While speaking alongside Deborah Lipstadt, the US special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism at the Munich Security Conference, Hillary Clinton told her audience that young people in America are “woefully uninformed” about antisemitism and the Holocaust, while denouncing its rise in the United States.
Clinton provided an example while she was speaking at a panel discussing conflict-related sexual violence. “Last week, we had three panels about Ukraine, and they were superb. They went off without a hitch. We learned a lot and were challenged,” she began. While speaking at the panel discussing conflict-related sexual violence, there were protests. The panel discussed sexual violence in Ukraine, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Israel.
“You just have to ask yourself how you could have an event focused on using rape as a tactic of war against women and girls, which is [used] in conflict across the world, and you include the most recent horrendous example out of Israel, and that brings out the protesters,” Clinton said.
She commented that there is an “invidious strain of antisemitism that has never gone away…that has been poking its head up for quite some time now.”
Young people today do not know the history
At the conference, Clinton provided a brief history of previous efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including the Oslo Accords and the rise of the intifadas. She also discussed Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza and Hamas’s takeover of the Strip. She said that young people do not know or understand this history.
Clinton said at the conference that it is the responsibility of educators, policymakers, and the current generation of leaders to teach young people more about history, particularly about the Holocaust. Over 60% of young Americans between 18 and 29 believe the Holocaust of the Jewish people is a myth, according to polling data published by YouGov/The Economist in December.
“That's our fault. The information they get, more often than not, is off of social media, where they are picking up not only misinformation but deliberate disinformation that they are absorbing and acting on and not knowing even what they’re saying. So this is a problem that was really exposed on October 7, but we have to recognize it is a bigger problem even than that.”
Clinton is now a professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. She described an environment at the university where students who are extremely engaged in global issues only regularly protest Israel despite not knowing the history.
Hillary Clinton has been outspoken about her support for Israel since October 7. She has made comments against Hamas on the View and met with families of the hostages in Gaza in December.
In an article published in the Atlantic in May 2023, Dara Horn, best-selling author, and literature professor, argued that current Holocaust education might be making antisemitism worse since it fails to address contemporary antisemitism and Jews alive today.
Since October 7, universities across the United States have hosted pro-Palestinian protests, where chants calling to globalize the intifada and “free Palestine from the river to the sea” are frequent and normalized. Although these protests have occurred during every operation and war in Israel, the protests have become increasingly extreme over the years. Protesters frequently compare Israel to the Nazis during the Holocaust and argue that Israel is committing genocide.