She is being racist

She has a very poor understanding of what's happening in Gaza, and replaces the yawning chasm that is her factual understanding with a dim stereotype view that it's a bad place because the Palestinians are terrible people who don't pull themselves up by their bootstraps

I think her point is that people would probably get hurt if they went there for a college semester even if it wasn't a conflict zone, maybe due to religious or gender discrimination.

Which might be right, as a society they still can improve, but it doesn't mean they deserve to be victims of a genocide. I think we're past religion here, we're just humans concerned for other humans.

what point she even thought

I'm going to stop you right there to tell you she's incapable of doing something like that.

Let’s say she meant “before conflict”. It still does not make sense. Yes, US universities are better. Therefore, what?

The point she is trying to make, is that Hamas doesn’t grant the same freedoms to protest and accept criticism of the government that we claim to allow in the US.

Which is true.

But what she doesn’t get, is that religion, extremism and lack of education is the problem both in the Middle East and in her constituency in the US.