Earlier this summer, my son and I biked over to fashionable east Hackney where it’s normal to pay £4.20 for a coffee and £3 for a croissant and everybody complains about the cost of living. The croissants, by the way, must come from the Dusty Knuckle bakery. I don’t know if it’s the same in other parts of London, but here in the north-east we have our standards.
‘Israel is literally a fascist state. Literally criminal. Soon it won’t exist at all and that’s great’
We’d biked a fair distance, so we found a café that sold Dusty Knuckle croissants and settled in. My son read his book while I eavesdropped on the conversation between three interesting-looking youngish people at the next table. Interesting because they all looked so very typical it was almost surprising. Like going to Australia and right away coming face to face with a koala in a eucalyptus tree.
There were two women in shorts, one with the Palestinian flag on her T-shirt, and a blond man with breasts, a neat moustache and a tote bag from the Museum of the Palestinian People in Washington, DC. The three friends had met at Oxford University, I later learned, and were now academics.
When I sat down they were talking about Israel. This was a while before the discovery of the six hostages murdered by Hamas but, even had they known, the conversation would have taken the same course. And I’m writing this now to make it clear to the people who seem to expect some post-murder change of heart: you won’t get one. The kids are way too far gone.
The young woman nearest me was Israeli by birth. She had been brought up there, she said, and had recently returned for a friend’s family wedding during which an awful thing had happened. The awful thing had caused several of her friends to vow never to return, and to break from their families completely. What could the thing be? I leaned closer. What had happened, it turned out, was during the wedding after-party, on the instruction of some of the older guests, the band had played the Israeli national anthem. That was it. That was all. In the middle of countless bloody atrocities, this little spasm of musical patriotism was too much to bear.
The three friends shook their heads in disgust. The national anthem! But the young Israeli woman looked sad. She said: ‘I know. And, like, how can they go back? But I was thinking it must be hard for my friends also. It would be hard never to go back to the place you kind of belonged to. I know it’s Israel but it’s still home.’ And she held out her hands the way women do when we expect empathy, a touch on the arm.
The blond wasn’t having any of it. He folded his arms and looked coldly at her. ‘Israel is literally a fascist state. Literally criminal. Why would it be hard?’ Instead of telling him to wind his neck in, both women looked alarmed. Clearly it had been a serious faux pas to express any regret. The first quickly pulled her hands away and began to recant. ‘Oh yeah, no. It’s criminal. I mean, Israel soon won’t exist at all and that’s great.’
Then she hurriedly introduced a topic they could agree on: how very naive older people were about not just the war, but about the world in general. She said: ‘It’s so Gen X to think Islamic terrorism is a threat.’ Everyone concurred: ‘I mean, they think Isis has geopolitical ambitions! So naive. They’re all brainwashed by TV and podcasts.’ (Podcasts!)
‘Yeah, they think Isis literally want to build a caliphate that runs from Damascus to Paris or something.’ Much relieved laughter. ‘It’s so wild!’ They laughed, I pictured those Yazidi girls, taken as slaves by Isis, raped and often killed, and considered the fact that in Isis-held Raqqa, the blond would have been thrown to his death from the top of the punishment tower.
When a man arrived to take their order, there was the usual pained pause that I’ve become familiar with. Millennials take their sourdough seriously, but round my way Gen Z order like martyrs with an air of tremendous suffering.
‘Um, I think I could eat shakshuka. Do you have shakshuka? No? Sigh.’
Everyone was ‘naive’, according to these Dusty Knuckle revolutionaries. Though they teach in term time at various universities, in the holidays they meet up for protest marches around the world, and consider most other protestors unenlightened. ‘The Arab bros, all they’ve ever done is Palestinian protests. They don’t get it!’
One of their universities didn’t ‘get it’ either. While it had recently appointed a trans professor to some new gender studies course, the friends agreed that this only made things worse. A man they’d met on an anti-police march in DC was particularly naive because he campaigned against mothers being imprisoned. ‘He still thinks it’s important to keep families together!’ Cue more anxious-sounding laughter. ‘So cute!’
I looked over at my lovely son, who was reading Ian Seraillier’s The Silver Sword, about a family torn apart by the second world war. In the debate over the wedding fiasco, no one had mentioned the Israeli parents there or the unbearable pain and confusion that they must feel. Other mothers’ sons and daughters have been slaughtered. Now these mothers have lost their children over a choice of song.
The friends talked on about all the people who didn’t ‘get it’, and I didn’t worry much about what that ‘it’ might be. Some dismal bollocks about the need to overturn the West, break the code and subvert norms. But I worried about the poor boys and girls who are due to arrive this week in their
seminar rooms, and about the proud parents who have no idea that all their nurturing and chivvying has come to this.
I have in the past admired twentysomethings for their interest in politics at an age when I was mostly clueless. I still do. But if you have a set of views that you can’t question, and a group of friends who’ll disown you if you do, you’re not a political activist – you’re in a cult.
Comments