RUTHFULLY YOURS

Remember when leftists chanted, ‘Yemen, Yemen, make us proud / Turn another ship around!’, goading the medieval anti-Semites of the Houthi movement to bomb merchant ships in the Red Sea? Well, now those same people are blubbing like babies because Israel allegedly pumped some ABBA on to their flotilla of boats heading to Gaza. So it’s fine for a racist militia to rain missiles on the hard-grafting men of merchant ships, but heaven forbid that the Jewish State subject the lily-handed activist class to a bit of ‘Dancing Queen’. Bombing commercial ships is resistance – making the West’s privileged, preening haters of Israel listen to some Seventies bangers is a war crime.

They don’t like it up ’em, do they, to quote Lance Corporal Jones. A fitting line to cite because, when you think about it, these flotilla fools are the Dad’s Army of the high seas, only younger and a lot more sinister. A gaggle of social misfits that fancies itself as a force for good. A mob of inept muppets that hilariously fantasises it will save the world from evil – from Nazism in the case of Dad’s Army, from Zionism in the case of the ABBA-oppressed TikTokers on those dumb boats sailing into a warzone. Rarely has the woke left’s toxic combination of grating self-pity and depthless self-regard been so starkly exposed as it has by the latest melodramas from these white-saviour ships in the Med.

It’s hard to figure out exactly what’s going on with the flotilla. We know 52 boats are involved. We know Greta Thunberg is on one of them. We know they intend to ‘smash’ Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza. We know they’re carrying food parcels for Gazans. We know that in the six weeks or so that they’re at sea, Israel will have handed out around 40million meals in Gaza. And we know this will do sweet FA to dislodge the latest hip libel about the Jewish State ‘starving Palestinians to death’.

But everything else is unclear. The boat folk claim their communications systems have been targeted. ‘They’re jamming our radio!’, cried one as ABBA blasted in the background. Is it wrong that I laughed? They say drones have flown overhead. They say some of the drones have dropped items on to the boats, possibly including ‘noise grenades’, which are designed to disorientate people without injuring them. They say it’s all Israel’s doing, though the Italian authorities, in whose waters these things reportedly happened, pointed the finger at ‘unidentified perpetrators’. Israel is staying schtum. It refuses to comment on the very serious accusation that it is committing the war crime of winding up Swedish Greta with some Swedish pop.

The flotilla’s keffiyeh-adorned flag-shaggers are shocked that someone seems to be targeting them. I’m shocked these people are that dumb. Perhaps if Greta had spent more time in school she’d have learnt in history class what a colossal folly it is to sail towards a warzone. Like everyone else, I want no harm to come to the flotilla fools. I think Israel should fire nothing at their boats. But I fully expect that when they arrive in Israeli waters their boats will be commandeered by the IDF and the crew spirited away for a kosher sandwich and a flight home, as happened last time. The exhausted dears will wail about being ‘taken hostage’, but in truth this will be perfectly normal behaviour by a state at war. If I drove a truck of stuff into eastern Ukraine while hollering ‘Look at me, aren’t I fucking wonderful?’, I’d expect to be arrested, too.

Imagine the cavernous quantities of social entitlement it must require to think you can sail towards a warzone and shout about ‘smashing’ a military blockade and not face any consequences. Clearly these people are so enamoured with their own moral righteousness that they think it affords them the right to go anywhere they please with no regard for such trifling matters as statehood, sovereignty or war. This is the imperious narcissism of Israelophobia summed up. Ash Sarkar is horrified that a boat flying the UK flag has allegedly been targeted by drones. I’m horrified that a boat flying the UK flag is sailing towards the Middle East in the first place, as if it were the 1940s and privileged Britons still think they can boss around the Jews of the Holy Land. That boat does not represent me or any Briton I know. Take down that flag immediately. The Empire is dead, you pompous numpties.

The dystopic image of boatloads of Westerners sailing towards Israeli waters exposes the imperial arrogance that fuels the fashionable loathing for Israel. This isn’t a peace movement – it’s a neo-colonial crusade against one small state that the educated of the West have unilaterally branded as the source of the world’s every ill. Witness how these supposed radicals gleefully plunder the language of imperialism, calling Israel a ‘rogue state’ and saying it should be subjected to sanctions and possibly even invasion. That Italy and Spain have now sent frigates to ‘safeguard’ the flotilla has got these people whooping in delight. ‘Wow. This is absolutely huge’, said Owen Jones, who seems to have a boner for the idea of Western navies taking militaristic action that embarrasses the uppity state of Israel.

And yet, if I was Israel, I’d relax. You don’t need to ‘defeat’ this flotilla – they’ll defeat themselves with the hilarious contradictions of their Islamo-leftism. This week it was reported that the flotilla has ‘descended into chaos’, following the outbreak of a ‘woke on woke’ civil war. A Tunisian coordinator of the flotilla has reportedly resigned after discovering that the boats are carrying – brace yourselves – LGBT people. Sinful homosexuals? That just won’t do. It’s not Israel that’s being humiliated on the high seas. It’s Queers for Palestine. It’s Gays for Gaza. It’s the whole fragile and lethal alliance between blue-haired Westerners and red-faced Islamic hotheads who might agree that Israel is a demonic entity but who disagree on just about everything else. They said they’d ‘smash’ Israel’s blockade but the only blow they’ve landed so far is an entirely self-inflicted one, exposing to the world the suicidal idiocy of genderfluid Westerners cosying up with Allah-fearing Koran-bashers in an orgy of hatred for the Jewish nation.

That’s the funny thing: when the IDF takes this Dad’s Army of wokeness into custody and then flies them home again, it will be doing them a massive, progressive favour. It will be saving them from the racists, misogynists and homophobes of Hamas and its mad allies. And will Greta and friends say thanks? Will they hell. ‘War criminals!’, they’ll wail as Israel delivers them from the hell of medieval Islamism. I can’t wait.

Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show. Subscribe to the podcast here. His latest book – After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation – is available to order on Amazon UK and Amazon US now. And find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy