Joe Hildebrand: Activist left are aiding and abetting Trump and Israel with self-indulgent distraction
In a world in which both Trump and Israel have become increasingly isolated by international opprobrium, the left are aiding and abetting them with self-indulgent distraction, writes Joe Hildebrand.
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If you look at the headlines and the hashtags, see the Molotov cocktails and social media selfies, you could be forgiven for thinking that the activist left hates two things more than anything: Israel and Donald Trump.
In fact there is no body of people that is doing more to help them both.
Let’s start with the Holy Land, a destination that Greta Thunberg and her boatload of Arguenauts famously failed to reach under their own – no doubt carbon neutral – steam.
Thunberg was among a pilgrimage of 12 freedom fighters, a sacred number that mirrors the headcount of Jesus’ apostles and the 12 tribes of Israel that Simon, Peter and Co supposedly represented. Whether she or her red-hued retinue recognised this ancient symbolism I very much doubt but, still, it is a nice historical touch.
Unlike Jesus’ pals, Greta et al never got to Jerusalem. Instead they were intercepted by the Israeli Defence Force, upon which they confused being offered sandwiches with kidnapping.
Four of the 12, including Greta, then promptly agreed to leave the country – perhaps with the promise of more sandwiches on the horizon – while the remainder stayed to clog up the Israeli judicial system.
And what did all of this achieve? It certainly wasn’t the delivery of six tins of baby food or whatever token amount of “aid” accompanied them on the world’s most documented Mediterranean cruise.
Indeed, some cynical observers might say it delivered nothing at all. But this would be unfair.
In fact it delivered a massive PR coup to the Netanyahu government at a time when it was under immense international pressure over the withholding or otherwise of actual, genuine, lifesaving aid.
Like virtually every puffed shirt pontificating on this issue, I am in no position to determine the exact extent and cause of the aid crisis currently facing the two million Palestinians scrambling for survival.
This is a propaganda war as much as it is a battle of bullets and bombs. And, as in every war, the first casualty is truth.
I cannot know the truth because I am not in Gaza, and nor is Greta. No one is more not in Gaza than Greta.
And that is the point. If she really wanted to share the suffering of Palestinians via her selfies or any other medium there were a million – give or take – other ways she and her comrades could have tried.
But they didn’t. This wasn’t a protest, it was a performance. And it was a performance that bombed on Broadway while the Israelis broadcast it to the world.
Thus the genuine suffering of the Palestinian people became reduced to the plaything of an overprivileged posterchild of the global left and the whole world’s gaze was shifted from the horrors in Gaza to a silly girl on a silly boat.
The images of starvation were eclipsed on the international stage by images of unbridled stupidity and self-indulgence. Well played!
Well played also to the “mostly peaceful” rioters in LA and other cities in the US who have decided to attack Donald Trump over the one issue for which he actually enjoys mainstream popular support.
Trump’s mass deportations are undoubtedly cruel and extreme for the people experiencing them, but they are equally undoubtedly the central mandate upon which he was elected.
Just as there is nothing “progressive” about terrorism, there is nothing progressive about unchecked borders that incentivise vulnerable people to fork over money to crime cartels for a life-or-death lottery.
The hapless Biden administration had a golden opportunity to quietly make the most of Trump’s Wall-that-never-quite-was, maintaining tough border protection while strengthening the safeguards for those already in the US. They could have literally drawn a line under it.
Instead unchecked immigration became a lightning rod, especially for working-class Americans, who fled to Trump 2.0 in droves.
Now Trump is essentially a failed state on the world stage. His ridiculous tariff war is crippling the global economy and his absurd bipolar disorder on both Israel and Ukraine is crippling global security. China, along with Putin, is laughing.
And what is the American left’s obsession?
Picking a fight with Trump on his very safest home turf – both politically and physically – and making it the very law and order issue he wishes it to be.
Trump says illegal immigrants have to go because they are lawbreakers, so their supporters try to prove him wrong by – wait for it! – breaking the law.
And Israel says Gaza is being misrepresented by global elites and so its supporters send the world’s biggest ideological celebrity to post angry selfies from a yacht.
The activist left has now transcended satire.
In a world in which both Trump and Israel have become increasingly isolated by international opprobrium, the left are aiding and abetting them with every dumb and self-indulgent distraction. They are geopolitical jailbreakers for the very people they claim to hate.
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Originally published as Joe Hildebrand: Activist left are aiding and abetting Trump and Israel with self-indulgent distraction
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