Death wish

Glasto cast a dark spell and I have some thoughts

Look, you’ve got to admit, the chants are catchy. Who amongst us hasn’t found ourselves mindlessly humming any one of the chants, hips swaying gently while preparing a batch of schnitzels? Ok maybe it’s just me, but c’mon, they have rhythm, they even bring drums to thump and costumes to flounce about in. And the lyrics, I mean, it’s advertising genius!

“Death death to the IDF!”

So simple, so contagious. So fucking festive.

And, much like history, it rhymes.

When the energy of a music festival adopts the language of violence, woven through funky beats that float over an ecstatic chemical-fuelled crowd, it’s hard to hold onto hope. After all, at the heart of this particular chorus, the latest in the endless twisted symphony of Jew-hate, is a death wish. On its surface it sounds like calling for the death of the IDF organisation, the industrial military complex etc etc. This is how some talking-heads on the BBC tried to Westsplain this death wish to its audience. But Einat Wilf has taught us to be alert to such shenanigans.

In reality this death wish, this rallying cry, calls to end the life of the young, brave and vibrant 18-22 year old Israelis, mostly Jews, but not all, who are conscripted into the army. Thousands and thousands of teens and young adults who put their lives on the line for their people, their nation, knowing full-well that their very bodies stand between their people, our people, עם ישראל, and those who want to see our obliteration.

Without the IDF, there is no Israel.

This is not a reality any Jew wants, but a reality thrust upon us by certain ideologies and the people committed to them, who simply cannot wrap their heads around sovereign Jewish existence in our indigenous land. Without the IDF people in Israel face what the hundreds of party goers faced at the Nova festival, what 1200 Israelis slaughterer on October 7 faced. For in those first few hours of October 7 there was no IDF, and as such we bore witness to a world without that line of defence.

So, when the throngs of sweaty mobs chanted “death death to the IDF” with wide smiles and dilated pupils, they were, whether they realised it or not, casting a death wish upon all those the IDF serves and protects, which is actually half the Jewish population in the world as well as many other people from many other cultures who call Israel home.

As I am living in a contracted universe these days, that is hovering very close to the realm of death, I find the celebratory call for it punctuated by clapping hands and pumping fists particularly grotesque. How can so many people be so oblivious to the meaning of the words they are uttering? How can so many be so callous? So damn stupid, simplistic and cruel? But that’s the power of a good ol’ fashioned chant. You can leave your thinking mind behind and simply join the parade, a parade fuelled by what I call algorithmic-hate-speed-velocity. Hate at this speed would make Dr Spock’s head spin! Hate-speed-velocity ensured that the death wish wafting from the mosh pit of Glastonbury found its way to the streets of my home town of Melbourne within a day. Just one day! And we Jews have no clever comeback, for we are not a people of pithy chants. Can you even imagine a group of Jews agreeing upon a chant? The prospect is almost laughable.

No.

We are a people of stories, but stories that inspire questions rather than give clear answers or happy endings. And our stories are not simple or short. Even our storybook is as think as a brick, and the commentaries and debates that come from it are many many bricks in length, enough to build an entire city! A city of words, of discussions, of arguments. We have no disposition for propaganda. It’s too blunt, too dogmatic and, well, that’s just not Jewish. Neither are we in the business of winning friends, never have been. And so we watch, aghast, as thousands cast their death wish, thousands call to see Jews as defenceless, vulnerable and weak. But we are not stilled or inactive. Not this time. We stand up and speak out in our complex, deliberative and nuanced way. That is who we are.

But what happened at Glastonbury was not complex or nuanced. What happened there is utterly shameful, a stain on human history, a moment drenched in some of the most repulsive inclinations of humanity.

I’d like to finish by channeling my darling husband who, if he could, would certainly say “Pull your fucking head in Glasto! Get your fucking shit together”.

Quite right my darling, quite right.