Is it a fish? Is it a boat?
No, it’s worse, it’s Greta on a boat!
Our favourite climate activist turned pro-Palestinian agitator, Ms Greta ‘how dare you’ Thunberg, is on the way to the Gaza strip to defeat the Israeli Defence Forces singlehanded. Having realised that people were bored with her zero-sum game climate activism, she has adopted another equally tedious cause, that of the Palestinian people.
I say ‘tedious’ not because I don’t think they have rights or that they are not being treated terribly by the Israelis, but because the cause is tedious. It attracts the kind of self-righteous westerners, full of vegan food, high on marijuana and with a penchant for pitching tents where they are not wanted. It is also tedious because, it seems, there is no atrocity too large committed by Hamas that they will not ignore.
They chant slogans and wave Palestinian flags when they are not being especially persecuted, they continue chanting while Hamas or other discontents lob missiles over the wall into Israel. They cheered loudest when hundreds of Hamas murderers entered Israel and killed over 1,000 Israelis.
Surely that was a time, at least, to question if the Hamas tactics were acceptable, proportionate or – as it has turned out – provocative. Surely, they realised that a well-armed and besieged state like Israel, justified by the more vengeful passages of the Old Testament, would hit back. And hit back hard, as they always said they would.
I have no statistics to back me up, but I am certain that the percentage of pro-Palestinian activists who have been to Palestine is in the low single figures. They’d get short shrift if they turned up looking, as they often do, like Worzel Gummidge. Queers for Palestine were told where to stick it – as if they needed that advice – when they recently turned up to show their support. As Scottish comedian Leo Kearse said, they should thank the Israelis that there were no high buildings left off which they could be thrown.
So, our Greta has jumped on the bandwagon; a boat in fact. And as I write she is chugging towards the Holy Land, no doubt with a list of demands for Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli government. The Israeli Defence Forces must be on high alert for Sweden’s answer to Boadicea entering their coastal territory. She has been warned that she will be intercepted.
No doubt Greta knows that she has zero chance of reaching the shore other than in an Israeli naval patrol boat, handcuffed, blindfolded and with every prospect of seeing the inside of an Israeli jail. She seems to enjoy being filmed getting restrained and led away for a stiff talking to from assorted European police forces. But she ain’t seen nothing yet. Israel cares not what the world thinks about it. The defence forces are decisive and brutal, and she’ll wish she was back on the steps of some COP summit if ever she ends up in their hands.
If Greta does get hauled off and put behind bars, the outcry from the bold legions of the perpetually concerned and the permanently persecuted will be a joy to watch. Shouts of ‘Free Greta’ will resound outside the Israeli Embassies across the world, and questions will be asked in Parliament. Perhaps Ed Miliband, himself of Jewish heritage (don’t mention the ham sandwich) will be dispensed to negotiate on behalf of his climate catastrophising pin-up.
It is to be hoped that Greta and her band of activists in the Freedom Flotilla see sense long before Israel is in sight and turn back. But I doubt they will. The Israel Defence Forces have form when it comes to stopping boats and killing the occupants. It would be a tragedy if Greta was ‘taken out’ in any such action. She is to be pitied, every bit as much as she is scolded. She is an exploited, neurodivergent young lady who has not had a normal childhood or adolescence. She appears irresistibly drawn to, and perhaps dependent on, activism in favour of lost causes.
And so, as Greta’s solar-powered soapbox sails steadily towards its inevitable showdown with the Israeli navy, one can only marvel at the sheer performative stamina of our age’s most celebrated adolescent activist. Whether she returns with a UN resolution or a bruised ego, one thing is certain: Greta will not go gentle into that Tel Aviv night.
Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He is a columnist with Unity News Network and writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including The Salisbury Review and The European Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. He lives in Kingston upon Hull, UK.
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I do not like the RoP and regard it as the biggest threat to what was Christendom but unlike your writer Roger Watson I have studied the history of the creation of the current state of Israel and am not deluded into believing the hasbara that emanates therefrom and all the echoes by the brainwashed followers.
I’m still waiting for one of those “Palestinian” activists to advise us when, in all of human history, there was a sovereign people or nation called Palestine. I think they will find that the answer is never.
Another pathetic self-publicist who’s life is incomplete unless forcing themselves into the public eye.
Once this latest bandwagon becomes stale (or the Israelis instil some shock treatment) can we look forward to GT transitioning into a ‘man’ and taking up the Trans cause? I wouldn’t be at all surprised, nor would I be surprised to see an honorary Damehood bestowed.
This piece of shit I would be happy if she dies,she’s making a mint out of protesting.