If the BDS crowd wants to divest from an industry that is truly enabling Palestinian misery, it ought to start with pretty much anything labeled “pro-Palestinian” in the comfortable West.
Yesterday’s riots in Los Angeles were ostensibly about ramped-up ICE deportations and the helter-skelter manner in which they have been carried out. And no doubt the riots are ICE-focused. Additionally, the Trump administration appears to have crossed the line of legality more than once in just the past couple months of deportation—in some cases sending deportees to an El Salvadoran prison and then claiming powerlessness to get them back.
And look, anyone paying attention can see that President Trump is delighting in this the current confrontation. But that is because riots are bad, and these riots are no exception—they are bad. Politically, they force Democrats into a pickle: Either denounce them and incur the wrath of the Giant Progressive Ball of Anger, which is the engine of Democratic primary turnout, or find some whataboutism to at least implicitly defend them by saying Trump provoked them—which is an implied acknowledgement that the riots are, in fact, bad.
And right on cue, CNN’s excellent stat man Harry Enten explained to viewers today that Trump’s approval rating on immigration “has gone up like a rocket” since his first term. It passed a milestone, in fact, by going from negative approval to positive, putting him above water on the very issue that is now the center of attention.
So what does any of this have to do with the Palestinians in Gaza? In one sense, nothing. But viewers simply cannot ignore the fact that as they watch LA cops huddle under an overpass while rioters throw objects onto their cars (and at them), the flag being waved by the crowd is a Palestinian one.
Yes, there are also the Mexican flags and El Salvador flags—though the latter can be seen waved in a crowd full of keffiyehs.
Is this destructive rioting being done in the name of Palestine? No. But that’s what makes it worse, believe it or not, for those who actually want to win hearts and minds on behalf of the Palestinians in Gaza.
The great left-wing monocause of anti-Zionism is the chief organizing principle of progressive protest and it is currently the closest thing the movement has to a genuine litmus test. But for a time this could be expressed by simply banning Jewish symbols from progressive gatherings. Now, the iconography is an affirmatively Palestinian one.
The way this happens is a two-step process. Step one: The angsty activist left grabs on to someone else’s readymade cause and rides along, adopting an approach of basic mimicry. Step two: Youngish, progressive American activists soon outnumber actual Palestinians in the movement, and the “for Gaza” world is absorbed by the progressive Blob. Like the merger of a brand with a sales infrastructure, the issue is now owned by the conglomerate.
Is this a happy marriage? I doubt it, because everything done by Western activists makes life actively worse for Palestinians in the long run. But now the keffiyeh and the Palestinian flag are contributions to the intellectual property of the Blob.
Sales are excellent, but actual Palestinians don’t see a dime from the keffiyeh bubble, and when it bursts, they’ll be blamed. That’s how the Blob works. Don’t take it personally; it’s just business.
And until the bubble bursts, that stuff will be everywhere. (Intersectionalism, baby!) Every other progressive activist is treating the keffiyeh craze like spring break in the ’90s, coming home wearing a Señor Frog’s t-shirt. The marketing possibilities are endless: I Accused Israel of Genocide at the Hague and All I Got Was This Stupid Shirt.
Pretty soon, everywhere someone is denouncing the United States or assaulting a police officer or torching cars or vandalizing houses of worship, the Palestinian flag and keffiyeh will be there. Not because Palestinians want it that way, but because the Blob’s merchandizing department does. Meanwhile, any capital spent on the Palestinians will be spent defending and buttressing Hamas, the fascist death grip currently squeezing the life out of everything it finds in Gaza. But cool shirt, bro.
