More than a quarter of British undergraduates consider the Hamas atrocities of October 7 “defensible”, according to a new survey.
Younger students were found to be more likely to hold the position than the general public, the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) said.
The Hamas-led terror attacks across southern Israel saw the massacre of some 1,200 people and 251 taken hostage. It led to Israel launching the Gaza War, aiming to defeat Hamas and destroy its military and governing capacities.
HEPI’s survey of 1,018 students aged between 18 and 21 found that 28 per cent believed the proscribed terrorist organisation’s attacks were “defensible”, while only 34 per cent said it was “indefensible”.
Comparatively, a survey of more than 2,000 adults conducted by YouGov in 2024 found that only 5 per cent thought the attacks were “justified”, with 69 per cent saying they were not.
The HEPI report said: “Although ‘justified’ might be regarded as qualitatively different to ‘defensible’ and although there was a two-year gap between the YouGov and HEPI/Savanta polls, it nonetheless seems highly likely that a larger proportion of students than adults as a whole regard Hamas’s attacks on October 7, 2023, as justifiable.”
When asked about Israel’s response to the attacks, the poll showed a lower level of sympathy, with only one in six (18 per cent) of students said Israel’s response was “defensible” and half saying it was “indefensible” and 32 per cent said they didn’t know.
The HEPI survey also polled students’ views on other contentious topics, from gender and sex-based rights, assisted dying, reparations for slavery, artificial intelligence and capital punishment.
Nick Hillman, the institute’s chief executive, said: “We decided to ask students for their views on issues because of the idea that a ‘culture war’ has taken root, and because universities and those who oversee them have been wrestling with new rules on free speech.
“In general, our results prick the idea that students are ‘woke snowflakes’. Their views often resemble those held among the adult population, either closely or to a notable extent.
“Yet on a small number of issues, students’ opinions are strikingly different. They are more sympathetic to the proscribed terrorist group Hamas, more supportive of reparations for the slave trade and more in favour of unilateral nuclear disarmament.”
But he noted that comparisons between the HEPI poll and others were an “inexact science”.
The survey was conducted by the polling company Savanta between May 5 and 13.
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