Imagine if, in 1941, as we were fighting for our lives against the German menace, a boatload of foreign narcissists rocked up at Dover to make fun of us. Worse, imagine these self-regarding seafarers cheered on our enemies. Imagine they waltzed up to the nearest soldier or copper and barked ‘Victory to Germany!’ while sporting the smuggest smirk you have ever seen.
Everyone is frothing over the behaviour of Israel’s hard-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, which was indeed oafish
We’d be annoyed, right? More than annoyed: there would be national fury. Every paper in the land would denounce the preening aliens. Lines of boys in blue would have to hold back angry Brits yelling ‘Let me at ’em!’. Well, now you know how the good people of Israel must feel after yet another armada of cranks sailed their way to remonstrate with their soldiers and tell them how demonic they are.
For me, that was the most revolting thing in the clips that went viral this week showing members of the Gaza-bound ‘aid flotilla’ being detained in Israel. Everyone is frothing over the behaviour of Israel’s hard-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, which was indeed crude and oafish. He was seen jeering at the activists who were all knelt on the floor with their hands bound behind their backs.
But there was something even more jarring than Ben-Gvir’s crass gloating, something even more contrary to the rules of civilisation. It was the very presence of these hostile elements from the West. It was the staggering hubris of these Israelophobes to sail towards Israel in order that they might shame it before the eyes of the world even as it fights for its life against armies of anti-Semites.
In one of the clips, one of the detained white saviours can even be heard shouting ‘Free, free Palestine!’. Can we take a minute to clock how vile it is to bark that trite slogan at men and women whose nation was invaded in the name of ‘Palestine’ not even three years ago? And whose fellow citizens, possibly their loved ones, were raped, murdered, kidnapped and burnt to death under the Palestine flag? I fear the understandable anger about Ben-Gvir is blinding us to a far graver moral transgression: this giddy taunting of a nation at war by smug Westerners who know nothing of war.
Everyone agrees Ben-Gvir behaved badly. Even Benjamin Netanyahu criticised him. The flotilla activists on their ‘humanitarian’ jolly to Gaza were intercepted by Israeli naval commandos in seas near Cyprus on Monday. They were taken to Israel to be processed. They should not have been filmed or mocked. Israel should have just jotted down their details and sent them back to their leafy, war-free suburbs where they can defame the Jewish state to their hearts’ content.
And yet, I fully understand the anger of Israeli soldiers and politicians over these well-fed Westerners basically shouting ‘Victory to Palestine’ in their war-scarred faces. Imagine sailing to a warzone and making it all about yourself. Imagine the imperious arrogance it must require, the industrial-level brass neck, to trek to a country at war and demand that the spotlight be put on you and your emotions.
That’s what I saw in those viral clips: lines of foolish, self-infatuated activists so high on their own supply of moral vanity that they even insist on central billing in a foreign nation’s war for survival. Talk about Main Character Syndrome.
It speaks to the West’s neo-religious veneration of self-esteem that we have birthed a new generation that thinks it has the right to centre itself in other people’s wars. Nothing has done more to reinforce my belief that we need to bring back the cane than the sight of these sanctimonious sailors heading to a warzone and crying: ‘Look at me, mum! I really CARE.’
Then there’s the misinformation. Listening to those keffiyeh clowns sunning themselves on the Med as they sail towards war, you could be forgiven for thinking that they and they alone might save the people of Gaza from Israel’s inhuman cruelty. It is lie upon lie. Not one crumb of food has been delivered to Gaza by these white saviours, while Israel has distributed tens of millions of meals to hungry Gazans.
Israel has given food, water and medicine to Gaza. It is currently overseeing the arrival of around 100 trucks of aid every single day. While those suntanned Westerners were on their stupid boats tweeting about Israel’s genocidal strangling of Gaza, Israel was feeding Gaza. It is the world turned upside down, a wholesale gutting of truth, to present these activists as Gaza’s valiant liberators and Israel as its executioner.
Be honest: you’d be angry too if such flagrant lies were being told about your nation. And at the very moment your nation was facing down Islamo-fascist armies like Hamas and Hezbollah and the Islamic Republic that funds them. Here’s a tip if you don’t want to be detained in a warzone: don’t sail to a warzone. Stay home. Do something useful for once. Get a job.
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