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Gen Z has an Israel problem Palestinians are the only victims that matter

'Here, Gen Z believes, is another apartheid regime to boycott and sanction' (Fatih Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

'Here, Gen Z believes, is another apartheid regime to boycott and sanction' (Fatih Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)


November 6, 2023   5 mins

It’s almost like a religious ritual. Every Saturday since 7 October, central London has swollen with protestors waving the Palestinian flag and chanting “From the River to the Sea”. For the impartial and curious observer, two facts are immediately striking. The first is not all that mysterious: the protestors are disproportionately Muslim. The second is more of an enigma: why are they so young?

For years, young people have tended to be much more pro-Palestine and anti-Israel than their elders. According to a poll conducted a few months before Hamas’s attack, American millennials are the first generation in history to sympathise with the Palestinians more than the Israelis. In Britain, 18- to 34-year-olds are also far more supportive of the Palestinians (23%) than the Israelis (only 7%) — almost the precise inverse of the 55- to 75-year-olds. This being so, at universities across the country, you will find students and academics calling for an Intifada and tearing down posters of the kidnapped Israelis.

The noisiest activists most attract our attention. But the whirlpool also sucks in those rubberneckers who just want to know what mantra they have to intone today. Silence, being “violence”, is never an option: on all sorts of issues, you need to have a view. Here, “intersectionality” provides a solution: instead of going through the laborious effort of selecting your stance on each issue à la carte, you can opt instead for the set menu: climate justice is racial justice is LGBTQ justice is reproductive justice is Palestinian justice. But “intersectionality” breeds conformity. If you dissent on any one of these issues, you risk suggesting to your peers that you dissent on the others — marking you out as a bad person.

And not just bad, but gullible, too. Supporting Israel, or simply having a more nuanced position than “From the River to the Sea”, is proof that you’re a brainwashed rube. TikTok is awash with videos promising to tell you what the conflict really means, and what’s being kept from your eyes by the powers that be. “‘Israel’ isn’t a country,” one of the more infamous infographics patronisingly explains. (Note the scare quotes.) “They are a settler colony.”

Since 7 October we have seen the invention and dissemination of these conspiracy theories in real time, and young people have disproportionately gobbled them up. A full 17% of Americans — already troublingly high in the face of all the evidence — think the official narrative about the attacks is a “false story”; among the 18-24 cohort, that number nearly doubles. One of Gen Z’s defining traits is a profound scepticism of established authorities who propagate “official narratives”. And Israel — partly because it is an American ally, and doubtless also because it’s Jewish — gets the full blast of this cynicism. As Dave Rich wrote in Everyday Hate, “the difference between racism and antisemitism is the difference between a prejudice and a conspiracy theory: and while prejudice is out of fashion for today’s youth, conspiracy theories are all the rage”.

Given that young people skew Left, the question of why they are so anti-Israel (sometimes to the point of being pro-Hamas) is partially a question of why the Left is so anti-Israel. And, as Noah Smith has argued, the Left’s strong attachment to Palestine is a consequence of the triumph of liberalism. With communism gone, and the old European empires dismantled, the Palestinian cause, with all its revolutionary and “anticolonial” accoutrements, offered a way out of “end-of-history ennui”. But this generic lust for activism is turbocharged among the young, for whom Israel has taken on the associations South Africa held for the Eighties generation. Here, Gen Z believes, is another apartheid regime to boycott and sanction, with its own oppressed ethnic minorities onto which contemporary concerns about race can be mapped.

Curiously, however, Israel is a much more diverse and multicultural country now than it has ever been, including when it was Romanticised by an earlier generation of socialist activists. The ubiquitous claim that Israel is a “settler colony”, often deployed to justify violence against Israeli civilians, fails to acknowledge that the majority of today’s Israeli Jews are of Middle Eastern and North African extraction, expelled from those lands against their will. If Israel is an “apartheid” state in any sense of the term, this is not along obvious racial lines: many Israeli Jews are indistinguishable from Palestinian Arabs. Calling Israel a “settler colony” also begs the question: a colony of whom? But none of this stops activists from countries where most Jews are categorised as “white” — and where Arabs are “non-white” — from imposing onto Israel those familiar racial and “decolonisation” dynamics. The Palestinian cause, in other words, is already packaged for Gen Z in a familiar language.

Zionism has always been about two key claims: first, that the Jews need a state of their own, and second, that this state should be in Palestine. After the Holocaust, many Jews and non-Jews alike were more than convinced by the first claim. The earlier converts to Zionism, who migrated in the thousands to Ottoman or British Palestine, were vindicated in their decisions; those who remained in Europe, no matter how they assimilated, were not. But the Holocaust is receding from memory: one of its survivors was among the slain on 7 October, and there aren’t many others left. And, in a symbolic nominal and chronological exchange, Nakba seems to be taking on some of the moral weight that the Holocaust once had, Israeli history starting in 1948 rather than 1945.

Like much of the new wave of anti-imperialist popular history, this offers the kind of subversive counter-narrative that many in Gen Z crave — resentful, perhaps, of hearing so much about the Holocaust. The Nakba becomes the other genocide, the one “they didn’t teach you about at school”. (It is perhaps striking that there is, to my knowledge, no agreed-upon name for the Jewish exodus from the Islamic world which it is contemporaneous with.) Pro-Palestine scholars such as Ilan Pappé deliberately craft parallels between the Nakba and the Holocaust: Pappé’s The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2008), a staple of activist reading lists, mistranslates part of David Ben-Gurion’s diary to give the false impression that the Jews in 1948 were preparing to gas the Arabs. There must be, in the eyes of those who view this substitution as total, something irresistibly compelling — something almost fable-like — about the idea of Jews becoming Nazis.

Gen Z, of course, are not the first generation to feel broadly hostile towards Israel. But what’s striking is the intensity of their hostility — something which can only be understood as part of the broader story of how political activism works post-2020, and how the Holocaust’s near monopoly on our understanding of evil has been challenged. Before, Israel could effectively sell a narrative that was highly appealing to young idealists — one of a downtrodden people who, emerging from the gas chambers, dared to assert their place in the world.

But as Israel’s power has grown, as it has shifted Rightwards, as the plight of the Palestinians has become more desperate, and as we move further in time from the Holocaust, that lustre has worn off. On the fundamental question of Israel’s right to exist, Israel is losing the battle for young hearts and minds. Instead, with their own claims to anticolonial resistance and racial victimhood, it’s the Palestinians, now, who are telling the better story.


Samuel Rubinstein is a History student at Trinity College, Cambridge.
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Bernard Brothman
Bernard Brothman
11 months ago

Hamas does not need to have a PR department. They can torture, murder brutally (perhaps you have seen the testimonies of a baby cooked alive in an oven in its home, or how families had parts of their bodies cut off while still alive), kidnap and sexually assault women and this seems to be all well and good as “by all means necessary,” Hamas can attack the “settler colonialist” Israelis, according to their supporters here in the West. I guess Hamas did not and does not need to sign the Geneva Convention.
Here is the US, I’m sure some of these young pro-Hamas protestors on our college campuses, would easily report you for misgendering someone or some other perceived micro-aggression. Yet calling for murder of Israelis and harassment of Jewish students is just fine and dandy.
You get an idea of what life would be like under these people when they come of age in the west and take positions in business and government. Totalitarian with punishment (perhaps modeled on Iran’s Evan Prison) for thought crime.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
11 months ago

Hamas is a barbaric terrorist organization that lines it own pockets from aid money and ensures its own safety in tunnels, while sacrificing the lives of its own peoples. It doesn’t even bother to deny that it doesn’t build bomb shelters. That’s the UN’s responsibility.

Phineas
Phineas
10 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

But well I suggest Hamas is finished in a matter of days or weeks. The October 7 repulsive murders of children, women and men was surely its suicide note Yet some 800,000 supporters of Hamas turned up to support them on Armistice day and maybe this signals a turning point at last for attitudes towards the Muslim community in Britain?

Nicholas Taylor
Nicholas Taylor
11 months ago

Where were the previous generation when Gen Z were growing up?

Mrs R
Mrs R
11 months ago

It looks like they were busy undermining their education, ensuring it was more about indoctrinating left wing favourite shibboleths, ensuring that a wide understanding of global history and current realities that didn’t support those positions was carefully hidden away.
Hence Gen Z think that Britain invented slavery, only the British ever colonised, that Christianity is evil, the only genocide was committed by Nazis (white) and white peoples are to blame for everything. While all people of colour have been oppressed by whites.
In 1915 Gramsci wrote that the only way of ensuring socialism in the west was by infiltrating institutions from education to media and by destroying Christianity.
That idea was embraced by other Marxists across academia and assiduously cultivated. Here we are. They dare to question nothing if it is deemed to come from the side of ‘virtue’ and ‘victimhood’.
Our young generation is being led into darkness by the Woke Pied Piper.

Ted Ditchburn
Ted Ditchburn
11 months ago
Reply to  Mrs R

Spot on. Happily the media is fragmenting and collapsing in influence (compared to social media) thanks to technology and the true liberalisation (communist, if you like) of production and distribution brought about by digitalisation of content.
I hope, as a real growndswell does seem to be growing amongst ordinary people for a comprehensive roll back of the anti-enlightenment , anti-rational ideologies like BLM, Aggressive Transgender advocacy, and support for blatant medieval scale terrorism etc., we may see a similar roll back of the broadly ‘wokey’ madness in schools first, then colleges and above all universities.

Chipoko
Chipoko
10 months ago
Reply to  Mrs R

“Our young generation is being led into darkness by the Woke Pied Piper.”
I love this! So true!

Katja Sipple
Katja Sipple
11 months ago

I did my job, and raised a responsible young woman who wants nothing to do with the vile leftists whose presence pollutes her campus.

Peter D
Peter D
11 months ago

If you take a look in the history books, there are plenty of massacres conducted by white groups. However, what conveniently gets ignored is that there is often an attack conducted by the non white group first. It was a different time, and no one had the luxury of being able to talk it out in expensive resorts. So if someone hit you, you hit back so hard that they won’t get up for a while.
Unfortunately what counts for a historian these days is someone who sits very comfortably in their university department away from all forms of harm and cherry picks events to suit their world view and conveniently ignores the rest, then applies modern concepts to a time where everyone thought very differently.

P Branagan
P Branagan
11 months ago

What a vile hate mongering propagandist contribution Mr Brothman. You’re an insult to the very concept of a full human being.

Oh! BTW I 100% agree with every word that Gerald Kaufman spoke about Israeli treatment of Palestinians in the Commons all those years ago. Israel was born in terrorism and has remained a terrorist state ever since. What the Israeli terrorists did to brave British troops in trying to keep the peace in the Palestine Protectorate was simply horrific.
Any British citizen that supports the racist Israeli state is spitting on the graves of those brave unfortunate British soldiers in the King David hotel in 1946.
Any US citizen that supports the Israeli state spits on the graves of those 34 US sailors on the USS Liberty sunk by the Israeli airforce in 1967.

Also I really like as many downticks as possible from the usual numbskulled brainwashed commenters.

Last edited 11 months ago by P Branagan
David McKee
David McKee
11 months ago
Reply to  P Branagan

Mr. Branagan, your intemperate outburst would disgrace the public bar of the Dog & Duck, let alone a respectable public forum. It may be par for the course at the Guardian but not, I suggest, for Unherd.

I think you owe Mr. Brothman an apology when you’ve sobered up.

Right-Wing Hippie
Right-Wing Hippie
11 months ago
Reply to  P Branagan

By your logic, any American who supports Britain spits on the graves of the 70,000 Americans who died in the Revolutionary War and the 15,000 Americans who died in the War of 1812. I guess we should have just left you to the Nazis.

sue vogel
sue vogel
11 months ago

I’d respectfully question your use of the word “logic” in respect of Mr Branagan’s post here.

Dougie Undersub
Dougie Undersub
11 months ago
Reply to  P Branagan

Yes, the terrorism of the Stern Gang was awful and unnecessary. We shouldn’t forget it. Nevertheless, you seem to be living in the past.
Here in 2023 there is only one question – do we want Israel or Hamas to win?
If Israel wins, will there be Jewish terrorism on the streets of Britain? No.
If Hamas wins, will there be (more) Islamist terrorism on the streets of Britain? Yes.
Question answered.

Oliver Wright
Oliver Wright
11 months ago

If Israel wins there will be more Islamist terrorism on the streets of Britain.

Samuel Ross
Samuel Ross
11 months ago
Reply to  P Branagan

You are back to front, friend.

Jerry K
Jerry K
11 months ago
Reply to  P Branagan

As it happens, a Jewish relative of mine was one of those Brits who died in the King David bombing. Remember that most of the middle east/Ottoman area was divided up by the Brits and the French along both rather arbitrary but roughly tribal lines. Palestine had many Jews and Arabs who had been there for generations. In most of these new countries, tribal divisions took their toll and resulted in dictatorships of varying severity for the stronger tribes. Without justifying terrorism, I would suggest the Irgun and and others were fighting the British in order to remove a foreign power. They were not fighting their neighbours, the Pal Arabs. The Arab countries and the Pal. Arabs both denied the original two-state solution and many Pals left on the understanding that the Jews could quickly be pushed into the sea or worse. When the Jews fought back, this led to the state of Israel which became and remains the only democracy in the region still today. It is worth noting that huge areas of land were also purchased at the time by the Jewish National Fund, generally from either absentee Ottoman landlords or proprietors who were glad of the money. Whilst not directly conferring sovereignty, this does entitle the owners to decide on the use of the land. Sadly the debate over solutions to the so-called Palestinian problem has in recent years veered away from the two-state idea due to the sworn hatred of all Jews by Hamas which makes such coexistence impossible. It is also Hamas’s hostility to Israel – now a separate state from Gaza – that has forced Gaza into becoming a #HamasOpenAirPrison. The only way to future peaceful coexistence must be a two state solution with safe borders, but while the Hamas and the widespread Islamist threat remains – the only route appears to be a fight to the finish – causing much pain to Israel’s and Gaza’s civilians. If Israel succeeds and neutralises Hamas and new and constructive political solutions are envisaged, peace could finally break out. If Israel fails, then, as many Islamists say, after Saturday, comes Sunday…

Frank McCusker
Frank McCusker
11 months ago

Hi Bernard, you are aware that the murdered babies story is of v doubtful provenance: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/despite-refutations-from-israeli-military-headlines-that-hamas-beheaded-babies-persist/3016167
One suspects though that you’re not a man troubled by too much doubt lol.

Andrew Fisher
Andrew Fisher
10 months ago
Reply to  Frank McCusker

I believe there is some doubt about this detail – but it is a detail. There is no doubt at all however that Hamas butchered and abducted civilians. It is rather strange, isn’t it, the lack of condemnation of this war crime, which that atrocious invasion by Hamas most certainly is, compared to Israel’s military actions, not targetting civilians, which are not.

The moral imbecility and utterly blinkered understanding of the world by much of the Left (anyone anti Western, just tickety boo) is utterly chilling.

Micheal MacGabhann
Micheal MacGabhann
10 months ago

Ridiculous conflations! You sound like the paramilitary wing of UH.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
11 months ago

Are young people really skeptical of official narratives? I find that difficult to believe. They have certainly bought into the most hysterical climate claims and they didn’t push back against Covid policies, even though they suffered more than anyone else. Schools are basically indoctrination centres – maybe they have always been – and antisemitism is the new thing they are supposed to support.

Martin Butler
Martin Butler
11 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Depends which official narrative you are talking about. Truth doesn’t care whether the narrative is official or not. Some happen to be true(climate), some half true(Covid), some false(transgender stuff). But you do need to look at the evidence.

John Riordan
John Riordan
11 months ago
Reply to  Martin Butler

All three of the things you mention here possess official narratives that are false.

Warren Trees
Warren Trees
11 months ago
Reply to  Martin Butler

What if the evidence is considered false too, or completely hidden from the public? Like Hunter’s laptop.

Martin Butler
Martin Butler
11 months ago
Reply to  Warren Trees

Its real conspiracy country round her isn’t it. Dear me!

Steve Jolly
Steve Jolly
11 months ago
Reply to  Martin Butler

I wouldn’t say conspiracy theories, rather that we are skeptics who don’t drink the government sponsored elite driven kool-aid. Take climate change as one example. I personally believe in the climate change science. It’s the best explanation we have based on the scientific evidence available, but I’m of course open to the possibility of other explanations or that future evidence and experimentation could definitively disprove climate change. In pure science, there is no such thing as proof. There are hypotheses that are tested against the evidence and retested. Any scientific theory or law can be disproved by the evidence, and no amount of evidence can ever change that.
It is one thing to accept the science and another to accept unscientific apocalypse scenarios about the world ending in twelve years. Those narratives are just as unhelpful as the so-called ‘climate deniers’ and possibly even less based in evidence and science. They are fictions being pushed by media and somewhat ironically, energy companies, who have already benefited substantially from government subsidies to develop and build wind and solar power, which come with their own environmental footprints. Further, it’s 101 level economics that profits will be greater if there are fewer sources and less competition for a particular good like energy, but lower when there are many sources and more competition.
You’ll find many on Unherd who recognize the legitimacy of climate science like myself who nevertheless question whether Netzero is realistic or wise given current technological limits. If you want to argue about climate on the basis of relative costs of actions and/or inactions, there are many here who would engage you. If you’re going to parrot nonsense propaganda from the media or cite Greta Thunberg and/or other ‘activists’ as credible ‘scientific’ sources, we’ll probably ignore you as we ignore them, unserious people whose thoughts are guided by ideology and social cues rather than independent thought and good sense.
There’s a reason this site is called Unherd. It’s not the place for mindlessly repeating whatever line the government and media has been feeding us. If you’re of that type, might I suggest the Guardian or the New York Times might be more to your liking.

Peter Lee
Peter Lee
11 months ago
Reply to  Martin Butler

I would suggest to all of you, do your own research. if you are a left winger don’t stay in your left wing bubble, read serious articles that are at variance with your own opinion. I think you may or may not then come round to John Riordan view. But at least you can make up your own mind. At a minimum you will stop labelling everything to which you disagree a conspiracy theory. Why do you think I’m here? ha ha

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
11 months ago
Reply to  Martin Butler

Young people have developed anxiety disorders because they think climate change is an existential threat. There was only one reason for young people to get vaccinated – to save granny from death. None of this is true.

Phineas
Phineas
11 months ago
Reply to  Martin Butler

Climate? What evidence?

Martin Butler
Martin Butler
11 months ago
Reply to  Phineas

No, there is absolutely no evidence of man made climate change – its all a big conspiracy put out by the deep state! Comments on Unherd are becoming a joke!

Peter D
Peter D
11 months ago
Reply to  Martin Butler

Settle Martin, most of us here accept that Climate Change is real, that humans have an effect. What many of us think is that it is not as apocalyptic as the media say it is.

Steve Jolly
Steve Jolly
11 months ago
Reply to  Peter D

Yes, this. The extremes at either end of the climate change debate both benefit from framing it as a binary yes/no question and both have been completely unhelpful to rational debate. It’s a complicated issue demanding a full and sober accounting of the costs of any and all possible actions and inaction balanced with human nature and the realities of what people can actually accomplish through collective action vs. what will result in war, death, and dystopia if attempted. Human behavior isn’t a variable anyone has control over, after all, and most of us here are worried about a scenario where in trying to solve a problem we instead create new problems that might well be worse than doing nothing, or worse still create a bunch of new problems while still failing to alter the climate situation in any meaningful way. I don’t think we should do nothing, but I don’t think it’s realistic to completely eliminate fossil fuels given current technology. It’s never useful to shut down debate and label everyone who disagrees as a ‘something denier’ or automatically a shill for elite interests.

Last edited 11 months ago by Steve Jolly
Pamela Watson-Bateman
Pamela Watson-Bateman
11 months ago
Reply to  Peter D

Do you agree with Obama’s legislation that CO2 is “poisonous pollution”? Sorry but this PhD-educated heretic understands that every plant on earth needs carbon dioxide to grow. The higher the level of C02 the healthier the plant. The earth’s climate continually changes. The amount of C02 added to the atmosphere in just one single day of the Mt Helen eruption was MORE than the entire amount humans have added since 1750. There is no need to stop using the fuels and technologies that have created the modern world. If you want to live in the Middle Ages don’t drag the rest of us with you.

El Uro
El Uro
10 months ago

H2O is even more “poisonous pollution”. We are lucky nobody informed Obama about that

Andrew Fisher
Andrew Fisher
10 months ago

Your claim about Mount Helens simply isn’t true:

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/which-emits-more-carbon-dioxide-volcanoes-or-human-activities#:~:text=For%20example%2C%20Gerlach%20estimated%20that,output%20for%20about%20nine%20hours.

There is no serious doubt that human beings are emitting much greater amounts of CO2 than in the past, and we have known that it is a greenhouse gas for about 150 years. None of that means that Net Zero policies are the right response.

As to your comment about CO2 being “plant food” – this is true but irrelevant. Water is also essential for all life – but you can still drown in it!

Charles Hedges
Charles Hedges
10 months ago
Reply to  Andrew Fisher

Freeman Dyson the great physicist first looked at modelling climate in the 1950s. The problem is complexity. What is modelled is an over simplified version of the World. Models predict hot spots from 20 degrees south and north of equator at altitudes of 10km but ther are cool spots.
The most important consumer of CO2 is phytoplankton. So how has phytoplankton varied in the last 150 years? In the Jurassic/ Cretaceous CO2 was 6 to 7 times what it is today which is why there was so much plant growth which enabled herbivores of up to 120 T to exist. Also the massive biomass in the seas was possible which meant growth was greater than decay so the organic matter was able to accumulate in the oceanic muds which led to formation of oil.
Climate does vary. Looking at the last 12,000 years I suggest the greatest threat to man was a cooling after a thermal peak. Thermal peaks cause peaks in agricultural production and human population. If the areas of the great food producing areas of USA, Canada, Ukraine, Russia, Argentina, Austarlia, New Zealand cooled by a 1 to 2 degrees and rainfall was reduced, the reduction in yield could cause mass starvation. Satellite images show vegeation in sub Saharan Africa has increased by 30% since the 1970s. Increase in CO2 increases root depth and resistance to drought.

Andrew Fisher
Andrew Fisher
10 months ago
Reply to  Martin Butler

Martin. If you are going to engage in debate, I suggest that at least read what debaters have actually said, which was not to deny climate change. However the world isn’t going to end in 12 years – and – official western policy or not – we are not going to achieve Net Zero any time soon. The Chinese have now admitted as much.

80% of the world’s energy is still derived from fossil fuels. It is cheap, reliable and portable. Think, even with a technology which is quite developed, such as EVs. The size of refuelling stations will need to be many times that of existing petrol stations. Think about it. And EVs cause huge environmental issues of their own (enormous polluting mines) not to mention supply ones, with western countries becoming more dependent on China.

And EVs are a relatively mature technology. We simply don’t have reliable and cosy effective alternatives for much else of the much vaunted “energy transition”, such as home heating. Agriculture is almost entirely dependent on fossil fuels, both for fertiliser and mechanisation. It will no doubt eventually happen, but not to these timescales.

What human beings will do instead is adapt. The Dutch aren’t drowning in their thousands by flooding – and interestingly this is also increasingly true of Bangladesh as it gets richer.

Last edited 10 months ago by Andrew Fisher
Charles Hedges
Charles Hedges
11 months ago
Reply to  Martin Butler

The hottest temperature was the Mid Eocene Thermal Maxima which was 5 to 6 C hotter than today.

Andrew Fisher
Andrew Fisher
10 months ago
Reply to  Charles Hedges

True, but humans hadn’t evolved in rose times.

Charles Hedges
Charles Hedges
10 months ago
Reply to  Andrew Fisher

About 7,800 and 7000 years ago it was about 3.5 C warmer than today. The dryiung of the grasslands and formation of desert led to migration of people to Nile, Tigris and Euphrates.There are also the mid Minoan, Roman and Medieval Warm Periods.

Peter Lee
Peter Lee
11 months ago
Reply to  Martin Butler

I would be pretty sceptical of your evidence of man-made climate change. None of the prognostications of the past 70 years have come true, not one, not even the extinction of the polar bear.

Walter Marvell
Walter Marvell
11 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

It is not a rational political response to Official Narrative. It is emotive primal responses to any and all perceived forms of ‘discrimination’ or non Equality. The Young bought into the Covid Lockdown because any form of targetted support (of Old/Vulnerable) was by its very nature discriminatory and so eugenic and Trumpian. The deranged Progressives running out Health Bureaucracy said so. The BBC also had focused very hard on the plight of non white health workers, the particular vulnerability of BAME multi generational homes and community language problems, further encouraging a mass nom discriminatory lockdown approach eorthy of Korean Pot Pan celebration. Diskrimination = social death/exclusion. They think in a herd and think like cultists.

John Riordan
John Riordan
11 months ago
Reply to  Walter Marvell

I don’t agree with this analysis. Younger people seized by the sort of thinking in question have absolutely no problem discriminating against Tories, Brexit supporters, climate change sceptics and trans-exclusionary feminists (or sane biological women, as they’re also known).

It’s true that there appeared to be an exception during the pandemic, but outside of that, the youthful distaste for property-owning boomers has remained alive and well. I can’t explain why the pandemic was an exception, except that it seems to be a general exception in which all layers of society seem to be oddly resistant to the now-revealed harsh fact that lockdown was the worst policy disaster in peacetime history.

Last edited 11 months ago by John Riordan
Martin Smith
Martin Smith
11 months ago
Reply to  John Riordan

The high level of compliance with the covid infringements is explained by a childish level of fear in a coddled population exploited by the work of social psychologists in nudge units broadcast by a willing media.

Walter Marvell
Walter Marvell
11 months ago
Reply to  John Riordan

Yes, of course, the negative flip side of what is a Manichean mania is that they – the morally pure Elect – have a licence to display hatred and intolerance toward those who stand in opposition to their worldview. So all those at the bottom/Oppressor end of their twisted order-Israel/Jews; rich wealth creators; Tories and Nationalist Brexiteers and terfs are all hated.

Deb Grant
Deb Grant
11 months ago
Reply to  John Riordan

They’re scaredy cats which we bred, cosseted and educated. They’ve been brought up only to know the aftermath of the Global Financial Crash, Brexit, Covid and Ukraine War. I’m mot sure how they missed all the fundamentalist Islamic terrorism though. In what parallel universe do they find that okay?

Last edited 11 months ago by Deb Grant
Walter Marvell
Walter Marvell
11 months ago
Reply to  Deb Grant

They have been instructed – Muslims are Top Trump Alpha Victims of White Oppressors. In the deranged corridors of the progressive disorder this means that Fundamentalist Islamic/Iran’s abuse of a Beta Victim Group…tbeir entire female population…must be set aside. Gays For Gaza – same. Its what happens with cult thinking. It is not supposed to be rational.

sue vogel
sue vogel
11 months ago
Reply to  Deb Grant

Mine aren’t. I used to get frustrated by their questioning decisions made in their best interests when they were growing up, but I’m mightily proud of them now. They can think critically and for themselves.

Susie Bell
Susie Bell
11 months ago
Reply to  John Riordan

The explanation for the lockdown enthusiasm was being able to stay in bed all day

Andrew F
Andrew F
10 months ago
Reply to  John Riordan

Reality is that most MSM still promote official covid narrative, so nothing was revealed to average person.
And nothing will change because it is in interest of all political parties, uncivil service, health officials and MSM to maintain that covid policies were correct but badly implemented by Boris and his crew.
Just follow covid inquiry direction to see that.

Andrew Fisher
Andrew Fisher
10 months ago
Reply to  Walter Marvell

This isn’t exactly a nuanced commentary! Lockdown policies were adopted in most, if not all countries, including conservative ones. I believe they were a wrong panicked reaction, but labelling and name calling of anyone supporting it anywhere “deranged progressives” doesn’t help or have any influence.

Steve Jolly
Steve Jolly
11 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Yes. Schools were always indoctrination centers. The first schools were adopted with both purposes in mind. The first modern public education system was established by one Napoleon Bonaparte in order to raise better soldiers and more loyal and patriotic citizens. Having taken power after the chaotic French Revolution, he was arguably one of the first to conceive of and attempt to establish a nation in the modern understanding of the term. A uniform, top-down public education system accessible to all was a tool to build national unity and loyalty to the state rather than loyalty to clan, family, or feudal nobility. Upon defeating him, most of the nations of Europe immediately copied his methods to build their own nation states. In the US, public education was gradually adopted slowly by governments at low levels largely on the basis of economic competition, and with the enthusiastic support of industrialists who needed workers who were literate but also compliant and accepting of authority, namely their authority. It remains a decentralized, disorganized, motley collection of local organizations and thus a somewhat different creature. The indoctrination here has tended to vary rather widely between different areas. Only recently has there been any uniformity to it, and recent events have it trending back the other direction, with local school boards facing angry parents being forced to push back against wokery and other nonsense while private schools that openly pander to one or another ideology have gained in popularity lately.

Charles Hedges
Charles Hedges
11 months ago
Reply to  Steve Jolly

Extremely well put.

Samuel Ross
Samuel Ross
11 months ago

Young and dumb, these scholars should be mugged by reality in a few years time. That said, parents should not send their kids to these ‘elite’ colleges, as they are plainly teaching kids how NOT to think.

Simon
Simon
11 months ago
Reply to  Samuel Ross

Too late, we thought reality would fix the problem some 10 years ago when this started emerging. In the end, they managed to bully and intimidate others into adopting their rules and beliefs. The same will happen here and I’m not looking forward to it. Interestingly though, Zoomers I know who haven’t been to university are actually really sound people.

Micheal MacGabhann
Micheal MacGabhann
11 months ago
Reply to  Samuel Ross

Better to be young and dumb than old and dumb.

John Riordan
John Riordan
11 months ago

That’s true. The problem is that there aren’t enough old fools about to support what you’re implying in this context.

Last edited 11 months ago by John Riordan
Deb Grant
Deb Grant
11 months ago

Young and foolish, older and wiser. Even less intelligent older adults have actual, real life experience, historical context and have seen what policies work and what don’t – and importantly, those which have unintended consequences. Less intelligent young people don’t.

Never mistake oldies without degrees for stupid – only 10% went to university in 1970: 5% women and 15% men compared with half today. Intelligence distribution hasn’t changed, so there are a lot of smart oldies without degrees and very average kids with degrees.

Charles Hedges
Charles Hedges
11 months ago
Reply to  Deb Grant

Most middle class people do not undertake dangerous work in arduous conditions and can chose to live in an ideological life. In a mine collapse, sinking of a trawler in a winter storm,fire and explosion, falling from a building or something falling on one brings one in tough with the physical reality.

John Riordan
John Riordan
11 months ago
Reply to  Samuel Ross

The danger is that ideology is mugging reality these days. You would think this would be impossible but it can be done – if, that is, the people responsible are prepared to pass off the increasing costs of doing so upon others. And that’s what the modern, woke-captured State does.

Jerry K
Jerry K
11 months ago
Reply to  Samuel Ross

Intelligence is not taught in universities. University, along with football for some, are many people’s earliest tribal experiences, where the difficulties of adolescence are transcended by the inviting smell of the herd. Wisdom takes rather longer to come forth and usually for different reasons…

Walter Marvell
Walter Marvell
11 months ago

No secrets here. Gen Z have been trapped and brainwashed by a quasi religious Leftist Progressive cult (now embraced by the UK Stare) throughout their educational upbringing & their smart phoned hyper anxious lives. They have been made to feel terror at any discriminatory thought..and to exalt the Victims and hate the Oppressors the Equality Ideology identifies. Non White stateless Palestinians sit with George Floyd/American blacks at very apex of the Hierarchy Victim Pyramid. Jews have somehow warped into Rich Western Colonizer/Settler Whites. It is only good to see the impact of the ideology so shockingly unmasked.

Irene Ve
Irene Ve
11 months ago
Reply to  Walter Marvell

Palestinians, Arabs, Jews all originate from neighbouring Semitic tribes; they are genetically related peoples who simply developed different cultures and culturally diverged over time. Therefore, stateless Palestinians have the same skin hue as the Jews and, in general, they look very similar when dressed in the same clothes – the Progressive cult are yet to learn about it. The difference between them is cultural/religious and, as usual, the progressives celebrate and support all the things failing – states, cultures, individuals.

Walter Marvell
Walter Marvell
11 months ago
Reply to  Irene Ve

Yes I of course agree. But we are talking about a mind virus and derangements which cloud all reality. Why else do affluent educated liberal Western women totally ignore and deny sympathy to the brave women of Iran??

Grainne Jordan
Grainne Jordan
11 months ago
Reply to  Walter Marvell

Do they? Ignore & refuse to sympathise? I don’t think they do. Maybe they don’t hear about Iranian women much on social media. However, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case was in the MSM news a good deal in the UK and her release greeted with much celebration. Use of a phrase like ‘mind virus’ makes me wonder what you’ve been smoking.

Peter Lee
Peter Lee
10 months ago
Reply to  Grainne Jordan

There are exceptions to every rule.

Mark Burks
Mark Burks
11 months ago
Reply to  Walter Marvell

..and of Afghanistan.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
11 months ago
Reply to  Walter Marvell

Do they?

Tom Lewis
Tom Lewis
11 months ago

“But “intersectionality” breeds conformity. If you dissent on any one of these issues, you risk suggesting to your peers that you dissent on the others — marking you out as a bad person.”
Neatly sums up why “TERF’s” get it in the neck.

Julian Farrows
Julian Farrows
11 months ago
Reply to  Tom Lewis

Yes, those who believe in intersectionality hate their own who step out of line more than they hate their opponents – the very definition of cult-like thinking.

Tyler Durden
Tyler Durden
11 months ago

Excessive Internet engagement from the youngest age has produced a form of psychosis in this generation – digital psychosis? – to which unchallenged left-wing propaganda is added to their mental fragility to produce sociopathology on so many political and cultural questions.

J. Hale
J. Hale
11 months ago

This display of antisemitism is the predictable result of letting millions of Muslims immigrate to the UK. I have never understood why, when colonial powers left Asia and Africa, they then allowed mass immigration from the very regions they fled.

Warren Trees
Warren Trees
11 months ago
Reply to  J. Hale

Cultural suicide. It’s the only term that makes any sense.

Steve Murray
Steve Murray
11 months ago
Reply to  J. Hale

It was on largely economic grounds. In the 60s, Asian immigrants were required to work in occupations in the North of England which the local indigenous populations were starting to shun, and prepared to work more cheaply. Earlier, Afro-Caribbean immigrants were encouraged to relocate to the UK (principally the South) for similar purposes. This process tended to start with a male bread-winner, which then entitled him to bring his extended family to these shores.
I’m not being judgemental with this point, simply putting forward the rationale behind immigration at the time. Now, there’s a more general issue with population replacement.

William Cameron
William Cameron
11 months ago

The problem is education. They are ignorant. They dont know that Israel was founded by the United Nations. They dont know that Arabs ands jews live and work together in israel.
They dont know that Hamas murders gays. etc.
They dont know that Gaza and the West bank are self governing. Not run or controlled by Israel.

Rick Frazier
Rick Frazier
11 months ago

Yes. And as described in a recent essay by Victor Hanson, they don’t know “…900,000 Jews were forcibly exiled from Muslim countries in the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia after the 1947, 1956, 1967 wars.”

“Most fled to Israel. Do they now live in “refugee” camps administrated by the UN? Are they protesting to recover their confiscated homes and wealth in Damascus, Cairo, or Baghdad? Do Jews on Western television dangle their keys to lost homes in Damascus a half-century after they were expelled?”

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
11 months ago

And they don’t know that the leaders of Hamas are millionaires who live lives of comfort, luxury, and safety in Quater with their ill-gotten gains. They don’t give a hoot about the average, disenfranchised, impoverished Palestinian. This should be obvious from the fact that they have made no attempt to provide any kind of bomb shelters or other protection for civilians, or any kind of aid for victims of a war they created. Then there are the other lot of wealthy Palestinians who go to America, make a ton of money, go back to the West Bank and build huge, ostentatious mansions with swimming pools, tennis courts etc.etc. Their decadent lifestyle is dubbed the Miami of the West Bank. These are the things that Gen Z, apparently, is ignorant of.

Last edited 11 months ago by Clare Knight
Emre S
Emre S
11 months ago

I believe Left-wing movements to be malleable. Ideas loudly proclaimed to be undisputable now by Leftists would be laughable 20 years ago. Today we’ve got a Left that pretty much miraculously hates the working man and loves the large corporations and things that benefit them. So, that must be about how long it takes to bend reality to power.
Mao created a Left-wing movement to escape accountability for his failures. The Red guards manipulated by him murdered anyone who stood in Mao’s way accused of not being sufficiently Left-wing, including ritually eating the livers of their teachers.
I can foresee a Left 20 years from now that will manage to oppose Islam yet passionately “care about the underdog”. Not being anchored in reality is like a Jedi power, it can do unbelievable things.
Be careful what you wish for though. Once that monster is out of the bottle it’s hard to tell what it will do. Mussolini (named after the radical revolutionary Benito Juárez) was once a Left-wing firebrand and the editor of the socialist party’s flagship publication “Avanti!”. The rest is history – as they say.

Last edited 11 months ago by Emre S
Alex Carnegie
Alex Carnegie
11 months ago
Reply to  Emre S

Your last point is spot on. We know roughly what Gen Z thinks but what about Gen Alpha? Especially the boys who seem to rebelling against being told by progressives they are innately toxic. Who will their prophet be? Andrew Tate? Someone even more startling? Things can always get worse and often in the most unexpected ways.

Martin Butler
Martin Butler
11 months ago
Reply to  Emre S

Yes but he moved seriously right wards. It’s childish to try and make out all the bad in the world comes from ‘the left’. (What exactly does ‘left’ mean anyway?) Just as it’s infantile to make out that everything ‘right’ is bad. Just because someone says they are a women doesn’t mean they are. Similarly, just because someone says they are ‘left’ doesn’t mean they are.

Last edited 11 months ago by Martin Butler
Deb Grant
Deb Grant
11 months ago

Gen Z need unbiased history lessons. The Holy Land, or Palestine, was a desert wasteland, where Arabs lived in medieval poverty. Then industrious Israelis came along and with their productive, entrepreneurial labour and western money, they transformed it into a thriving, prosperous democracy.

Q. What have the Palestinian authorities and Hamas done to improve the lives of their citizens in the last 75 years, having rejected what was effectively a 2-state solution proposed by UN in 1947.

A. They’ve used money from wealthy Islamic states to bomb Israel and use their people as human shields in Gaza, keeping them poor and putting them in constany mortal danger.

What they haven’t done is come to the negotiating table, haven’t agreed to a 2-state solution and haven’t initiated a cease fire.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
11 months ago
Reply to  Deb Grant

Well said and true.

Vijay Kant
Vijay Kant
11 months ago

It is the political Islam that has Israel problem. Gen Z is just its useful idiot along with leftwing media. The political Islam is fiercely antisemite, and its explicitly stated goal is to eliminate Israel. Left unchecked for decades, it has infiltrated government institutions, academia and students unions. Its messages and instructions are spread around through mosques and madrassas networks. The Palestinian cause is just a tool it uses to justify its violence against Israel. It is clever at disguising itself as a victim. Ignore it at your own peril!

Last edited 11 months ago by Vijay Kant
Andrew F
Andrew F
10 months ago
Reply to  Vijay Kant

There is no such thing as apolitical Islam.
Government and MSM push this narrative to justify mass immigration of Muslims into Europe.
So, they claim, there are few bad apples in Muslim community but great majority will integrate and contribute something more than terrorism.
However, just observing Muslims on streets of London tells you that is nonsense.

Peter B
Peter B
11 months ago

Leaving aside the current situation (which has made all debate highly emotive), I think there’s certainly a tendency in some groups in many Western societies to sympathise with whoever is seen as the underdog – and an assumption that the underdog is so because they have in some way been held back by the current dominant group.
My recollection from the mid 1970s was that Israel was often seen as the underdog then – a small, vulnerable country surrounded by large and powerful bullies. But it’s much harder to take that view now given Israel’s military strength and dominance.
And Israel also had more left-leaning governments in those times. Not the case today.
So there’s a natural tendency for left-leaning, anti-authoritarian minded people to drift across to seeing the Palestinians as being the victims. I don’t find this trend surprising. Again, I’m not claiming that the facts necessarily justify this – simply that it’s a predictable change.
Let’s hope the Hamas crimes provide a sort of “hard reset” where some people stop and look at the facts and take a more balanced view.

Jon Barrow
Jon Barrow
11 months ago
Reply to  Peter B

‘Re ‘the underdog: ‘blank slate’ ideas, produced in the Enlightenment, are both widespread in the West and wrong. Dependent on this ‘blank slate’ idea of natural equality, ‘social justice’ oppressor-oppressed categorisation morally judges differences in group outcomes then demands action to remedy the differences (which may be natural, cultural, etc). A clear example to me is radical feminism, which contorts itself over male-female equality of outcomes (across all domains) while trying to maintain special dispensation for women in areas where men tend to – for genetic reasons – outperform them (sports, very competitive/physically demanding work, etc.). A lot of the West’s energy is wasted on struggling against unequal realities when we could eg be trying to mitigate them.

Peter B
Peter B
11 months ago
Reply to  Jon Barrow

True. But the instincts to back the underdog and want “fairness” seem to be almost inherent for some of us and it requires some education and experience to rationalise them away. And this stuff doesn’t get challenged enough.
We do indeed seem to be at the mercy of people who believe in “absolute rights” (human rights, targeting absolutely zero road deaths regardless of costs/other deaths, etc) and don’t balance these against other rights and responsibilties. It’s getting hard to maintain any sense of balance and almost impossible if you don’t at some point engage with the “other side”.

Jon Barrow
Jon Barrow
11 months ago
Reply to  Peter B

Right. The only thing I’d add is that it’s virtually impossible to have a genuine discussion with ‘ideologically possessed’ people. They don’t debate in good faith, are not primarily interested in the pursuit of truth. In the latest (woke) iteration there’s a tendency to judge what you say as if it’s just automated talking points generated by your intersectional identity, they seem not to recognise the distinctiveness – ‘spark of divine’ if you like – in every individual being.

Martin Smith
Martin Smith
11 months ago

Once either Hamas or Hezbollah or whatever assemblage of Sharia might yet emerge from the Islamic expansion, establishes the new Caliphate, not only from the river to the sea but from the Seine to the Thames, it will at least bring to a conclusion our decadent and cowardly cultural suicide and ‘Gen Z’ and its ludicrous cultural and intellectual preoccupations will be no more.

Last edited 11 months ago by Martin Smith
Sayantani Gupta
Sayantani Gupta
11 months ago

If anyone saw Ben Shapiro debating at the Oxford Union with a rabid, ill informed and brainwashed panel of activist students, one just wonders why Oxford Union isn’t dismantled immediately.

Wynn Wheldon
Wynn Wheldon
11 months ago

Tik Tok is an arm of the Chinese communist party. Simples: attack the enemy – liberal democracy.

Derek Smith
Derek Smith
11 months ago
Reply to  Wynn Wheldon

But who fills TikTok with various flavours of bullshit and permits their children to watch? That’s totally on the West, not the Chinese. To blame them is an abrogation of our collective responsibilities as parents.

Peter Joy
Peter Joy
11 months ago

The headline might not be Mr Rubinstein’s doing – but would it not be more accurate, and less solipsistic, to say that Israel has a Gen Z problem?
In the years to come – given the crucial importance of western political, diplomatic, military and economic support in maintaining Israel’s continued existence – Gen Z’s attitude to the State of Israel is likely to be more of a problem for the State of Israel than it is for Gen Z.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
11 months ago
Reply to  Peter Joy

I think outside of America there’s very little support for Israel’s actions anymore amongst most countries general populations, although most governments still pledge their loyalty

Gorka Sillero
Gorka Sillero
10 months ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

Funnily enough, I’m still to find anyone who would rather live in one of those Arab hellholes rather than in Israel

Edward K
Edward K
11 months ago

They should show these Generation Z what Hamas did. Since most of them are visual based staring hours into their smart phones, show them unfiltered video of the atrocities committed.

If they still want to go out and protest after that then so be it, but for right now they are picking sides without all the information.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
11 months ago
Reply to  Edward K

So true.

Katja Sipple
Katja Sipple
11 months ago
Reply to  Edward K

I quite agree. I had suggested on this very Website a few weeks ago that we send the woke Gen Z crowd to Israel to assist in the cleanup process. Seeing (and experiencing) is believing, and the scenes of destruction and devastation ought to convince even the most vigorous naysayers.

Katja Sipple
Katja Sipple
11 months ago

The Left has always been antisemitic. Its intellectual father, Karl Marx, was a rabid antisemite who equated “the Jews” with capitalists—the epitome and personification of evil not only in his mind, but also in the ideology called communism which he birthed. The vile German terror group, the Red Army Faction led by Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, sympathised with Palestinians abe identified itself as a part of the radical Left. Baader and Meinhof also hated Jews with a passion, and praised the Holocaust. In the following decades, the 1980s through 2000, the Left had to be a bit more careful, and prevailing antisemitic attitudes were disguised as criticism of Israel’s domestic and foreign policies. However, the hatred of Jews combined with a profound envy was always just beneath the surface.

“One of Gen Z’s defining traits is a profound scepticism of established authorities who propagate “official narratives”. “

As somebody who deals with members of Gen Z on a daily basis, I find the defining traits to be incredible naïveté, perhaps even stupidity, short attention spans, and an inability to evaluate complex topics from multiple angles. They can only view the world through one lens, and are either too lazy, too cowardly or intellectually incapable to look at the facets.

Last edited 11 months ago by Katja Sipple
David Harris
David Harris
11 months ago

…two facts are immediately striking. The first is not all that mysterious: the protestors are disproportionately Muslim. The second is more of an enigma: why are they so young?
Fortunately the younger you are the less likely to vote you are.

James Kirk
James Kirk
11 months ago

Interesting that Gays for Gaza have appeared coincidentally with the destruction of high buildings there. Interesting that some of our young men volunteered to fight in Ukraine and some for ISIS compared with very few earnest young progressives heading for the Middle East today.

Colorado UnHerd
Colorado UnHerd
11 months ago
Reply to  James Kirk

Let’s raise the funds necessary to send Gays for Gaza straight over, so they can help out personally. I’m sure they’ll be put to work immediately — in prison, assuming they’re not summarily executed.
Embarrassed lesbian here who cannot believe the ignorance of some gay people. Perhaps they’re the same unthinking faction that has embraced gender ideology.

Last edited 11 months ago by Colorado UnHerd
Susie Bell
Susie Bell
11 months ago

The Jews were given their land thousands of years ago by God! Not a fashionable enabler.
Many Palestinians have had their lives stolen by Hamas and it’s useful fools, as their lives, businesses and jobs have become untenable in Israel.
A tiny bit of land, of no great natural wealth, cannot be allowed to exist in a sea of Mohammidism? Why are Muslims so insecure?

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
11 months ago
Reply to  Susie Bell

Most of us don’t believe in fables I’m afraid. Claiming ownership of something because you’ve read it in a book is nonsense

Samuel Ross
Samuel Ross
11 months ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

Go back to sleep, Billy Bob

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
11 months ago
Reply to  Samuel Ross

I may as well. My dreams will be as historically accurate as anything in the bible

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
11 months ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

Sweet dreams!

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
11 months ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

Exactly.

Steve Jolly
Steve Jolly
11 months ago

I agree with the author that this is very disturbing to see and I’m shaking my head at people’s stupidity. That said, these are mostly young people, and what do we know about young people? They lack experience. Their brains are not fully developed. Their judgement is questionable enough they’re not allowed to legally rent a car in many places. They’re easily stirred to rash words and rash actions. If you’ve seen something stupid being attempted or done on some Internet video, chances are that person was no older than thirty.
So, some of this, perhaps the majority, can be attributed to young people being ignorant and inexperienced in general, which is doubly true of today’s overprotected highly sheltered western children who are fed a steady diet of G-rated Disney fluff and hovered over by helicopter parents ready to shield them from the unpleasant and the ugly. Even so, prior generations have their own shame as well. How disco was ever popular I will never understand. I will also never quite grasp how so many people thought ‘peace and love’ was a viable political philosophy. The Beatles once sung a song that accosted revolutionary young people for ‘carrying pictures of Chairman Mao’. Not old enough to know whether that actually happened or not, but it would be about the moral equivalent of supporting Hamas. Going back farther, there are the fools who tried to build communal religious societies during the 1800s, and then there’s the mobs of the French Revolution who first defined what mob violence looks like. Young people are ever drawn into whatever the latest political, social, and cultural fads happen to be and easily stirred to rash words and rash actions. More often than not, their strings are being pulled by older, smarter people whose motives are far less pure.
Over time, they will perhaps realize this, and adopt the more cynical views that predominate among their elders. They may regret some or all of their actions and views in the future. Moreover, they’re young people who haven’t yet become fully acquainted with the notion that the world isn’t fair and most attempts to make it more fair end up making things worse. Give them time. Once they live long enough to see how things work, they’ll probably wise up like previous generations. I would be far more concerned if it were a bunch of old people out protesting. That would be a sign of things getting pretty bad, IMHO.

Samuel Ross
Samuel Ross
11 months ago

To these loony leftists, everyone’s a Nazi except for the ACTUAL Nazis.

Emmanuel MARTIN
Emmanuel MARTIN
11 months ago

I strongly support Israel, its right to self defense, and its right to preemptive defense against would-be jihadis.
But you need a reality check. Israel is a First World country, with the highest living standards in the world. Its inhabitant enjoy top level wealth, healthcare, civil liberties (including a right for their people to have a national democracy, unpolluted by unelected Brussels courts).
Due to the ruthless efficiency of Tsahal and Mossad, they enjoy a high levle of security Israel is safer for Jews than Londonistan.. Jewish people are very represented in the upper classes of western societies, and AIPAC is the most powerfull lobby in Washington.
Shoah has been over for almost 80 years, and the idea that jews are “an oppressed minority” or “victims” is now blatantly couterfactual, and has been blatantly counterfactual for all of GenZers life. I am hapy jews aren’t victims anymore, and I am happy to see them sending payback at jihadis.But the “jews are victims” narrative from the 60s does not cut it anymore.

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
11 months ago

Is AIPAC what I and my gang call ‘Kosher Nostra’ by any chance?

As at 18.54.GMT. I am correct?

Last edited 11 months ago by Charles Stanhope
Warren Trees
Warren Trees
11 months ago

You are ignoring about 4,000 years of history here. As God’s chosen people, they will always be hated by the world.

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
11 months ago
Reply to  Warren Trees

3000 max, more like 2700.

harry storm
harry storm
11 months ago

3400 to 3200 would be more accurate. 2700 is inaccurate.

Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
11 months ago
Reply to  harry storm

I am sorry but that is a wild exaggeration and NOT backed up by any archaeological evidence.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
11 months ago
Reply to  Warren Trees

That’s not why they’re hated, ask your average anti-semite why they hate Jews.

harry storm
harry storm
11 months ago

Correct. And Oct. 7 never happened.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
11 months ago

Yes, except I wouldn’t feel safe being a Jew with all the anti-semitism that abounds. It’s always been there and now those people feel emboldened to crawl out of the woodwork. Ironically, a vast majority of anti-semites don’t really know why they hate Jews, they’re just a convenient scapegoat.

Geoff W
Geoff W
11 months ago

I don’t buy the “subversive counter-narrative” which demonises Israel.
I don’t buy the subversive counter-narrative which lionises Donald Trump as the true winner of the 2020 election either.

Julian Farrows
Julian Farrows
11 months ago
Reply to  Geoff W

I agree with your first statement; am on the fence with your second. Something fishy happened to the votes on election night. Trump was way in the lead until the counting went ‘dark’. When it started working again, Biden was leading. Could have just been a glitch, but with American politics being the way it is today, you just can’t be entirely sure.

Mike Michaels
Mike Michaels
11 months ago
Reply to  Julian Farrows

The vote was stolen. If not by Ballot box stuffing then certainly by the suppression of The Laptop from Hell.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
11 months ago
Reply to  Mike Michaels

Rubbish.

Geoff W
Geoff W
11 months ago
Reply to  Julian Farrows

It’s not unknown for tallies to swing back and forth during counting. It can be influenced by which votes (i.e. from which areas) are counted when.
My main reference points are Australia and New Zealand, because I’m most familiar with them. A case in point is the recent NZ election, where the prospective government had a couple fewer seats at the final declaration of the poll than had looked likely on election night. The difference was significant in that it made a three-party coalition necessary for a change of government, whereas previously it had looked like two parties would have the numbers. But as far as I know, nobody on the right or the left is alleging a conspiracy.
From the little I know of the US, genuine swings during counting would seem quite likely, given the chaotic, non-uniform electoral system there.
My basic point (which you got; I’m just reiterating it) is that one man’s conspiracy theory is another man’s revealed truth.
My attitude to the 2020 US election is primarily influenced by the fact that no court has made a finding of significance. Most people who discount that just extend the conspiracy theory to the courts.

Last edited 11 months ago by Geoff W
Clare Knight
Clare Knight
11 months ago
Reply to  Geoff W

Exactly.

Derek Smith
Derek Smith
11 months ago
Reply to  Geoff W

Trump did tell his voters not to use mail-in ballots well before the actual vote, but to turn up on the day. That’s out there in the public record, and yet no one references it, even his critics. Conservatives tend to prefer voting in person on the day itself – a civic duty, if you will.

That is one explanation for why there were suddenly more votes for Biden when the boxes were opened. This is regardless of ballot-stuffing, both real or imagined.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
11 months ago
Reply to  Julian Farrows

Yes you can.

P N
P N
11 months ago

Why is the left wing narrative so much more attractive to the young than a right or even centrist or nuanced narrative?

Colorado UnHerd
Colorado UnHerd
11 months ago
Reply to  P N

Not sure if your question is rhetorical. If not, I’d say critical thinking is much diminished in today’s young people; they lack not only the maturity to see nuance and context, but the skill, thanks partly to brain-rotting technology, but also to parents and teachers who don’t instill intellectual discipline. Combine that with an outsized need to fit in and the impulse to rebel against older generations — longtime tendencies of the young — and you end up with …. this.

P N
P N
11 months ago

Thank you although that doesn’t fully explain why the skew is left not right. What is it about leftism that particularly appeals.

Colorado UnHerd
Colorado UnHerd
11 months ago
Reply to  P N

“Woke” intersectionality — which blows right past (in order) liberal, left and progressive — is, as the writer of this article says, a predefined menu of stances. No original thought required. I’m not sure there’s an equivalent on the right; I’m not conservative, but I’ve found more sanity and discriminating thought on that side of the aisle since “woke” arrived. I’d be interested to hear what others think.

Last edited 11 months ago by Colorado UnHerd
Clare Knight
Clare Knight
11 months ago

Woke is a meaningless word that’s projected onto anything a person doesn’t like.

Albert McGloan
Albert McGloan
11 months ago
Reply to  P N

After a history teacher made the case for the Parliamentarians she asked her class of teenagers if any of them would’ve supported the Royalists. She seemed surprised that none said they would, but then she never made the case for the Royalists, so why would they? People send their children to schools staffed by folk they wouldn’t invite to dinner and are surprised their children end up as blinkered, prissy zealots.

Nicholas Taylor
Nicholas Taylor
11 months ago

Is it rather a Gen Z problem? Writing in the Times, 6 November 2023, Trevor Phillips comments “Most people in Britain balance belonging to several identity groups” and “problems arise when one attribute starts to dominate all others” adding, perhaps wishfully, “in spite of our own wishes” (who is the implied ‘we’?). I have lived long enough to see that history is more like long cycles in weather than the march of progress, even if its arc bends towards something that I tend to think has depended up to now on a steady decrease in the cost of energy.
Looking at the situation in Palestine, I find that:- the state of Israel has the right to exist and defend itself; Jewish settlements are acts of theft, and incidentally one researcher has concluded that preservation of property and condemnation of theft is the moral principle most subscribed to; conditions in Gaza are intolerable and fertile ground for extremism; by placing its god above all aspects of human life, Islam lends itself to the sort of violence we saw on 7 October; by its adherence to its Law and equally imaginary divine ordination Israel lends itself to the kind of implacable reaction we are seeing.
I perceive also that the two sides have more in common in mentality and behaviour, than either with Europeans and possibly with Americans. A caveat is that the settler mentality has deep roots in America too, and according to historian John Mearsheimer “Israel and the USA are joined at the hip”. Conversely, the Palestinians, while nominally Arab, are unloved by the wider Arab world. Both Israel and ‘Arab’ Palestine are subject not only to these asymmetrical outside influences but also to internal exceptionalisms like Haredim and Islamism.
The history of endless conflicts and outside meddling in the region since 1948 or even earlier is well known. You may ask yourself: Do I approve generally of Israel as in principle a democratic liberal secular society? Would I have a clear conscience if I were Israeli? Would I be content to be a Palestinian? Can one deal rationally with Gaza while it is ruled by fanatics sworn to extinguish their neighbours, and who seem to put little value on their own people? If that is all clear as mud, you are getting the picture.
I mention in passing that when I visited Israel in 1987 I was collared, and later more-or-less befriended, by a doctor from New York who was quite explicit about wanting to see the Palestinians, I quote, “driven into the sea”. I know that’s a few years ago. Have feelings changed since then?
A situation that seems fundamentally intractable is at least interesting. I suppose if Gen Z conforms to Phillips’ single attribute model then, if it is not apathy, a condition unlikely in a generation painfully aware that it has no prospect of a home or a decent job or any future it can foresee, then it is inevitable that it takes the line of least resistance and of minimum complexity. 

Last edited 11 months ago by Nicholas Taylor
Dominic A
Dominic A
11 months ago

Indeed – lest the elders (of which I am one) get all superior about ‘kids these days’, they might recall Bader-Meinhoff/IRA/Weathermen/BLA/KKK/Shining Path/The Order/Red Brigades/JLA/Actione Directe….and at the same time the Millenials can read up on Mao’s Red Guards.

Derek Smith
Derek Smith
11 months ago

That is a great comment, Nicholas. I particularly liked this line – which is totally quotable:

“I have lived long enough to see that history is more like long cycles in weather than the march of progress, even if its arc bends towards something that I tend to think has depended up to now on a steady decrease in the cost of energy.”

Geoffrey Kolbe
Geoffrey Kolbe
11 months ago

“….The second is more of an enigma: why are they (the chanting Muslims) so young?”
I offer an ‘obvious’ answer that many of them were not born in this country – indeed, are not legal residents of this country….

Peter Lee
Peter Lee
11 months ago

I would suspect it is for the following reasons:
1.Palestinians are seen as the underdogs. 2. Gen Z have not been taught to do any critical thinking or research and look into the situation for themselves 3. From interviews it would appear that many protestors do not even know about Oct. 7th. 4. It would seem that the protests are not spontaneous but being sourced and managed Thus all the Palestinian flags and prefessionally produced placards.

Last edited 11 months ago by Peter Lee
Oliver Wright
Oliver Wright
11 months ago

‘resentful, perhaps, of hearing so much about the Holocaust’
Something in that, I think.And for that reason, I think the proposed Holocaust Memorial in Westminster is a really bad idea, likely to do more harm than good.

Ted Ditchburn
Ted Ditchburn
11 months ago

It isn’t the Palestinians telling a better story it is the ‘Anyone-But-Britain/Israel/France/Germany/USA and etc” types in the public sector and civil service and amongst the sorts of ‘Progressive’ (self cert)people whose grandparents lauded Societ Russia in the 30s and 50s, and whose parents waved Mao Tse-tung’s Little Red Book in the 60s and 70s.
After each of these episodes we have luckily had some leaders who come along and whether by luck or judgement articulate the real desire amongst most people for our enlightenment values and intellectual tradition to be reasserted.
Thatcher and Reagan obviously spring to mind, but there are others.
I feel there is a real groundswell amongst ordinary people (however one defines them we all know who we mean: Not AC Grayling, Alastair Campbell, Gary Lineker, or Owen Jones) for another reassertion of those enlightenment, and Western,values and ethics, beliefs and duties that have been the main things driving forward World History in the last few centuries, not just European.
It’s why so many Far East Asians or Southern Asians,can come to Britain and find a home and fit in well, and want to fit fit in.
Until Islam has a reformation like Christianity did in medieval times, and God knows that was a bloody enough process, to separate religious power and authority from state power and authority, it is difficult to enough Muslims arriving here being assertive enough about British/Western values to counteract the ones who seem to despise them.

Frank McCusker
Frank McCusker
11 months ago

Could the author kindly comment on this cartoon:
https://www.cjpme.org/pr_2023_10_16

Frank McCusker
Frank McCusker
11 months ago

SOLUTION 1: The only logical political solution is a 2-state one.
However, Israel does not want that, and has not done so since 2004 –
see Dov Weisglass’ infamous “formaldehyde” quote:

Ariel Sharon’s senior adviser, Dov Weisglass, clarified Israel’s
position when he admitted: “The disengagement from Gaza is actually
formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary
so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians
… this whole package that is called the Palestinian state, with all
that it entails, has been removed from our agenda indefinitely.”

See: https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-180624/

SOLUTION 2: The only logical military solution is to kill and / or
ethnically cleanse over 2 million Palestinians in Gaza. Behind the
scenes, Israel of course fancies the job – see:

https://www.972mag.com/intelligence-ministry-gaza-population-transfer/

Unfortunately for Israel however, the US and other Western allies have
weak stomachs, and once you get to circa 20 – 50,000 dead Palestinian
civilians, the clamour grows for “talks” and a settlement. Even
though, as 1 above reveals, there no longer is anything to talk about.

All that’s left is the prevailing approach of the last couple of
decades – periodic platitudes about a 2-state solution while an “acceptable level of violence” continues – essentially a “kicking the Arabs down the road” policy.

This is a recipe for long-term stalemate and increasing polarisation.

Not optimistic.

Last edited 11 months ago by Frank McCusker
Paula Fields
Paula Fields
11 months ago

w

Walter Schwager
Walter Schwager
10 months ago

So what are you suggesting should be done about “the desperate plight of the Palestinians”? That causes most of the anti-israeli sentiment.

Paula Fields
Paula Fields
11 months ago

I am not sure its just intersectionality that breeds conformity. I have been disappointed with the women who critique gender identity ideology. We shared on twitter as if a ‘community’ and how bitterly (and justifiably) they have complained about cancel culture.
But there support of Israel is just as conforming as any intersectional left millenial. They don’t have any grasp of history (thinking it all began on 7th October), they think indiscriminate bombing and denying civilians water is not Israel’s fault and can’t bring themselves to condemn the risk to infants who will suffer disease first – if not killed or left parentless). And when you try and debate with them then they say calling for a ceasefire is a hate crime – and try to cancel you, shut you down. Its ironic.
For many of them their islamaphobia is paper thin. I have had people say Israel must win so we don’t get Shia law imposed in this country. This is a ridiculous view that makes no sense. The biggest danger at the moment to this country is the failure to allow space for different viewpoints. This perhaps is why the young are less and less sympathetic to Israel’s narrative – they don’t trust it. They don’t trust the USA, UK, Canada or Germany to seek a just solution.
I was brought up to be completely sympathetic to Jewish people and to Israel. I hadn’t even heard of Palestine.hen g Tradually you learn about the illegal settlement in the West Bank where there is no Hamas and you learn about the suffocating seige of Gaza. Israel, the USA and the UK is not winning hearts and minds in the west but on the Arab Street they are building contempt.

Walter Schwager
Walter Schwager
11 months ago

Israël’s new right-wing government basically wants to confiscate the West Bank, Palestinians be damned. Can anyone deny that?

D Walsh
D Walsh
11 months ago

I’m sure Samuel Rubenstein would

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
11 months ago

I think Israel has a lot more to answer for in that West Bank than Gaza.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
11 months ago

This is the problem. The PA is much more moderate than Hamas, and their reward for this is for Israel to build ever increasing numbers of settlements on the West Bank

Stephen Walsh
Stephen Walsh
11 months ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

They are not ever increasing. They have been there for decades and it would be wildly impractical to try to dismantle them now – dismantling the ones in Gaza didn’t do a whole lot for Israeli security. And Mahmoud Abbas is not exactly a centrist dad. He is a Holocaust denying corrupt dictator.

Last edited 11 months ago by Stephen Walsh
Peter B
Peter B
11 months ago
Reply to  Stephen Walsh

But they are increasing, aren’t they ? And Netanyahu had agreed with his coalition partners to build many more West Bank settlements, hadn’t he ?
Billy Bob wasn’t asking for existing settlements to be dismantled. He made an interesting and valuable comment. I realise it’s unfashionable to look for any balance or centre ground right now – but the alternative is extremism – and on both sides.
Historical note: I guess the Israeli Jews who left settlements in Gaza had to abandon them. Palestinians at various points had to abandon their homes.

Juan P Lewis
Juan P Lewis
11 months ago
Reply to  Peter B

No, they are not increasing in area. Almost all of them were established before 2000. Amihai, approved in 2012 consist of about 230 settlers who used to live in Amona, an outpost dismantled by Israel itself.

Settlements have increased their population, but that’s normal, because the population of Israel and of Palestine are increasing.

The only other two approved in 21 century (Rechelim and Brukhin existed before 2000. In 2005 Israel evacuated all settlers and all soldiers from Gaza. So, in terms of area occupied, settlements have contracted in 21 century (Israel also left areas A and most of area B (40% of the WB, the productive, the other 60% is almost empty and barren).

The idea of Israel as a perpetually expanding state is only peddled by propagandists and people without a clue.

Juan P Lewis
Juan P Lewis
11 months ago
Reply to  Juan P Lewis

Btw, the vast majority of Israeli settlements are close to the green line. They could be annexed by Israel and the Palestinians would have more than 90% of the West Bank.

Or, they could be incorporated to the Palestinian state, something that Fayyad proposed, but the Palestinian leadership rejected, because they want no Jews.

Paula Fields
Paula Fields
11 months ago
Reply to  Juan P Lewis

Israeli authorities advanced plans for 6,300 housing units in Area C ….

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
11 months ago
Reply to  Stephen Walsh

They are increasing though. Jewish settlements on the West Bank are still being built today

Shoel Silver
Shoel Silver
11 months ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

If every house is a “settlement”, then yes. If a settlement is a community of houses, then no.

Peter Buchan
Peter Buchan
11 months ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

Precisely so.
The level of emotive, lightly packaged, low-resolution analysis and comment here is…well, just more of the usual, really; linear framing of, and solutions for, highly complex non-linear issues. So very…Judeo-Christian.
The following is not a judgement, but simply an observation: It seems to me that “Hamas” – the name, the movement, the strategies, the tactics – represent an emergent Idea, rather than a “targetable organization over which (military) victory can be achieved”. What is the “idea”, then? It is that 2.3m people cannot – will not – be contained and/or “farmed” in the way Israel and its Western backers have sought to do – whatever the posited justification/s may be. Period. Reframed: until such time as a sustainable political solution is found this kind of will keep on happening, every so often, whether the inmates’ representatives, political or martial, are named Hamas or any other word they care to select, or not.
If history teaches anything it is that these kinds of Ideas can outlast any single, and sometimes even multiple, generations. The greater question is exactly how much appetite a now right-leaning Israel, and the emerging multipolar world system, has for escalation. Seems we will find out soon enough, but I think few are taking this seriously enough.

Warren Trees
Warren Trees
11 months ago
Reply to  Peter Buchan

So you believe that a people who proudly demonstrate their blood thirsty, demonic, savage behaviour should have a place to call their own? The ones who film their savagery and call for the extermination of Jews. Do you not question why no other Arab country even wants them? Without this reckoning the issue will not be solved.
And your comment about “until such time as a sustainable political solution is found” shows your understanding of Islam is dangerously misguided, as there is no distinction between politics and religion in Islam. When the only acceptable solution to is eliminate your enemy, how in the world do you “negotiate” with that?

Last edited 11 months ago by Warren Trees
Peter B
Peter B
11 months ago
Reply to  Warren Trees

Perhaps they should if they truly are all as you say ! That way they would all be contained safely in a place where you need never go. The alternative is spreading them around and presumably putting more people at risk.

Peter Buchan
Peter Buchan
11 months ago
Reply to  Warren Trees

Your reply is as lightweight as it is ahistorical. Where have you been since 1948?
Making this about “Islam” is an inflammatory red herring for this particular discussion. This is mostly about land and the right to live – or continue living – on it, and for whom. Go look up these terms: Irgun, Stern Gang and Hagenah. Some inconvenient facts:
70% of Gaza residents are refugees of the Nakba, and 50% of them children. Where were all the “democracy” lovers when Hamas won a fair election and Israel and the West shut Gaza down overnight.Sure, Islam has problems in and of itself, no serious thinker or observer doubts that. But look around: so does Western atheist materialism as it edges ever closer to full blown nihilism. And to deny that the Zionist ideal has been captured by a fundamentalist and assertive religious right with a dream of implementing the Yinon plan is dangerously naive.

Last edited 11 months ago by Peter Buchan
Charles Stanhope
Charles Stanhope
11 months ago
Reply to  Peter Buchan

Perhaps you could give us a précis of the YINON Plan. Few on here will have heard of it sadly.

Doug Mccaully
Doug Mccaully
11 months ago

Do you think the reason why Generation Z are more anti Israel than their parents might be because Israel is treating the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank worse than they treated their parents?