There’s an epidemic of ignorance surging through America, and it’s especially virulent among the young.

As we’ve seen played out on campuses and public spaces recently, impassioned but clueless youth are weighing in on the Israel-Hamas war without a hint as to the history of the region and its people.

The buzzword du jour is “colonizers,” applied to the Jews in Israel. Even if students weren’t privy to extensive classes on world history, how have they not been taught that Jews are indigenous to the region, going back thousands of years? In a little over a week we’ll be celebrating Christmas, marking the birth of a Jew in Bethlehem, Judea over 2,000 years ago. Jesus was not an outlier, nor a European.

Biblical history aside, there are enough non-sectarian historical records and archaeological evidence supporting the fact that the Israelites made their mark millennia before 1948.

But students are lacking this knowledge, and more. As The Hill reported, a fifth of Americans ages 18-29 believe the Holocaust was a myth, according to a new poll from The Economist/YouGov. Another 30% of young people said they didn’t agree or disagree with the statement.

Ignorance helps antisemitism gain ground and leaves young minds vulnerable to progressive propaganda that’s full of incendiary phrases, but few if any facts.

Some lawmakers are trying to right the ship. Earlier this month a bipartisan group of senators, led by Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), introduced a bill to reauthorize the Never Again Education Act, providing federal funding for Holocaust education.

“Failing to educate students about the gravity and scope of the Holocaust is a disservice to the memory of its victims and to our duty to prevent such atrocities in the future,” Rosen said in a statement. “At a time of rising antisemitism, reauthorizing the bipartisan Never Again Education Act will help ensure that educators have the resources needed to teach students about the Holocaust and help counter antisemitic bigotry and hate.”

There’s a problem – what if the educators need education as well?

As has been reported, the Massachusetts Teachers Association’s executive board voted to urge the National Educators Association to put pressure on President Joe Biden to stop funding Israel, which the board characterized as a “genocidal war on the Palestinian people in Gaza.”

Teachers presumably have access to dictionaries, but in case some don’t, genocide is the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group. As in the terrorist group Hamas slaughtering, mutilating, raping and kidnapping Israelis on Oct. 7, and vowing to do it again and again. The destruction of the Jewish people is literally their mission statement.

The deaths of Gazans caught up in this war are devastating, and the humanitarian crisis monstrous. But do those urging a ceasefire not realize that Hamas is using Palestinians as human shields and taking the humanitarian aid for itself? Hamas is not in the business of helping Palestinians.

One of the slogans making the rounds is “standing on the right side of history.”

You can’t do that if you don’t know anything about history. Clearly, our schools are vastly shortchanging America’s youth.

Editorial cartoon by Gary Varvel (Creators Syndicate)