Israel IQ at UCLA with Comedian Mark Schiff

By Lauri B. Regan

StandWithUs, "an international organization dedicated to bringing peace to the Middle East by educating about Israel and challenging the misinformation that often surrounds the Middle East conflict," has produced a very funny, yet enlightening and scary video that is a must see.

Comedian Mark Schiff takes to the campus of UCLA, ranked in the top 25 American universities, to ask questions to the students pertaining to Israel and the Middle East. For instance, when asked, "What is the only democracy in the Middle East? Is it Iran, Lebanon, Israel, or Syria," respondents were clueless, guessing Iran, Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey, but never Israel. The level of ignorance was also on display when students were asked questions regarding how many Muslim countries there are in the world, how many Jewish countries there are in the world, how long Arab Palestinians have considered themselves a people, and how long there has been a Jewish presence in the land of Israel.

The final question posed to the "elite" young adults of American society was "What is Hamas? Is it a type of spreader dip, is it a humanitarian aid group, a new music group that's coming up now, or a terrorist group?" I won't give away the answers but suffice it to say that when Schiff concludes that "...we have a lot of work to do to get these people to understand exactly what we're about," he is making a major understatement. Were it not so sad, the compilation of interviews would be hysterical. Unfortunately, they do in fact represent the sad state of American education and in particular, knowledge of one of the most important global issues of our time.