The march of the useful idiots

In April 2017, thousands of wealthy Westerners headed to the Bahamas for Fyre, a luxury music festival. They expected villas and meals from celebrity chefs. What they got was soaked tents and cheese sandwiches. Watching the Netflix documentary, Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, it is difficult not to cringe as you watch it slowly dawn on the privileged tourists that the whole thing is a con.

We saw a similar case of privileged Western delusion meeting reality in Egypt this weekend. Some 4,000 activists had descended on Cairo for the ‘Global March to Gaza’. They expected to take buses to Arish, a city in northern Sinai, before marching 30 miles to the Egyptian side of the Gaza border at Rafah. There they would break Israel’s blockade.

Instead, as they made their way to Arish, they were greeted by the Egyptian authorities. Videos of what happened have now emerged on social media. They show the Egyptian authorities confiscating passports and preventing the mainly white European activists from passing through checkpoints. They also show the activists being violently and verbally abused by angry locals – all before they were eventually removed and prepared for deportation.

None of it looks pleasant, but some of the footage is unintentionally hilarious. There’s the Welshman, whose mum apparently cuts his hair, repeatedly pronouncing Palestine as ‘Falasteen’. He seems to think that his authentic Arab pronunciation will be enough to win over the stoney-faced riot police. Trust me, mate, it never works – I’ve been visiting ‘Bathelona’ for years and it never gets me a discount from the ice-cream vendor.

Then there’s the woman with what look like $4,000 earrings. She screams to the camera that she’s had to save the lives of two people, who were apparently suffering from acute sunstroke. If only there was some kind of scarf or traditional Middle Eastern headwear the marchers had access to which could provide some shade and protection from the sun and dust. Mind you, if the organisers had wanted to reduce the risk of sunstroke, I’m not sure they should have planned a three-day march from Arish to Rafah. Through the desert. Perhaps they assumed the last part of the journey would be through tunnels.

The protesters’ videos testify to the marchers’ abject ignorance. If they had known anything about the regional situation, they would have known the march was never going to happen. There certainly wasn’t a chance they would ever make it into Gaza. There is a kilometre-wide buffer zone all along the Egyptian border. There are 20-foot-high concrete walls and fences, which reach 30 feet below ground, equipped with seismic sensors. After terror attacks from Gaza on Egyptians, the Egyptian government has spent tens of millions building one of the most impenetrable borders in the world.

Egypt’s rulers might claim to support Palestinian rights, but the last place they want the Gazans to be is in Egypt. Egypt has no illusions about the threat posed by Hamas and its deep roots in Palestinian society. So even with a humanitarian crisis raging in Gaza, the Egyptian border remains firmly shut – the same border, that is, that Western pro-Palestinian activists ignore when they claim that Israel solely controls access to Gaza.

So for the marching numbskulls to just rock up in Egypt, thinking the authorities would welcome them with open arms and let them through this most guarded of borders, requires ignorant hubris of almost superhuman levels. Perhaps the marchers imagined themselves being showered with rose petals while scores of white doves were released in their honour. Instead, they got a slap in the face from a local with a flipflop.

Predictably, the would-be white saviours reacted with indignity when the uppity brown locals violently resisted their ‘march’. They then resorted to anger and vitriol as they chanted ‘Fuck Egypt’ on buses taking them to their waiting planes. Where’s their gratitude for Egypt saving their lives? For death was the fate that likely awaited them in Gaza. Just ask Vittorio Arrigoni, the Italian pro-Palestinian activist abducted and murdered there in 2011 by Salafist radicals who considered Hamas too moderate.

Soon enough, these most useful of idiots will have been returned home to live another day. Maybe some will join up with those activists who staged a protest in London on Saturday chanting pro-Iran slogans.

Their arrogance and ignorance of the West’s Israelophobes truly knows no bounds.

Josh Howie is a stand-up comedian and host of Free Speech Nation on GB News. Follow him on X: @joshxhowie.