Does the Z in Gen Z stand for ‘zombies’?

Do you ever think that the Z in Gen Z stands for zombies? ‘Cause I kind of do. Or at least the ones who are pro-Hamas on college campuses, protesting Jewish-owned stores in malls or parading through the streets calling for genocide.

They come together in large groups. All of them are followers. They also don’t moan as much as they scream. However, like a zombie who has been dead and brought back to go after the living world, these Gen Zombies march to the same beat.

After a quick visit to the US and watching them do their thing, styled in their khaffiyas, masked with actual masks, it was clear that they were not only hiding their faces, but the truth. And boy, are these kids angry. I believe the therapy term is “projection.” And for those of us on the outside, it is quite clear that they are projecting the concept of oppression based on social media propaganda and assumptions.

If we think of the zombies like AI, without the I part, then we can see the basic algorithm to their angry madness. There is an oppressor and an oppressed. In America, that was clear for the Black Lives Matter campaign. The copy-paste takes a Western issue in American culture and inflicts it on a Middle Eastern conflict far away from home and definitely far away from reality.

In their version, the Palestinians are the oppressed and the Jews are the oppressor. And it is that simple. They literally see black and white. Which makes it all the more ironic, since that is somehow making this a race issue, and in fact being racists. Anyone who lives in Israel or understands Jewish culture is aware that Jews come in all colors and backgrounds, many kicked out of Arab countries over the last hundreds of years, and Arabs are not all dark-skinned.

The protesters claim a lot of crazy stuff. As I mentioned earlier, they are all followers, so they speak the same messages, one tweet at a time. In my brief encounter I heard the chant:

“Jews are doing genocide…from the river to the sea…,” you know the rest of that statement. Again we hear the zombies’ hypocritical anger. When I saw one of them holding a sign with “Free Palestine,” I made the silly mistake of engaging. In a calm voice, I said, “Yes, free Palestine…free them from Hamas.” My cute quip was quickly met with a barking-like noise from the zombie. Like one of those little lap dogs, which you always know to stay far away from….those dogs are nuts.

Before this war, I was convinced that climate change was humanity’s biggest mistake and would ultimately lead to our demise. Post-October 7th, it is the Gen Zombies who have taken over as #1 in that department. Their cruelty towards Jews and, frankly, to Gazans, is the destruction of society and the ultimate failure of free thought. They have gone from ridding the world of labels, to ridding the world of Jews. They prefer to decimate the world of the only democracy in the Middle East, so that a terrorist organization can run a dictatorship in Palestine.

We said never again.
The zombies say never, say never.

We celebrate life.
The zombies haven’t lived it.

We see the conflict as complicated and stale.
The zombies see it as a commercial between cat videos.

We mourn our dead.
The zombies are already dead. 

My words are harsh. Controversial. But they expose the truth that we keep looking for. As Israelis, we are dumbfounded by this generation’s choice to justify raping women, murdering innocent children and kidnapping elderly. I want to go back to when zombies only existed in myths and movies. When the next generation focused on non-binary issues and saving the trees. Where their free thought provoked change, rather than repeating history.

While we bury another fallen soldier, we continue to fight for our freedom, for democracy, for our lives. It breaks us; we will need a ton of therapy, but we are not zombies. We are not the walking dead. While our fallen return to the earth, they become the seeds of change, growing a nation of compassionate strong leaders. The zombies will follow each other to the ends of the earth, before they can end us.