SO, Greta Thunberg has a new cause. She found a new crusade on which to put all her weight. Forget saving the planet – now she wants to save Palestine.
Yes, the little prophetess of doom has exchanged her rage against industrialism for her rage against Israel. Mother Nature will just have to wait – her former valiant defender is now busy repairing the Middle East.
Yesterday, Greta was photographed at demonstration in MalmöSweden against Israel’s inclusion in the Eurovision Song Contest.
She looked the part. She had a keffiyeh on her shoulders and a smug look on her face: the two must-haves for any bloated bourgeois activist who enjoys ranting against Israel.
The keffiyeh has truly become the uniform of the right-thinking. Go to a trendy coffee shop or an overpriced burger joint in Soho and I guarantee you’ll see Generation Z decked out in Palestinian headscarves.
What happened to the sin of “cultural appropriation”? It wasn’t that long ago that the right was angry at white guys who wear dreadlocks and white women who wear kominos. “Stop stealing other people’s culture!” » they shouted. And yet, now, they themselves spend their days in Arab clothing.
This image of Greta in Malmö, very satisfied with herself, sums up the role that the keffiyeh plays in the life of the 21st century activist. Wearing the keffiyeh is intended less to draw attention to the plight of the Palestinians than to draw attention to You. Look at me in my Arab costume, am I not good and hyper socially conscious – that’s the needy cry of these hipster appropriators.
Yet behind their radical chic lie darker feelings. Their universal hatred of Israel can have horrible consequences. So, while young Greta demonstrated her virtue in the streets of Malmö, another young woman was locked in her hotel room for fear of being attacked by a crowd.
It was Eden Golan, the 20-year-old Russian-Israeli who sang for Israel at Eurovision final in Malmö.
The inclusion of the Golan in Eurovision has sickened anti-Israel protesters. Israel, they said, must be punished for its “Gaza genocide” – their juvenile and historically illiterate term for Israel’s war against Hamas.
A crowd even invaded the hotel where Ms. Golan was staying. She received death threats. Things were so bad that he was advised not to leave his room. She received 24-hour security.
Is this really “progressive activism”? To me this sounds more like harassment. The intimidation of a young woman by a crowd of Israel critics.
How infuriating that Greta had to show herself at the heart of such a regressive protest. This is someone who has spoken out about their own experiences with bullying. Who said women in the public eye get too much criticism.
And yet she now rejoices in a protest that had the consequence, whether intentional or not, of filling a young woman with such fear that she became essentially a prisoner in her own hotel.
We might call it woke privilege. Because Greta adheres to the correct thinking of the chattering class on every issue – climate change, transgender, Israel – she has the freedom to go about her business as she pleases.
Ms. Golan, on the other hand, is denied this fundamental freedom. Her national heritage, her devotion to her homeland mark her as morally suspect. And that’s why she has to hide. ” Shame ! the protesters shouted, as if she were a modern-day witch deserving of immersion.
It’s tempting to view Greta’s conversion from climate change worship to anti-Israel religion as simply jumping on the bandwagon.
Maybe his savior complex, his burning sense of virtue, just needs a new outlet. So, like others of her generation, she abandons climate, trans, and everything else and moves on to “Palestinian solidarity.” This is the issue we can really make moral waves on these days.
But I think there’s something else going on too. The truth is that climate activism and anti-Israel agitation go hand in hand. There are even frightening commonalities between green agitation and Israel’s greatest ideological enemy: radical Islam.
Both represent, at their core, a distaste for modernity. Privileged Westerners who cry about industrial society and Islamists who hate Israel share an aversion to the modern world, to progress, to the Enlightenment itself.
So we can even have a situation where Muslim activists who shout “Allahu Akbar” can be elected councilors for the Green Party.
Hampstead’s upper-middle-class recycling obsessive may seem a million miles away from the bearded radical who publicly sings the praises of Allah – but they share an instinctive revulsion for capitalist society. One sees it as a crime against Mother Nature, the other as an affront to Mohammed.
For both sides, Israel is the epitome of the modernity they hate. A young, confident and enterprising nation that has made the desert a land of abundance? Boo. Hissing. Kick his people out of our social circles.
So it makes sense that Greta temporarily abandoned Gaia for Gaza. Because this crisis also provides him with the opportunity to display his pious rejection of the modern world.
