Scandal-plagued and unpopular politicians are making liberal use of the latest Western trend in holding onto political power: Palestining.
Once upon a time, Palestining was the shared pastime of Arab potentates. But it was destined to enlighten the rest of the world. It’s just too useful.
Palestining is the act of turning homegrown public anger outward and aiming it at Israel instead. Just as the Jewish people turn to face Jerusalem when praying, so too do dishonest politicians seek to turn their angry mobs to face East.
Keir Starmer has gone Palestining like it’s going out of style. And no wonder: Starmer is now officially the least-popular prime minister on record. In the five decades since Ipsos started polling the approval ratings of the premier, no one has scored lower: Just 13 percent of the public thinks Starmer is doing his job.
Nor can Starmer rely on his friends to save him: he doesn’t have enough of them. According to Sky News, 53 percent of Labour Party members want him gone by the next election.
So it’s no wonder Starmer has refocused his premiership on a distraction: recognizing a “state of Palestine.” Make Israel the scapegoat and shore up enough of the left to at least make it to a general election.
Starmer came into office last year riding high on a landslide victory. But he faced an immediate rebellion in the party and suspended seven members over it. A few months later, “it was revealed the prime minister had declared more free tickets and gifts than other major party leaders in recent times,” the Guardian reported. Thousands in clothes, accommodations, and Taylor Swift concert tickets for the Starmer family. It’s him—Starmer’s the problem, apparently.
Just a couple of weeks ago, Starmer told lawmakers he had full confidence in his ambassador to the United States, Peter Mandelson. Hours later he was reading leaked, supportive emails from Mandelson to Jeffrey Epstein.
Alas for Starmer, the attempt to distract everyone by Palestining doesn’t seem to be working. The concern, then, is that Starmer might think he’s simply not Palestining hard enough. The longer he stays in office, the more desperate he is to attack Israel.
Starmer’s fellow wannabe Arab strongmen on the continent are likely to fare better. As reporters for the Telegraph lay out in no uncertain terms, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez “is also using Israel’s war in Gaza to save his political skin in a country that is, with Ireland, the most pro-Palestinian in Europe.”
That gives Sanchez, who has openly fantasized about having the ability to point nuclear weapons at Israel, a built-in advantage: his fellow countrymen don’t have to be convinced to hate the Jewish state. They just have to be convinced that Sanchez is the right man to lead the mob.
Which brings us back to why Sanchez is Palestining so much. The answer is a complicated mix of factors.
First up is scandal: Sanchez’s brother will soon go on trial over allegedly having a well-paid government job created specifically for him. Sanchez’s wife, meanwhile, faces charges of embezzling funds from the government for her personal use.
His leftist coalition is also fraying a bit. As the Telegraph notes, he would struggle to cobble together a governing coalition after the next election if the polls don’t improve for him. So he hit Israel with an arms embargo, closed the ports to Israeli tankers, and even egged on a protest mob that forced the cancellation of Spain’s annual cycling contest over the participation of Israeli athletes. He has lately been campaigning against Israel’s participation in Eurovision and in soccer matches.
Says the Telegraph: “It’s working—his ratings have plateaued and are starting to rally.”
Sanchez’s Palestining is also dividing his opponents on the right, which could help the left coalition in the next elections. A member of the main right-of-center opposition party grumbled that “[e]very time there is a development in one of the court cases affecting him, Sanchez comes out with something on Gaza.”
Further aiding Sanchez is the fact that Spain has a relatively small Jewish community. That is not the case in France, where Emmanuel Macron has been Palestining his head off.
There is still a sizeable Jewish community in France, which is what makes Macron’s obsession with demonizing and scapegoating the Jews so dangerous and so disgraceful.
Macron has used special powers to ram through legislation without a vote and faced protests and unrest throughout his term. Lately, he suffered the collapse of government in parliament and his hand-picked prime minister does not seem to be turning things around.
Macron’s popularity is now at 17 percent, the lowest of his time in office. Unions, students and retirees are especially furious with his party, and polls have found a fair number of two-time Macron voters would not make it three.
Macron is the ringleader of the Palestining West. He touched off the wave of recognitions earlier this summer, culminating in last week’s Hamas-a-palooza at the UN General Assembly. He has relished picking fights with Israel, with the global Jewish community, with the U.S. ambassador—with anyone who will give him a chance to climb up on his Gaza soapbox.
Yet whether it works is beside the point. In Europe, scapegoating the Jews for your country’s problems can get very dark very quickly. Macron, Sanchez, and Starmer are willing to have the Jews pay that price.
