I knew the modern left had its fair share of narcissists who can rarely see beyond their own navels. But even I never imagined they would spend the second anniversary of 7 October, the worst atrocity the Jews have suffered since the Holocaust, moaning about their ‘mistreatment’ by the Jewish state. Even I never imagined they would hijack the commemoration of the rape, abduction and slaughter of Israelis to moan about the hard beds and cold food Evil Israel allegedly foisted on them.
You want us to weep over Greta’s rash when there are half-starved Jews in Hamas’s tunnels being forced to ‘dig their own graves’?
The lack of self-awareness of Greta Thunberg and the other flotilla fools who tried to sail to Gaza is astonishing to me. There they are all over the press and clogging up social media, madly claiming to have been ‘abducted’ by Israel and held in ‘poor conditions’.
Meanwhile, Israel is just trying to remember its citizens who really were abducted two years ago today before being tortured, starved and in some cases summarily executed in the grimmest conditions imaginable. To distract attention from those real horrors with self-pitying whimpering about a two-day stay in an Israeli facility is self-regard of the most inhumane variety.
Thunberg and a few hundred others set sail on a flotilla of 42 boats in late August. They promised to deliver aid to Gaza and imperiously swore they would ‘smash’ Israel’s blockade. They were intercepted last Wednesday and taken to Israel where they were detained, processed and then flown back home. Greta was deported yesterday, to Athens, wearing what looked like a fresh and quite lovely tracksuit. I hope Israel invoiced her for it.
Among the digital left, where Israel is the great demon of the global order, there was much wailing about Israeli ‘pirates’ having ‘abducted’ our seafaring heroes who only wanted to bring baby food and medicine to Palestine. We were ‘brutally taken hostage’, said an Italian member of the flotilla. These are surely the first hostages in history whose captors have only one demand – that they go home. ‘Go away and don’t come back’ is not normally what a kidnapper says to his victim.
They weren’t ‘brutally taken hostage’, of course. They weren’t ‘abducted’. They were simply prevented from sailing into a warzone because – get this – you are not allowed to do that. If I drove a truck of stuff into Eastern Ukraine while hollering political slogans from the window, I’d expect to be arrested too. Or worse. Imagine the cavernous levels of entitlement it must require to think you can sail towards the territorial waters of a sovereign nation at war and suffer no consequences. The mind boggles at such oceangoing arrogance.
This is the hubris of Israelophobia summed up. The Israel-bashing lobby dolls itself up as an anti-war, anti-colonialist movement, but in truth it is propelled by the most haughty western chauvinism. Its adherents have anointed themselves the saviours of Gaza and the damners of Israel. One of the boats was even flying the UK flag as if it were the 1940s all over again and well-fed Brits still have the right to boss around the Jews of the Holy Land. Be grateful Israel only gave you a hard mattress for your neo-colonial impertinence.
The flotilla activists now noisily complain of mistreatment. They say they didn’t get enough food. The beds weren’t nice. Ms Thunberg says she got a rash, which she suspects was caused by bedbugs. They were shouted at. There are claims Greta was dragged by her hair and forced to kiss the Israeli flag. I am sceptical about that, to put it mildly. But more to the point, imagine the brass neck of sailing towards a country whose citizens really are being held in obscene bondage and whingeing because a flea bit your bum.
You want us to weep over Greta’s rash when there are half-starved Jews in Hamas’s tunnels being forced to ‘dig their own graves’? You want us to lament the indignity of some plummy leftist being made to sleep on a hard bed for two nights when Jews have languished in the fascistic captivity of Hamas for 730 days? You want us to hate Israel for calmly processing and deporting you when Israel saw its own women and children violently stolen from their homes, spirited into the hell of Hamas-ruled Gaza, and chained up in dank tunnels? Get real, please.
Just let the Jews have one day. Quit your maudlin wallowing and let them remember the horrors visited on their people two years ago. The truth is Israel behaved with extraordinary humanitarianism towards these hostile elements who sailed into its waters. It fetched them from dangerous seas, saved them from the warzone of Gaza, provided them with sustenance, and sent them home. All I want to hear from Greta today is this: ‘Thank you, Israel.’
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