A generation lost in hatred and historical illiteracy

This is the generation who couldn’t wait to take the knee over the death of George Floyd, but whose response to the barbaric slaughter of hundreds of people their own age is to say “Free Palestine”.

A woman holds placards identifying one of the Israeli hostages held by Palestinian militants since the October 7 attack. Picture: AFP

The Sun Also Rises is the first novel written by the giant of American literature, Ernest Hemingway. Published in 1926, in the wake of the Great War, it traces the lives of a group of British and US ex-pats as they wander aimlessly around Europe. Theirs was known as the Lost Generation (a term Hemingway credited to fellow author Gertrude Stein). It was a generation mentally, emotionally and morally lost. Hold that thought.

In truth, the book is far from one of my favourites, but there’s an exchange of dialogue I was reminded of this week as I watched with dismay and a heavy heart the brazen displays of anti-Semitism sweeping university campuses here and around the world.

In the scene, one of the main characters, a writer called Bill, is probing the financial misfortune of one of their group of friends, a Scottish war veteran called Mike.

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually, then suddenly.”

As I watched mainly white, middle-class privileged (in the truest sense of that word, not the co-opted, cheapened version) people parade themselves around as soft apologists for a declared terror organisation, I felt despair. How? How did we get here? Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.

Gradually in the sense that over the past several decades the world of tertiary education has become more woke, more self-absorbed and less about iron sharpening iron than providing safe spaces on campus where contrasting ideas can’t even meet, let alone go into a respectful, energetic battle.

A gradual decline and, as with most things of this nature, there’s no gatekeeper, and the squeakiest, most offended wheel gets the most oil. What’s been on display on university campuses since October 7 has been terrifying in its historical illiteracy, lack of humanity and ideological zealotry.

The generation who couldn’t wait to take the knee over the death of George Floyd, who use phrases such as micro-aggression (and expect to be taken seriously), who think a person who isn’t Asian wearing a cheongsam is an act of violent cultural appropriation. The generation whose response to the slaughter of 1400 people, many their own age, is to say “Free Palestine”.

The butchering of the largest number of Jews since the Holocaust on October 7 and the days following is the suddenly. Suddenly, we see how universities and many of their students respond. What they stand for. Students, defiant and disinterested in hearing another side. Administrations, slow to respond and inexcusably soft in their condemnation.

I was sent two emails an Australian university sent its student body after the terror attacks. I won’t name the college, but the first email was an initial pro-Hamas response to the slaughter. The follow-up? A sheepish “look, we’re sorry if we forgot to mention our Jewish students may have found that insensitive”.

University students around the world have been filmed ripping down posters of the Israeli hostages. They’re holding protests and talking about war crimes, while refusing to demand the release of the hundreds of hostages still being held in Gaza. Children, the elderly, again, young people their own age. Heads up, kids. Taking hostages is very much a war crime under international law.

And universities that champion free speech can’t seem to identify hate speech. Seemingly indifferent to calls for the eradication of the state of Israel and Jews; vile, hateful things being said every week.

Back to the gradually for a moment. This is the soft generation. Their grandparents fought type 2 diabetes, not Nazism. It was reported that (perhaps unsurprisingly) the University of Sydney Student Representative Council urged students to “stand against oppression … until Palestine is free”. Let me tell you one thing I’m willing to bet on. Not one of them would volunteer to go help the cause. Not one of them would give up their Uber eats, days at the pub and total freedom to go live in a place where being gay is an offence punishable by death, fewer than 20 per cent of women are allowed to work and more than 20 per cent of women are married under the age of 17.

Good luck wearing a bikini or your active wear in downtown Gaza. When I was in Israel a few short months ago, it was Pride week. Tel Aviv was alive, vibrant, and truly diverse. Guess how many Pride weeks take place in Gaza and the West Bank? As the cool kids say, I’ll wait.

I’ve been trying to remember anything like this during my own time of tertiary learning. I went to two universities, studying across a range of humanities-based courses. I recall disagreements. I recall the contest of ideas. I recall being exposed to things I vehemently disagreed with.

But this conflict in the Middle East, this visceral, existential attack on Israel, and on Jewish people the world over, seems to have ripped something open to reveal an ideological hatred that I don’t understand. It’s a good impetus to raise the voting age, to be honest. If your response to the fact that the Arab states are refusing to take refugees, that Egypt won’t open its northern border for the same reason, is “Israel’s committing genocide”, then sorry, you’re not intellectually agile enough to be in the conversation.

If it were 1400 young people barbarically slaughtered anywhere else in the world, if it were any other ethnic cohort, these same junior cowards, and the universities they attend, would be condemning the act and the actors.

My observation over the past two weeks is that in most cases, universities who have been supportive of Israel and its right to defend itself have done so grudgingly, and after the application of some pressure. Of course, they’d deny it, strenuously, but if the problem isn’t rooted in a latent anti-Semitism, then what is it?

A lost generation. Lost to self-obsession. Lost to a shameful academic trend that seeks to erase and reframe, rather than learn from history. Gradually is behind us, there’s no getting that back. But suddenly? Maybe, just maybe, the shock of seeing what higher education has delivered will be enough to provoke a change of course. I hope and pray it’s suddenly.