Do you know what I mean?

 There's been a lot of discussion of the evasive answers given by the presidents of Harvard, Penn, and MIT to a question on whether a call for genocide against the Jewish people would violate their institution's code of conduct.  But one point that has rarely been mentioned is that there's no evidence that anyone at those universities, or any other university, has called for genocide against the Jewish people.  The premise of the question was that certain slogans , like "from the river to the sea," are equivalent to calls for genocide.   

What do people who say "from the river to the sea" mean?  I think that the great majority would say they want a secular state encompassing what is now Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank in which Jews, Muslims, and people of other religions all are equal.  It's easy to see why this vision would be appealing, especially for Americans.  Of course, you could object that it's naive and unrealistic, but student politics (and let's face it, faculty politics too) often involves taking stands on principle with little regard to practicality.  

There is a poll that bears on this issue--it has a question on whether Israel should "remain a Jewish state," "become a mixed state in which Palestinians have a major share of power," or "should no longer exist as an independent country."  Unfortunately, it's from 2002, but it's the only one I could find that asks about general vision for the future.  Overall, 42% said Israel should remain a Jewish state, 39% that it should become a mixed state, 6% that it should no longer exist, and 14% didn't know.  Some factors that were related to opinions (from now on, the base for the percentages excludes don't knows):
1.  Religion--there were only 19 Jews in the sample, and all 19 said Israel should remain a Jewish state.  Among Protestants, 56% said it should remain a Jewish state, 37% that it should become a mixed state; Catholics favored a mixed state by 60%-34%.  People with no religion were in between.  
2.  Race--blacks were more likely to say Israel should not exist (18%-6%).  Support for a mixed state was highest among Hispanics (53%).
3.  Education--more educated people were more likely to say Israel should become a mixed state and less likely to say it should not exist, but the differences were not very big (50%-39%-11% among people without a high school degree, 47%-49%-5% among college graduates).  
4.   Age--younger people were more likely to say that Israel should become a mixed state--support for that option fell from 54% among people aged 18-29 to 31% among people aged 65 and above.  
5.  Party--Republicans were somewhat more likely to say Israel should remain a Jewish state, and Democrats more likely to favor the other two options.  But the highest support for a "mixed state" was among independents (57%, against 39% among both Democrats and Republicans).  Independents tend to have less political knowledge and interest, so I think this shows that the mixed position has an intuitive appeal.  

These results raise a question of why political elites pretend the "mixed" position doesn't exist rather than trying to explain why it wouldn't work.  Of course, part of the answer is just the search for political advantage--discrediting an opinion is often more appealing than engaging with it.  Another is that it's a fringe position among political elites, so they don't realize that it's fairly popular among the public.  And finally, there's the "anti-elitist" mood that I've remarked on before:  people who (rightly) say that we should try to understand working-class Trump voters rather than just condemning them as racist will go straight to condemning college students, especially Ivy Leaguers, as anti-Semitic.  

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]