I was coincidentally in Paris for the weekend when news broke that two imbeciles had hurled pumpkin soup over the Mona Lisa at the city’s Louvre museum, to protest against hunger.
Because obviously, nothing says “let’s help hungry people” more than deliberately wasting buckets of food that could have fed them!
The word “imbeciles” is appropriate because it’s a French derivative of the Latin “imbecillus” which means a criminal of feeble mind.
This act of wanton pathetic vandalism against the world’s most famous painting was clearly a crime, and the breath-taking ignorance in thinking the best way to raise awareness of hunger is to waste buckets of soup suggests minds so feeble even Chrissy Teigen would ask for her money back.
On the same day, the Pace art gallery in New York was also attacked, with protestors spraying pro-Palestinian messages like “Intifada” and “Free Gaza” in blood red paint on the outside of the building.
The vandals targeted Pace because on their Instagram page, they promoted an Israeli artist named Michal Rovner and her giant video installation “Signaling” which is on display in Times Square and calls for the safe return of the remaining hostages held by Hamas.
Pace’s supposed offense, according to one of the hundreds of trolls who instantly bombarded the post with abusive comments, was “art-washing a genocide.”
But again, these protestors seem to have zero understanding of what they’re really doing, why they’re doing it, or to whom.
Ms. Rovner is world-renowned for making art that tries to forge peace, not war in the Middle East.
In fact, and ironically, one of her most famous works, Makom, was exhibited at both Pace and the Louvre and was made — with the help of Israeli and Palestinian masons — from stones gathered in abandoned or destroyed Palestinian and Israeli buildings in places like Jaffa, Gaza, Jerusalem, and Bethlehem.
By what twisted logic does this woman deserve to be hounded for backing genocide, or the gallery that supports her be bullied into issuing a clarification stating that it had previously “omitted the broader context of the ongoing conflict in Gaza and the horrific loss of life?”
Why should an Israeli artist not be allowed to express hope that hostages snatched by terrorists from her homeland, including babies, women, and Holocaust survivors, be returned from their captive hell?
That’s just a basic cry for humanity and doesn’t mean she or the gallery don’t care about Palestinians being killed.
It’s only controversial if you’re so blinded by hatred against the other side that you can’t tolerate even a heartfelt plea for kidnapped people. Yet it provoked a torrent of vile abuse and threats.
As with the Mona Lisa wreckers, this stupidly self-defeating protest served no useful purpose.
It just made me think the ill-informed protestors are… well, imbeciles.
But we see so much of this depressing protester ignorance now.
In a clip that went viral last November, two young people were interviewed on a pro-Palestinian march in London and asked by a representative of the Campaign Against Antisemitism: “When Hamas invaded Israel on 7th October, what was your initial reaction to that?”
One looked bemused and replied: “I don’t believe they did, did they? Hamas?”
The other said hesitantly: “I think so… honestly I think I need to be a bit more clued up on everything that’s going on, so I feel like I’m not really qualified to answer that too well.”
The first protester then added: “I mean, I’m not sure if I’ve seen anything that shows that that’s actually happened or factually correct.”
Yet this shameful idiocy didn’t stop them carrying a banner demanding a ceasefire. It was just a shame nobody asked them where — because I doubt they know.
In Manhattan two weeks ago, more pro-Palestinian protestors screamed ‘SHAME ON YOU!’ outside the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center as their ringleaders with bullhorns bellowed: ‘MAKE SURE THEY HEAR YOU! THEY’RE IN THE WINDOWS!’
Many of those looking down from the windows who heard them were terrified children; the hospital houses a pediatric day care unit.
How dumb do you have to be to intimidate sick kids with cancer as you protest about the way Palestinian children are being mistreated?
I guess as dumb as the college students surveyed across the US last month who mostly (86%) said they sympathize with the pro-Hamas chant “From the river to the sea” yet more than half of them had no idea what river they were talking about, with guesses ranging from other rivers like the Nile to the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, and even the Dead Sea which is a bloody lake.
But what more should we expect in a country where supposed moral and ethical leaders like John Kerry demand we all stop polluting the planet with our carbon footprint as he simultaneously uses gas-guzzling private jets like taxis?
Such brazen hypocrisy filters down to the climate warriors.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
