Post-dialogue and Bloody Flags

Grainy footage of original Operation Ripped

Round I

In the Junior Common Room at SOAS, commonly known as the School for Organized Anti-Semitism, a group of hunched hooligans with sour expressions of violent intolerance and inherent anger entered with an evil status quo-debilitating ambition. After standing suspiciously beneath the array of flags strung up the room in anticipation of tonight’s Eurovision event, the group sprang into action. One member of this cult, a young unshaven man of Middle Eastern origin, cut the bottom half of the Israeli flag in a jagged vehement move with scissors obtained from Jihadist sources. The rest of the members held their ground, with an air of belligerence dripping off from their impassioned stares. The deed was done, applauded by a lone individual in the room-an anti-Semitic agent/non-student who had infiltrated the school’s premises.

The shocked expression of the two students sitting beneath the flags was manifested in their barely audible disapproving voices. “That’s so rude,” one of them whimpered, his eyes hurt at witnessing human nature’s cruel disposition up close and personal. “That’s so rude, man.”

Immediately, a man in a tweed jacket broke through the group’s ranks, who had mastered the age old military formation of “crocodile fashion.”

He stared in barely restrained anger. “Fuck off,” he growled to the Middle Eastern man. “Fuck right off.”

The firebrand of the group addressed him with authority and patronization that belied her minuscule size.

“Why?”

“How dare you do this?”

“How dare you put up an Israeli flag, a flag of apartheid.”

“This is not how things are done, if you had a problem you should have come and spoken to me about this.”

“To do what, give you a platform for justifying why you have a flag that is synonymous with crimes-”

“There are Israelis that go to this school!”

“Any Israeli that puts up that flag is a Zionist and is not worth arguing with.”

“What you are doing now is engaging in post-dialogue!”

“Post-dialogue? What society are you from?”

“The Eurovision society.”

“The Eurovision society. Right, exactly. I will not have ‘dialogue’ with someone who sees no qualms in putting up the Israeli flag in the Junior Common Room. Let me tell you one thing: dialogue doesn’t fucking work. And this university is supposed to be a safe place for students, some of who came from Palestine and had to cross through Israeli checkpoints just to get here, not to mention the harassment they face in their daily lives.”

“This university is supposed to be a safe place for all the students, including those from Israel-”

“This is an apartheid flag, it is the flag of occupation and ethnic discrimination-”

Here, members of this Eurovision society, whose life concerns ultimately revolve around shit music contests and political correctness, began to form their own ranks. One of them, with ostentatiously gold shimmering paint slathered on her body as a reflective body armor was joined by her comrade, a sweet young thing with hearts painted on her cheeks. Tweedman took heart from this display of duty, and tried a different track.

“You could have written to the Eurovision society, and taken up your problem with Israel with them,” he sneered.

“We took a decision. That decision was to take down the flag. And put it in the bin.”

“You can’t just rip something that doesn’t belong to you!”

Here the Middle Eastern man quipped, “I can actually. It’s my land.”

The firebrand continued with her tirade. “There are Palestinians, those who have fought to come to university here, who have to look at that flag and see it dripping in blood!”

The tweed jacket twat spluttered. “I know people who would be offended by the Palestinian flag.”

Another pugnacious member of the offensive group flipped her red communist hijab and said calmly, “We’re talking about two different dynamics. Can’t compare the colonized with the colonizer.”

The group arranged themselves in single formation, and marched their way out of the room in solemn silence at accomplishing a thorny operation.

Round II

Tweedman and his posse clucked their tongues in condemnation at the actions of the radical group. He organized a mission to delve into the rubbish bin in order to fish out the tattered remains of the Flag That Shall Not Be Named. Using their expansive military budget, they affixed the tatters to the hanging torn part with staples.

Informants in the JCR relayed to the offensive radical group the retaliation of Tweedman and Co. The group was not to have it. A quick strategy was thought up and once again they marched down to the JCR, where the Eurovision event was about to begin. Firebrand stood under the flag, and proclaimed loudly, “What the fuck is that still doing up there?”

Tweedman rushed to the flag’s defense.

“Listen,” he began, noting his weakened position with surprising calm. “We are between a rock and a hard place. There are Israelis in this room that have complained about the torn flag.”

“I don’t care. We are not moving until that flag is taken down.”

“This is just a matter of difference in opinion.”

“It’s not about that. I am talking about realities on the ground, and that flag is a symbol of violence. Don’t dare pretend to engage in a discussion when you don’t know the facts of what’s happening.”

“Why are you being so aggressive?”

“I’m not the one that said to fuck off twice. You did. Take that flag down.”

He relented. “Fine, that means I have to take down all of the flags. Is that what you want?”

“I don’t care. Do whatever you have to do to take it down.”

As they teach at SOAS, the nation-state, especially in the Middle East where European colonialists invented it, is an evil phenomenon. Additionally, they teach you all about fake progressiveness and liberalness, so long as the cause has become mainstream to the point where it no longer elicits outrage and decisive action. Apparently, students at SOAS love to write about Palestine for example, (they also love hummus, because that is very relevant) but are completely devoid of good politics as evidenced by their indifference to the flag in favor of a music contest.