NEW REPORT: Why Does Gen Z Support Hamas?

What motivates an otherwise normal teenager or American 20-something-year-old to throw their lot in with a genocidal terrorist organization? It’s a question we have all asked as we try to understand the eruption of support for Hamas after their inhumane massacre, torture, rape and kidnapping of over 1,200 Israelis on October 7, 2023.

The 20-somethings are a demographic that campaigns for anti-racism, anti-bullying and human rights for all. How are we to understand the extreme Jew hatred and demonization of Israel from this age group?

Moreover, after the terrorists strapped Go-Pros to themselves and filmed their horrific crimes on October 7 in real-time, why do vast swaths of 20-somethings deny the reality of the terrorists’ deeds?

The answers to these questions are as complex and idiosyncratic as most humans are. However, a deep dive into what is colloquially known as Generation Z (Gen Z for short) — today’s 12-27-year-olds — will set us on a path to unraveling this mystery and make clear a number of course corrections our society needs to make if we are to avoid devolving into a society much like the one Hamas created in Gaza. View Generations Chart.

This report explores the reasons why Gen Z youth heeded the calls made by anti-Israel groups in America and student organizations in Gaza for the “revolutionary escalation of the global student intifada for Palestine.” It is also worth noting that these same student organizations support other authoritarian regimes opposed to human rights and democracy, including those in China, Iran, Cuba and Russia.

In this report, we will discuss:

• Why Gen Z matters
• Consequences of becoming the first generation born entirely in the digital age
• Effects of social media on Gen Z regarding: radicalization, mental health, normalization of violence, narcissism, interest in factual truth

Why Gen Z Matters – Today’s Radicalized Voters are Tomorrow’s Radicalized Leaders

Gen Z refers to the demographic born between 1997 and 2012. As of 2024, Gen Zers (also known as “Zoomers”) range in age from 12 to 27, with the youngest around the age of a sixth grader and the oldest already in the workforce.

As of 2023, Gen Z is also the largest generation. Gen Z youth alone will account for over 40 million potential voters in the upcoming U.S. presidential election, nearly one-fifth of the American electorate. By 2030, the entire generation will be old enough to vote.

Gen Z has also been described as the “activist generation.” A 2024 “Gen Z Activism Survey” found 32 percent of Gen Zers and 40% of Gen Z college students are “regularly engaged in activism or social justice work” and just over half of Gen Zers have participated in rallies or protests to support specific causes or social issues. View United Way Survey of Gen Z. 

The survey also found that 66 percent of Gen Zers say that most of their activism takes place online.

iGen – the First Digital Generation

Gen Z is also known as “iGen,” since it is the first generation “born entirely during the digital age.” Due to their tech fluency and comfort with social media, Gen Zers have influence far beyond their age, life experience and knowledge of history (i.e., most Gen Zers don’t even remember 9/11).

Yet, being the iGen doesn’t come without consequences. A 2018 survey conducted by the American Psychological Association (APA) revealed that Gen Z had the weakest mental health of any living generation, suggesting a direct link between social media use and mental health.

Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist, said in a Wall Street Journal interview that Gen Z’s mental health crisis can also be attributed to growing up in a culture that “valorizes victimhood.”

Members of Gen Z have carefully cultivated and nourished their “victim status” online, with a host of intersectional code words in their social media bios that have become a form of virtue signaling. In doing so, they are rewarded with comrades-in-arms but have forfeited the sense of agency that is essential to mental health.

Internet Usage and the Normalization of Violence

The Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States (PIRUS) data found that internet and social media use facilitate radicalization and normalize violence to a broad global audience.

The PIRUS data found that over 60% of far-left extremists were under 30 (with nearly 10% under the age of 20), animal rights and extremist environmentalists were the largest far-left group (nearly 35%), followed by anti-capitalist, Communist and anti-Imperialist groups (nearly 24%) and anarchist movements (14%).

Between 2010 and 2020 (coinciding with the mass proliferation of major social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram and, since 2016, TikTok (along with Gen-Z entering their teenage years), the PIRUS dataset shows a 413% rise in internet playing the primary role in the radicalization process for those under the age of 30 compared to the previous decade.

According to the study, “Online platforms provide opportunities for far-left extremists to build community, disseminate propaganda, trade tactical material, orchestrate activism, and even announce and broadcast attacks” making it easier for young people to engage in acts of violence and to be targeted and indoctrinated by radical groups.

Susceptibility to radicalization is increased by a process referred to as “Algorithmic radicalization,” in which popular social media sites create an informational “funnel effect” with “recommender algorithms” steering users “toward progressively more extreme content over time, leading to them developing radicalized extremist political views.”

Gen Z: Radicalized Through the Online Rabbit Hole

A Generation of “Truthers”

An article in MIT Technology Review posited an explanation of why Gen Zers believe and reshare online misinformation. Social media, the article states, “promotes credibility based on identity rather than community. And when trust is built on identity, authority shifts to influencers. Thanks to looking and sounding like their followers, influencers become trusted messengers on topics in which they have no expertise.”

Gen Zers thus prioritize content and their identification with the content providers over objective facts. Essentially, many Gen Zers are so-called “truthers,” meaning they live in a “post-truth” world having been conditioned to think that “beliefs needn’t change in response to evidence.”

Part of that conditioning is the belief that everyone has “their truth,” a non-negotiable right to “believe as they please” even when verified objective facts run counter to that belief.

An article titled, “The Cause of America’s Post-Truth Predicament” states: “When we affirm one another’s ‘right’ to believe things—even things that fly in the face of evidence—we essentially decouple critical thinking and belief revision. This damages the norm that keeps minds tethered to reality” and people “become more susceptible to conspiracy theories, paranormal beliefs, science denial and extremism—mind viruses, if you will.”

Stanford University Professor of Psychiatry Anna Lembke notes that people who are obsessed with instant gratification – an essential component of social media scrolling – means they are living in the limbic brain which processes emotions, rather than in the pre-frontal cortex which deals with future planning, problem-solving and personality development.

Gen Zers, most of whom are addicted to social media, are essentially being controlled by the emotional narratives their brains offer in response to the dizzying array of digital images they encounter. Without the counterbalance that the executive functioning of the pre-frontal cortex provides, including the ability to differentiate between good and bad, to predict outcomes of behavior and work towards long-term goals, it is no wonder that radicalization among Gen Z is prevalent.  View Calla post on X.

Gen Z and October 7

As graphic images of Israel’s military response to the Hamas massacre of 1,200 Israelis on October 7, 2023 began flooding the internet, young viewers were privy to inflamed rhetoric, conspiracy theories and misinformation – misinformation that they do not have the curiosity or urgency to investigate.

Take, for example, the October 17, 2023 bombing of the al-Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital in Gaza. Initial media reports claimed 500 casualties and blamed Israel. U.S. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib immediately accused the Biden administration of funding Israel’s “genocide” of Palestinian people.

By the time the truth came out – that a misfired rocket launched by the terror group Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) at Israel from Gaza landed in the hospital’s parking lot causing 10-50 casualties – no one was interested in the truth. The false narrative had served its purpose. View photo of the area of Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza.

A December 2023 survey conducted by Harvard-Harris polling found that a majority (60%) of 18- to 24-year-olds believe the October 7 killing of more than 1,200 Israelis (including Israeli-Americans) by Hamas was justified.

The poll found that 50 percent of Gen Z support Hamas and said they believed the long-term answer to the Israel-Palestinian conflict was for “Israel to be ended and given to Hamas and the Palestinians.”

Seventy-six percent of Gen Z think Hamas can be negotiated with to create peace; 31% think Israel has no right to exist; 67% believe Jews “should be treated as oppressors” and 60% said Israel was committing “genocide.”

Following October 7, members of Gen Z are more likely to support Hamas and to oppose Israel than any other generation. This fact has been attributed to anti-Israel propaganda and a biased algorithm on TikTok.

The Virtual Pathway Into Real-Time Violence

The Gen Z incubator included the 2020-2021 global COVID-19 pandemic and the violent Black Lives Matter riots.

The pandemic resulted in high rates of youth unemployment as young workers were concentrated in the retail, hospitality and food services industries. Most Gen Z youngsters were not eligible for relief or benefits.

With no steady income and little access to credit, Gen Zers who took student loans went into debt and felt despondent about their economic prospects. They pointed to a failure of government to take care of them.

A 2020 op-ed in Teen Vogue declared, “This pandemic has brought into sharper relief what some of us have always known to be true: Capitalism, and the culture of hierarchy that props it up, is extremely screwed up.

“We must recognize that COVID-19 is not the only virus that must be destroyed. We also have to confront capitalism and the world that sustains it … the pandemic has given us a glimpse of what an anti-capitalist society could actually look like.” View teenVogue article on COVID and Capitalism.

The Black Lives Matter riots normalized violence as well as challenged the authority of the government, politicians and the mainstream media. Moreover, Gen Zers watched as government officials hypocritically sanctioned the protests (making exceptions to large gatherings for racial justice) and even promoted the donation of funds to bail out violent activists.

The mainstream media did its part by gaslighting the American public about the protests’ violence.  View Calla post on X.

Left-Wing Radicalism: Social Justice Warriors or Narcissists?

Left-wing extremism is linked to toxic, psychopathic tendencies and narcissism, according to a March 2023 study published in Current Psychology.

The study found that “Narcissistic individuals and those with psychopathic tendencies are more likely to strongly endorse left-wing antihierarchical aggression.”

Researchers of the study found that “certain forms of activism might provide them with opportunities for positive self-presentation and displays of moral superiority, to gain social status, to dominate others, and to engage in social conflicts and aggression to satisfy their need for thrill seeking.”

The research suggested “that individuals who endorse aggressive actions to overthrow those in power are more likely to exhibit traits of exploiting others for their own gain, lacking empathy, feeling entitled, being arrogant and manipulative…”

The research also noted: “Social justice is often used as a guise for these activists to behave unhinged.”

This letter by an “Ex-Canary” (an individual who was formerly featured on Canary Mission but has since rejected their antisemitism and removed from the website) is a perfect example of someone who became sucked into a social media echo chamber and acted out a narcissistic personality for the “thrill.”

“As I immersed myself in a social media presence,” the individual wrote, “I spiraled into becoming an unpleasant person. I became addicted to social media, and with that, my personality changed. I became more impatient, short-tempered, careless, and unfiltered.

“ … I gained thousands of social media followers, and I got hundreds of likes, and it began to consume so much of my life. I began to make many ‘Internet friends’ who shared very biased and negative opinions towards Israelis and Zionists.

“I began to partake in the hatred they spewed online … Why? I wish I had a better answer. Perhaps the attention it gave me? I look back at the way I behaved and I cringe from embarrassment and shame.”

Calla Walsh: A Case Study

An argument can be made that young Muslim Americans have been socialized into anti-Israel and antisemitic hate from early childhood. Some may have relatives in Gaza that have been affected by the conflict.

However, GenZ Americans have no such background and no single cause célèbre upon which to anchor their emerging identities. Many GenZers spend their formative years wandering around digital spaces, seeking identity, power, social connections and community, all of which are typical of adolescence.

Walsh comes from a middle-class family in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the daughter of Chris Walsh, a Boston University English professor, and attended the Winsor School, a top private school for girls in Boston.

Walsh attributed her entry into political activism at the age of 15 to the “climate crisis,” which segued into her activism for the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and then into the violent wing of the anti-Israel movement.

At 20 years old, Walsh faces multiple charges following her arrests in two states after she participated in violent protests at Elbit Systems, an international defense technology company owned by Israelis.

In February 2024, Walsh was charged with rioting, conspiracy to commit criminal mischief, burglary and conspiracy to commit falsifying physical evidence for her actions in climbing to the roof of Elbit Systems of America, creating a disturbance and causing property damage. Each charge is a class B felony, punishable by 3.5 to 7 years in state prison.

And yet, Walsh appears to be unfazed by it all – the physical carnage, the financial damage caused by her actions, the violent rhetoric and the incitement to violence that she issues regularly from her social media loudspeaker. View picture of Calla Walsh.

Activism With a Double ‘I’

In 2020, Walsh said her motivation for political involvement was “personal and that I wanted to feel like I was doing something … just knowing there’s this looming climate crisis that is going to destroy my future, that is very burdensome to be thinking about all the time … [and] when I started organizing in more climate activist circles, I instead felt like I became someone who is protecting the earth instead of just watching it burn and get to ruin.”

Note that Walsh considers herself the primary beneficiary of her activism, no matter the cause she chooses to address. At 16 years old, Walsh expressed that she was “burdened” by thoughts of the climate crisis and her activism turned her into someone who was “protecting the earth.”

Activism as a Quest for Power and Control

In 2020, then 17 years old and a sophomore in high school, Walsh launched a digital campaign that helped re-elect Senator Ed Markey in the Senate Democratic primary race of September 2020.

Walsh helped build a “youth movement and online cult of personality” around Markey, which became known as the “Markyverse,” a digital universe where Walsh, as a young social media “kingmaker,” rallied her digital forces to reinvent Markey as a progressive icon and left-wing superpower.

Following accusations from Massachusetts Rep. Joe Kennedy III (Markey’s opponent) that Walsh’s “negative campaigning online had created a vicious, dangerous atmosphere,” Walsh said, “That’s when I realized I had a stake in this game: They are scared of me, a random teenager on the internet who just happened to be doing some organizing with her friends. I think that made us all think, ‘Hey, they’re scared of us. We have power over them.’”

In an August 2021 piece for Teen Vogue titled: “The Democratic Socialists of America Can Mobilize Gen Z’ers Like Me,” Walsh wrote, “No other crisis in our history has posed such an existential threat and moral obligation for radical change in our economic and political systems. Human survival will depend on revolution.”

The article now carries an editor’s note: “The author of this piece left DSA in December 2021 and is no longer affiliated with the organization.”

In 2021, Walsh abandoned politics and found her way into anti-Israel activism after she felt betrayed by Markey’s support of Israel during Operation Guardian of the Walls. Walsh claimed that Markey had “framed Israel’s violence as a ‘both-sides’ issue rather than calling it what it is: settler colonialism and apartheid.”

In December 2023, Walsh wrote in Mondoweiss, “The experience permanently disenchanted me from electoral politics and made me question whether ‘accountability’ even exists for representatives of a capitalist, settler-colonial empire like the United States.”

Walsh added, “I don’t work on campaigns anymore. History shows us that direct action, protest, and internationalist solidarity are far more effective strategies than appealing to the morality of elected officials who are in the pocket of the military-industrial complex.”

2024 – College Drop-out and Hamas Fan Girl

After dropping out from McGill University in Montreal in 2023, Walsh seems to have radicalized to the point of self-destruction. She has vowed to escalate her violent extremism as a “self-sacrificial tactic” and glorified Hamas terrorists, casting as her heroes the likes of Yahya Sinwar and Hassan Nasrallah.

In a November 2023 interview with the Real News Network, Walsh spoke about the criminal charges against her. “We’re not just going to be politely asking our senators and representatives to stop sending weapons to Israel,” she said. “We are going to put our bodies on the line and say, we are stopping these weapons from going to Israel, and we dare you to stop us.”

Walsh continued, “And so when I was in jail, what I was thinking was that I would be ready to do it again and again and again and again until we shut these factories down.” View Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement.

On her 20th birthday, Walsh tweeted that she had “nothing to celebrate.”

As of July 2024, Walsh was enrolled in an online summer course at Birzeit University, a school located in the West Bank whose student body has celebrated terrorists since at least 2003.

In late July 2024, it was announced that Israeli security forces had thwarted a major terror operation being planned by a cell of students from Birzeit University.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Canary Mission report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.