TW: Article mentions terrorist attacks and deaths due to war.
Hillary Clinton has raised concerns over the rising number of Americans who are invested in spreading anti-Israel hate. She has spoken up against the viral videos on social media regarding Gaza at an event hosted by the Israeli newspaper called Israel Hayom in New York.
“Smart, well-educated, young people from our own country, from around the world, where were they getting their information?” Clinton asked the crowd, “They were getting their information from social media, particularly TikTok,” she added.
As per The New York Post, Hillary Clinton explained that many young people were first learning about the events of October 7 and everything that followed in the days, weeks, and months afterwards through what they saw online. She warned that this poses a serious issue not only for democracy in Israel or the United States, but also for young people themselves.
Hillary Clinton blames TikTok and “totally made up” videos for young people’s views on Israel and Palestine.
She says social media influenced “not just the usual suspects” but also “young Jewish Americans who don’t know the history and don’t understand.” https://t.co/rUVXRqK2rK pic.twitter.com/hAwG7Gbhwf
— Prem Thakker (@prem_thakker) December 2, 2025
The October 7 attack, one of the deadliest in Israel’s history, is often described as the most severe antisemitic violence since the Holocaust. These atrocities, carried out by Hamas and other allied terrorist groups, killed at least 1,219 people and resulted in 251 hostages being taken, most of them Israeli civilians.
The attack was led by Ismail Haniyeh, who was assassinated in July 2024, after which he was succeeded by Yahya Sinwar, the group’s leader in Gaza since 2017.
According to BBC, Hamas, which is formally known as the Islamic Resistance Movement, is a Muslim group that was first founded in 1987. It has officially been recognized as a terrorist group by U.K, the US, and Israel. Hamas took complete control of the Gaza Strip in 2007 after winning Palestinian elections and forcibly removing its political opponents.
In October 2025, the first stage of a ceasefire agreement negotiated by President Donald Trump led to the release of the final 20 surviving Israeli hostages, along with the freeing of nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees from Israeli custody. The 79-year-old president was happy as he personally went to release the hostages on his Air Force One.
“President Trump needs to know that we really thank him. It was hard for us to say it in advance because we couldn’t really believe that was true — 20 hostages are actually coming, all of them are alive… He promised, and he kept his word.” pic.twitter.com/M4rjC1zD0W
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) October 13, 2025
Hillary Clinton said that most of the online content people are consuming about the Israel-Hamas war is biased and based on “pure propaganda.”
There’s a lot more conflict history about the war than what the media tends to show, and the gap between what it really is compared to what is shown has made conversations with youngsters difficult. “It’s not only the groups you’d typically expect — many young Jewish Americans also don’t know the historical context,” Hillary Clinton said.
Images showed a masked protester smashing windows at Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall on April 30, 2024, and crowds of pro-Palestinian demonstrators filling the streets near campus on the second anniversary of Hamas’ October 7 attack in 2025.
Therefore, the the former First Lady urged younger Americans to reflect on the type of news they are consuming before forming robust opinions and to verify the source or channel they are watching it. Her remarks have received mixed reactions from online users.
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“They’re watching short videos — some completely fabricated, others misrepresenting what they claim to show — and that’s what they’re relying on as their source of information,” she added. According to RecurPost, YouTube and Facebook have the highest number of users in America, followed by Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn and others.
As Clinton said, a lot of youngsters have switched to YouTube shorts and reels from Google, which has made a drastic change in how they acquire knowledge. Short videos are fun, creative and require less attention span.
Yet, long-standing issues like misinformation, breach of privacy, data theft and online harassment remain significant issues of concern.
