I’ve never been sorry that I left education at 17, armed with nothing but my raw talent and splendid rack. The conformity and unworldliness which you need to have if you want to basically stay at school till you’re 21 are things I despise students for – and haven’t these character traits had a lovely outing during the current ugly outbreak of campus Jew-hatred?

Jews have never been popular at universities; the phrase ‘too clever for their own good’ might have been invented for them, with a world population of 0.2 per cent taking a whopping 22 per cent of Nobel prizes. The mediocre spawn of the ruling class once had their flimsy self-respect protected by the university admissions quota system, but there’s no longer this handy way to rule the roost. Is it a coincidence that the thickest and most privileged members of the British student body have fallen into the arms of those who have declared war on the world’s only Jewish nation? (The arms of those who would, coincidentally, kill them for their feminism, their atheism and their LGBTQism given half a chance; but, like I said, they’re not too bright.)

Western women wearing the hijab is grotesque – and has a long and ignoble history

In Brighton, we’re cursed with a lot of these irritating students: toffs who think they’re revolutionaries but are even more entitled than their parents. I call them the Shrieking Violets, as they often sport Victorian parlourmaid names – Violet, Lily, Daisy – while treating the lower orders like genetically-modified dirt.

Of course, they follow all the strict rules of virtue-signalling, except for one discrepancy. In an age when putting on a sombrero for 60 seconds during a drunken night out at an all-you-can-eat taco bar can be taken as proof of conquistador-level evil (because ‘cultural appropriation’ is far worse than, say, actually stealing from an intimidated shopkeeper) why do these same students swan around wearing the keffiyeh, the black and white chequered Arabic scarf which has become a symbol of the Palestinian ‘struggle’? Why isn’t this as bad as, say, Kim Kardashian wearing braids?

Palestinians on the internet are split. Some think it’s a cheek; others welcome the advertising for their cause. The most amusing response I found was ‘if you choose to wear this emblem, we see it not as an act of cultural appropriation, but as an open-hearted gesture of unity and support for our culture and cause. You know, wearing a keffiyeh is sort of like sporting a superhero’s cape – there’s a bit of responsibility that comes with it’. Does the ‘responsibility’ of supporting the butchering of infidel babies come with it?

If Western students wearing the keffiyeh is ludicrous, Western women wearing the hijab is grotesque – and has a long and ignoble history. The Hamas government long utilised legions of plain clothes police officers who patrolled public places, including beaches, restaurants and even hair salons to make sure that women were dressed ‘modestly’. One wonders how the soppy students so opposed to ‘slut-shaming’ squared this with their support for the governors of Gaza.

In 2009, the journalist Asma al-Ghul had her passport and laptop confiscated by the Hamas Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice security force after she laughed in public. It was somewhat surreal then to see a bunch of alleged feminists gleefully hijabing-up on the various ineffectual marches they held to protest against the democratic election of Donald Trump. As the Muslim-born writer Nervana Mahmoud put it:

‘Those who are marching against Trump are selective liberals; they remember liberalism when a white man is the culprit, but happily defend the illiberalism of non-white authoritarian regimes and ideologies. Women’s rights are for all, not just for Western women.’

Back in Blighty, the narcissism of the superannuated manic pixie dream girl Laurie Penny – who ceaselessly squeals about Western sexism while giving Islamism a hall-pass – reached fever pitch when she dressed up as a Muslim woman for an afternoon in 2010: ‘I wore an abaya with full headscarf…for the first time since puberty, I felt that people might be seeing the real me, rather than looking at my body.’ What a comfort to the brave young women murdered in Iran for not donning the required shroud this must have been.

Then there were those unspeakably stupid Swedish female MPs – Sweden’s self-declared ‘first feminist government in the world’ – who chose to wear the hijab when they visited Iran in 2017. This must have had the woman-hating imams of mosques worldwide wetting themselves with glee that certain sections of free-born Western women were doing their dirty work for them by willingly taking on the mantle of oppression.

It’s not in any way ‘brave’ to cover up. In a world where the brave women of the online movement My Stealthy Freedom are risking their lives in order to feel the sun on their faces, it’s actually a particularly tone-deaf take on Marie Antoinette playing at milkmaids.

Still, we live in strange days, when a woman wearing hoop earrings can be ‘called out’ for cultural appropriation, while a man appropriating womanhood itself can be hailed as a hero(ine). So it shouldn’t be shocking when free, wealthy Western women use the symbol of the oppression of millions of non-Western women as a style accessory.

The celebrities who grandstand at this form of virtue-signalling are, as usual, the most objectionable, as their privilege is so extreme – even greater than that of posh students. Mostly, it’s to do with sucking up to hosts so rich they make the Hollywood set seem like paupers. Zac Efron wore a keffiyeh in Dubai. Ricky Martin threw on a thobe (painful!) in Qatar. Those famously modest women Khloe Kardashian, Lindsay Lohan and Madonna tried having no freedom on for size by wearing niqabs or hijabs.

It’s amusing when the sucking up gets rejected: in Abu Dhabi in 2013, Rihanna posed by the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque wearing a black hijab. But the mosque asked her to leave, stating ‘in the event of behaviour that violates the moral codes of access to the mosque, or other visit regulations – such as taking inappropriate pictures, posing in ways that are improper in the context of sacred place, talking loudly, or eating – the violators are directed in a polite manner that reflects the civilisational and tolerant attributes of Islam’. So much for finding love in a hopeless place!

But the serial offender is Bella Hadid. Daughter of a reality TV star and a multi-millionaire Palestinian businessman, she grew up in Beverly Hills and has appeared 29 times on the cover of Vogue yet is forever jostling for a medal in the victimhood Olympics. More than anything, poor Bella would ‘have loved to grow up and be studying and really being able to practice, just in general being able to live in a Muslim culture.’

The serial offender is Bella Hadid

Instead Hadid, who is, at least – unlike Khloe Kardashian – a Muslim, posed in Doha wearing an Alaia dress – and a hair-covering. At a lavish dinner at the Museum of Islamic Art she wore a Schiaparelli dress – and a head-covering. At Naomi Campbell’s fashion show, there she was in another Schiaparelli dress – and a hood. Looking at her empty eyes peeking out from under her outfit, one can only hope that those who fetishise the veil will one day realise what it is like to have no choice about wearing the outfit and at last comprehend how precious and fragile freedom – especially female freedom – is.

But back to the cruelty of the campuses. At a time when Jewish students feel the need to hide the emblems of their actual culture, there’s something particularly sickening and hypocritical about the adoption of the keffiyeh by rich brats. Until, perhaps, one considers that a lot of the alleged ‘culture’ of Palestine itself looks a bit shaky; everything from the flag they nicked from Jordan in 1964 to the ‘Palestinian cuisine’ drooled over on social media as part of the timeless traditions of this proud people. In the light of which, a boy from Bedales called Barnaby prancing around in a keffiyeh is really quite appropriate.