Reducing keffiyeh wearers to “coffee shop socialists” sporting a “fashionable cause,” ignores the real and diverse communities that stand in solidarity with Palestine.
“Trump’s Gaza deal is the ultimate humiliation for the West’s woke Left,” headlined the Telegraph.
According to columnist Sherelle Jacobs, this is not only a diplomatic triumph for Donald Trump but also a damning indictment of progressive politics, particularly in Britain and Europe.
Jacobs praises Trump’s “robustness” as a peacemaker, contrasting it with what she sees as the moral and strategic failures of Keir Starmer and other European leaders like Emmanuel Macron.
“This Gaza ceasefire deal is a prodigious diplomatic achievement for Donald Trump,” she writes. “It is a win for Israel, which gets much more and has been forced to concede less than any of its critics thought possible. The surviving October 7 hostages are set to be released on Monday or Tuesday. If the next phases of Trump’s deal work out even in part, the art of Western diplomacy will have been revitalised, courtesy of Trump.”
Jacobs has long been known for her staunch pro-Brexit position and climate change scepticism. In 2019, she described the UN’s climate warnings as “woke propaganda,” calling them “an insult to science.”
The same suspicion of “wokeness” now extends to anyone who expresses solidarity with the Palestinian people, it seems. Jacobs claims the Gaza deal leaves, “Greta-loving, keffiyeh-wearing activists” looking “out of touch,” together with a sneer that attempts to equate symbols of solidarity with affluent activist fashion: “Vivienne Westwood Greenpeace t-shirts,” as she puts it.
This is, quite frankly, disingenuous. The keffiyeh, unlike a fashion statement, is a long-standing symbol of Palestinian resistance. I know many people, some working-class, who wear it not as a trend but as an expression of sincere political belief. Reducing them to “coffee shop socialists” sporting a “fashionable cause,” ignores the real and diverse communities that stand in solidarity with Palestine.
Jacobs also claims that the deal is an embarrassment for Starmer, Macron, and others who “prematurely recognised a Palestinian state.” According to her, this showed them to be “posturers out of their depth” whose actions only complicated negotiations and “demonstrated the geopolitical irrelevance of the fading European powers, including Britain.”
This is a gross oversimplification to say the least. Even Trump acknowledged that Israel had lost world opinion and apparently told Netanayahu so.
Amid the gushing over the president, there was no mention of why Trump didn’t do it earlier. And while the news of the ceasefire and upcoming hostage release has been welcomed wide and far, we’ve been here before. In January, a ceasefire was celebrated, only for Israel to resume its bombardment by mid-March.
None of this is to deny that Trump played a decisive role in brokering the current deal. Credit where credit is due: without his involvement, and crucially, the pressure exerted by Qatar, Turkey, and Egypt on Hamas, this agreement might never have happened. It was a joint effort, but Trump’s presence was undeniably pivotal.
Still, it is important to heed the words of Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s international editor, who offered some critical realism: “It helps to recognise what the deal is – and what it isn’t. The agreement was for a ceasefire and an exchange of hostages for prisoners. It is not a peace agreement, or even the start of a peace process.”
Bowen goes on to outline the next stage of Trump’s 20-point plan, which includes demilitarisation of Gaza and governance of a committee including Palestinians that reports to a ‘Board of Peace’ chaired by Trump himself.
“Significant work needs to be done on the detail needed to make that happen.
“The Gaza agreement is not a route map to peace in the Middle East, the ultimate and so far, unreachable destination,” he writes.
Sherelle Jacobs’ attempt to use the Gaza ceasefire to claim a sweeping ideological victory for the right, and a moral collapse of the left, is premature at best, and deeply cynical at worst. Ultimately without justice for the Palestinian people, the 80-year-old war between the 7 million Palestinian Arabs and 7 million Israelis will blow hot again sooner or later. Those on the Palestinian marches, including the Jews who marched with them, know that; politicians of the centre and left know that; and most important, many Israelis know it too. Those who don’t know it, apart from Jacobs, are the extremist politicians in Israel, their deluded counterparts among the Arab population who still dream of wiping Israel from the map, and quite possibly the President of the United States, who now seems more concerned with his picture on the front of TIME Magazine.
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