Young Radicals? Gen Z, Gaza, and Genocide

Akil N Awan examines the reasons behind the generational divide in attitudes to the conflict in Gaza.

Student groups protest in Central Park, New York 6 May 2024. Photo: Carlos Chiosso/Zuma Press Inc/Alamy

Bob Dylan’s 1963 song, Masters of War, is the angriest of his career by far. Written in the wake of US President Dwight Eisenhower’s farewell address in 1961, which warned of the creeping dangers of a Military-Industrial Complex, and the Cuban Missile Crisis the following year when the world narrowly averted nuclear Armageddon, the song seethes in righteous anger at the callous disregard for life by the warmongers bankrolling conflict. Anticipating accusations that a 21-year-old songwriter might have the audacity to critique his elders, Dylan wrote,

“How much do I know

To talk out of turn

You might say that I'm young    

You might say I'm unlearned

But there's one thing I know

Though I'm younger than you

That even Jesus would never     

Forgive what you do”

The last seven months of Israel’s slaughter in Gaza, in response to Hamas’ deadly attack on 7 October, has prompted a similar political radicalisation amongst young people in the US, compelled to speak ‘out of turn’. Their sympathy with the plight of the Palestinians, their moral outrage at Israel’s conduct, and damning condemnation of their government’s unflinching support for Israel, have been markedly different from those of their parents and older generations.

From heckling political leaders and disrupting public events, to mass peace marches, widespread university protests, and even tragic self-immolations, young people have expressed indignation at their government’s apathy towards, and even complicity in, what they believe is an unfolding genocide. “I will no longer be complicit in genocide…This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal…Free Palestine!” declared 25-year-old US Air Force serviceman, Aaron Bushnell, before setting himself ablaze outside Israel’s embassy in Washington DC.

Bushnell’s actions sit at the most extreme end of the spectrum, but young voices everywhere have attempted to shame their leaders into action. During a March fundraiser for Biden’s re-election campaign, former President Barack Obama rebuked one of the protestors interrupting the event, saying “[you] can’t just talk and not listen”. The young protestor retorted, “Obama, I’m listening to the UN, the International Criminal Court and testimony from the Palestinian journalists and civilians inside Gaza enduring a genocide. The question is why aren’t you?”

The wave of campus protests that have swept across 60 universities in the US, resulting in the arrests of nearly 3,000 students, are the strongest signs of this stark generational disjuncture. Their appeals have been met by authorities with derision, condescension, defamation, and most surprisingly, brutal policing. Following the NYPD raid on Columbia’s Hamilton Hall - barricaded by student protestors, the NYPD Deputy Commissioner revealed a ‘smoking gun’. Holding a widely regarded academic textbook, he triumphantly declared: “A book on terrorism…there’s somebody…but they are radicalizing our students.” NYPD’s Chief of Patrol followed up asking, “Who is funding this? There is an unknown entity who is radicalizing our vulnerable students. Taking advantage of their young minds.”

Trying to pin the blame on outside agitators who have somehow radicalised young minds is a cynical and obvious strategy, which aims to delegitimise the students’ cogent positions. It also seeks to divest students of agency, by painting them as vulnerable, naïve kids, brainwashed by TikTok and ‘woke’ professors.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Young people have consistently been more critically informed, and more ethically engaged than their elders, with their protests representing “the conscience of a nation speaking through [its] kids”. Moreover, their courageous stance, which comes at immense personal cost and threatens to jeopardise their education, future, and physical safety, has already partly fulfilled its purpose by shifting the needle on Gaza. Indeed, the tide of US public opinion now seems to be playing catch-up, shifting ever closer to the indignant and prescient outrage of the young. How did young people foresee what their elders are only now realising?

Part of the answer lies in inhabiting very different media ecosystems. Millennials and Gen Z have long bypassed mainstream news media, who they dismiss as archaic gatekeepers, that rather than speaking truth to power, are instead servile to power, serving more as stenographers than journalists. And they have a point. On Gaza, US mainstream news media have largely failed their audiences, uncritically amplifying Israeli governmental or military narratives while simultaneously diminishing Palestinian civilian suffering. Indeed, anti-Palestinian bias remains endemic. CNN, for example, has faced serious internal backlash over skewed editorial policies, leading to tendentious ‘pro-Israel’ coverage of the conflict. Perhaps the most egregious example involved the patently false story of ‘beheaded babies’ on 7 October, reported uncritically by most major news media outlets, and of which President Biden incongruously claimed to have seen photographic evidence.

In many cases, this undue deference to Israeli narratives fails to equip audiences with necessary contextual or historical knowledge to make sense of current events. A recently leaked ‘Gaza memo’ from the New York Times restricted the use of terms like  “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing”, despite the fact the UN International Court of Justice (ICJ) “found it plausible that Israel’s acts could amount to genocide”, or that renowned scholars of genocide have warned of Israel’s conduct using such terms. Even more problematically, NYT journalists were instructed to avoid using objective terms including “occupied territory” or “refugee camps”, even though these terms possess legal status and are recognised under international law. The memo also warned journalists not to use the word “Palestine” “except in very rare cases”.

Most deplorably, however, Palestinians have been consciously and systematically erased or dehumanised throughout the conflict. A New York Times headline from 9 January read: “9 Israeli Soldiers Killed in Single Day, Underscoring War’s Cost”, and in the process instantaneously erased the 23,000 Palestinians killed up until that point. Faceless, nameless, and clinically reported on in the passive voice, Palestinians simply die without allusion to cause of death or perpetrator. “Five-year old Palestinian girl found dead after being trapped in car with dead relatives” read a CNN headline describing the killing of young Hind Rajab and her family, after their car was first targeted in an Israeli tank strike before the survivors were raked by machine gun fire.

Young people have largely avoided being swayed by these media framing biases precisely because their news media consumption differs so drastically from older generations. Relying on social media platforms, they have effectively bypassed mainstream news media gatekeepers. In the US for instance, almost half of Americans aged 18 to 29 regularly get their news from TikTok. The effects of this generational shift have been profound on young people’s understanding of Israel’s war on Gaza.

On the one hand they have tried to understand the roots of the conflict for themselves, posting “explainer” videos, “mind-blown” epiphanies, or stories of unlearning and personal growth with fellow users on a range of topics, from the historic ethnic cleansing of Palestinians during the Nakba, to US support for Israel that hinges on AIPAC lobbying of US politicians, or repudiation of Zionism after birthright trips to Israel. This also has the effect of undermining the oft-heard and morally incapacitating refrain that the conflict is ‘complicated’ and requires deep understanding before an opinion can be formed. And they are indeed remarkably well informed, even if detractors like Hillary Clinton, condescendingly dismiss them as not knowing “very much at all about the history of the Middle East, or frankly about history”. Student protestors at the London School of Economics, for example, recently harangued the prominent Israeli historian Benny Morris, quoting at length from his own deeply problematic writings, in protest at his invitation to speak on the conflict. Morris chose to respond to this scrutiny of his past work by stating “I’d rather be a racist than a bore”, which was probably not the intellectual win he thought it was.

On the other hand, young people have engaged directly with Palestinian voices, from al-Jazeera correspondents on the ground, to local citizen-journalists like Motaz Azaiza, Plestia Alaqad, Bisan Owda, and Hind Khoudary, reporting from within Gaza while trying to survive. These raw, unsanitised accounts have allowed young people to witness and vicariously experience, often in real time, the brutality of Gaza’s devastation. And it is not only Palestinian voices on social media that offer a window into Gaza’s hellscape. IDF soldiers, armed with smartphones, have helped to document their own abuses and human rights violations in unsanctioned social media posts, much to the chagrin of Israeli military censors.

Although a seasoned historian of conflict, even I have been caught emotionally unprepared for the torrent of sheer horror unleashed by Israel. Surreal and unfathomable obscenities, like the Palestinian prisoner bulldozed to bloody mush while his hands and feet were still zip-tied; or the father forced to collect and carry the dismembered body parts of his precious children in a plastic shopping bag like some obscene offal; or stray dogs squabbling over greedy mouthfuls from a young girl’s bloated corpse churned up by a tank and left to fester in the sun; and myriad other scarring images – are all indelibly seared into my mind. Young people have also borne witness to this utterly harrowing depravity as it intrudes, uninvited, into their everyday lives through social media feeds that do not switch off. In stark contrast, graphic imagery of this nature has been glaringly conspicuous by its absence from sanitised mainstream media reportage, effectively cocooning older audiences from the visceral reality of the carnage unfolding.

As the fog of war gradually lifts, the unbridled brutality of Israel’s scorched earth policy in Gaza has been revealed through a flurry of damning revelations, making it impossible to ignore Israel’s wanton disregard for civilian life. Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, for example, has been directed by an AI targeting system operating with only cursory human oversight, and which employed algorithms that coldly countenanced an appallingly high rate of civilian casualties as ‘acceptable’ collateral damage. Similarly, Israel’s confident claim to have killed ‘14,000 Hamas terrorists’, while being unable to provide even a ballpark figure for civilian deaths, is unsurprising considering that the IDF had designated areas of Gaza as ‘Kill Zones’, and many of the ‘terrorists’ killed were in fact civilians whose only ‘crime’ was crossing an invisible line drawn by Israel.

Other figures point to the true horrific toll extracted from Gaza since October 7: 203 humanitarian aid workers killed – greater than had died in the rest of the world combined in any of the last 30 years; 103 journalists killed, representing over 75% of all journalists killed in 2023 worldwide; 492 doctors and other healthcare workers killed; only 12 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals remain even partially functional; 62% of homes and 80% of schools and all 12 of Gaza’s universities severely damaged or destroyed. Amidst this backdrop, as the Palestinian death toll approaches 35,000 victims, and with a staggering 85% of the total population of Gaza forcibly displaced, and over 1.1 million on the brink of an Israeli-engineered famine, Israel has well and truly lost the propaganda war with young people.

In a leaked recording, Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) lamented “we have a major, major, major generational problem…  in the issue of the United States support for Israel, it is not left and right, it is young and old. And so we really have a TikTok problem – the Gen Z problem.” It is easy to understand the consternation of Israel advocacy groups, who vastly outspend pro-Palestinian groups on social media platforms, and yet, young people have continued to grow increasingly more critical of Israel, evincing scepticism at its claims, and often mocking Israel’s ‘hasbara’ (‘explaining’) efforts as comical. TikTok's own analysis of hashtags posted by their users, and those of Instagram and Facebook, reveals a staggering preponderance of pro-Palestinian support, that has largely been a product of growing anger with Israel’s conduct.

Voter polling in the US has corroborated this widening intergenerational gulf. A December poll revealed that 18-29-year-olds were twice as likely to sympathize with Palestinians than they were with Israel. In stark contrast, the 65+ cohort were almost 6 times more likely to sympathize with Israel compared with Palestinians. Significantly, some of these generational trends defy lazy assumptions based on identity politics alone. Most strikingly, young American Jews have both led and been at the forefront of many of these protests, taking their place amongst a sea of diverse angry young voices, despite being disingenuously labelled ‘self-hating Jews’ by detractors.

But perhaps the biggest reason for young people’s divergent views is that they have sought to understand Gaza’s plight within their own liberal, progressive worldview; one steeped in a broad intersectional activism that draws astute linkages between different struggles, and seeks to dismantle multiple structures of oppression in the fight for social justice and global equality. "The use of passive voice when a Palestinian is killed, the use of passive voice when a Black person is killed by the police – passive voice is reserved for the marginalized" explained young, progressive US Congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. The same intersectionality was all too apparent when a baying crowd of all-White student counter-protestors at the University of Mississippi confronted a lone black female pro-Palestine protestor with racist monkey sounds and imitations.

Whether it be police reform, racial equality, corporate greed, climate change, indigenous rights, decolonisation, reproductive rights, or struggles around gender and sexuality, young people see these issues and more as inextricably interwoven. Tackling them in concerted ways is fundamental to the world they wish to shape for the future, even though it sometimes confounds and angers their detractors. “Has Greta Thunberg Betrayed the Climate Movement?” read an apoplectic Der Spiegel headline, condemning her support for Palestine.

Attempts to castigate or silence young voices, including arresting protestors, cancelling valedictorian speeches, doxxing, blacklisting and threats to their future employment, and most recently, the draconian clampdowns against non-violent college students by heavily armed riot police, have not dampened the swell of youth solidarity with Palestine. If anything, it has strengthened their resolve further, with anti-war positions galvanised by outrage over the curbing of First Amendment rights of free speech and assembly.

Young people have been at the forefront of most of the great social justice struggles of the past century: struggles that were largely portrayed at the time as ‘radical’ by those invested in maintaining the status quo. Indeed, young people’s dissenting voices have always been on the right side of history, precisely because they have the most invested in the future to be forged. This is a self-evident truth, even when their youthful exuberance, seething anger at intransigent governments, and sometimes inchoate and naïve radicalism, threaten to tarnish the righteous causes that animate them. “One side's right, one side's wrong. We're on the side of the Viet Cong!” chanted many student protestors at the height of the Vietnam War in a mirror of the problematic slogans that have occasionally been heard at campus protests today, but which do not invalidate the moral clarity of the broader movement.  

The current campus protests sweeping the country first emerged at Columbia University – an institution that has long been vaunted as a bastion of radical student protest. Columbia itself celebrates this activist legacy, marketing itself as “a far different place today than it was in the spring of 1968,” when New York police violently quashed the demonstrations. Ironic, considering that it is once again clamping down on non-violent student protestors, many of whom have been summarily suspended, evicted, or arrested by police at the behest of university administrators.

Young people were on the right side of history in 1968, when they protested Columbia’s involvement in weapons research during the Vietnam war. They were on the right side of history in 1985 during the Columbia Blockade, when they protested the University’s investments in Apartheid South Africa. In the midst of emerging reports of mass graves discovered around three Palestinian hospitals, with hundreds of hastily buried victims – some still zip-tied and evidencing signs of torture, students are demanding the University divest from Israel and weapons manufacturers. They are on the right side of history today, even if their elders cannot yet see it. History will vindicate them – it always does.

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Akil N Awan is an Associate Professor in Modern History and Political Violence, and Director of the Conflict, Violence, and Terrorism Research Centre (CVTRC) at Royal Holloway University of London. He is on X: @Akil_N_Awan.