Generation Z, those born between 1997 and 2012, are just as likely to call members of Hamas “freedom fighters” as they are to call them “terrorists,” according to recent polling by the British organization More in Common.
Just under one-quarter of Generation Z – 24 percent – termed Hamas “freedom fighters,” with the same amount calling them “terrorists.” A further 35 percent said they were not sure.
Millennials, born between 1981 and 1996, were similarly more open to calling Hamas freedom fighters than other generations, at 19 percent. However, the majority still called those who launched a violent incursion into Israel on October 7 as terrorists, at 32 percent.
Older generations were far more hostile to Hamas, with 72 percent of the silent generation, those older than 75, 56 percent of baby boomers, aged between 56 and 74, and 40 percent of Generation X, between 41 and 55 years old, labeling the organization’s members as terrorists.
Pollsters also learned that sympathy for Hamas was higher in London than any other region in Britain. Graduates were “twice as likely” to sympathize with Hamas and those in the Gaza Strip than Israel.
“One by-product of the Israel-Gaza conflict is that it’s simply made it impossible to ignore the growing divides in Western societies,” argues political commentator Matt Goodwin.
The divides 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,” he adds.
