objective journalism connected to a controversial issue, while in reality it was the opposite.

The most talked-about scenes in our discussion afterward were those including videos of IDF soldiers and their presence in the West Bank. What was being depicted as “occupation” is completely legal under international law, as stated in the second Oslo Accords. 

Chapter X of this agreement states “Israel shall continue to carry the responsibility for external security, as well as the responsibility for overall security of Israelis for the purpose of safeguarding their internal security and public order.”

During this dialogue, I brought up why it’s important to frame such reporting in its accurate historical context and was rebuffed. My professor justified its omission, explaining that the point of the documentary was to highlight the life of Ramallah’s mayor rather than the political issues of the Middle East. Accurate historical context would apparently dilute the point of the documentary. 

When one ignores 80+ years of the conflict to focus on one perspective during a two-year period (2018-2020), the project transforms into an agenda-driven political argument regardless of its intentions. Consequently, what could have been a class discussion about journalism through documentaries quickly became a breeding ground of misinformation to a group of impressionable students.

What could have been easily debunked by a piece of context was pushed aside by the director of the documentary, but more importantly by a university professor who took time to show the movie to her class as a form of education.

Instead of looking at the issue from both sides and connecting it to different ways journalists can tell effective stories, my professor instead used class to essentially indoctrinate her students to align with her views of a complicated geopolitical issue, while conveniently not showcasing opposing information.

Another such example is from a Middle East Politics class I took this semester. The class was completely asynchronous, meaning it was taught solely through reading the assigned textbook, “Government and Politics of the Contemporary Middle East,” and an occasional lecture video. Much like the documentary, this book gave a biased account of the region.

The main issue I found with the textbook is the fact that it refers to Israel as either “Israel proper” or “Palestine/Israel.” While this may seem mundane, I believe it was done in a strategic way by the authors to delegitimize the creation and recognition of the State of Israel. The few times the country is referred to as Israel is in negative terms, for example: “…the de facto frontiers of the State of Israel have remained the same since the 1967 conquests…they continue to control the skies and borders of this territory – engaging in a period of economic strangulation – and periodically…bombing targets there and carrying out destructive land invasions…evoking comparisons by some Israelis with the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II.”

In what’s supposed to be an educational, accurate retelling of the region became a biased, propaganda-adjacent, wildly inaccurate depiction of the land and its political and military endeavors. Furthermore, comparing the actions of the Israeli army to the genocidal Nazi regime is absurd. To debunk the genocide lie again is arbitrary, but when what should be an unbiased author claims legal military action is akin to the steps taken by Hitler, not only is there a wild misrepresentation but it was done in an extremely calculated way. Through this comparison, the authors flipped the script to make the victim into the oppressor, and did so to evoke the same biases in their readers as they personally have.

The information war we’ve been fighting for the last two years blew up on college campuses, and now I understand why. When impressionable young people are being faced with biased information and are unaware of the fact that it’s not true, they begin to take these libels and run with them, causing a snowball effect that’s hard to stop.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)