There's something I've found observing people all these years that I believe is unique to the Western psyche. Particularly Americans, but it can often also be found in those from other Western countries who have either spent too much time in America itself, or have absorbed much of the progressive and insular attitudes so fashionable among the educated or privileged elite.
It's a peculiar naïveté about the real world at large, almost a bubble effect. And it can be a classless phenomenon in many respects, but it never ceases to amaze me when people don't realize the world beyond our shores is not the same.
There were the well-to-do parents of friends in North Carolina in the 90s who'd waited their whole lives for their dream trip to Brazil - two weeks or so exploring the Amazon and the delights of Rio, etc.
And were home after four days because of the frustration that 'no one spoke English.'
Almost as if it were a foreign country.
The rocket scientist fiancée of a Marine 1stLt in our squadron bought a plane ticket, flew to Tokyo in the 80s to surprise him, and got stuck there. Never anticipating one needed visas or such things. She thought a ticket was enough to go where you wanted to go. She never thought to check.
There was the illuminating conversation I had with the black cab driver who took me from the train station in Virginia (after a long haul up from Savannah) to Naval Station Norfolk. He had a magical accent and, after we dropped a girl off I had split that part of the fare with, I asked him where he was originally from.
He asked me if I could guess. I took a stab at South Africa and turned out to be right.
One of these days I'll tell you all his whole story - he was a wise, wonderful man to talk to. But the one line he left me with I've always remembered, because it's true in so many cases.
You Americans never bother to look further than your front doorstep.
I heard his voice when the Russians snatched up Brittney Griner for something no one, certainly no privileged celebrity, thinks twice about in the States.
Clueless.
And I sure as hell heard him again when I read this gut-busting headline in the Telegraph yesterday, with the photo of a distraught and weeping WELSH 'human rights' activist confronting Egyptian authorities at the Gaza border:
‘We can do it in the US, why not here?’: The Western activists’ march to Gaza that became a farce
Perhaps a reconnoiter of the Egyptian-Gaza border situation would have logically been in order first, prior to packing knapsacks with treats and buying plane tickets?
Just because one can buy a plane ticket doesn't mean one can do what one is planning when one gets there.
They might have seen that instead of an exotic desert paradise with 'Welcome to Egypt - Land of the Pharoahs' billboards and an entry tollbooth, the border really looks like this...
This is the massive border between Gaza 🇵🇸 and Egypt 🇪🇬.
— Vivid.🇮🇱 (@VividProwess) January 5, 2025
One of the most well-fortified walls, with 7 layers of razor wires, walls, and fences, just to make sure not a single Palestinian gets inside.
I wonder why Egypt doesn't want them? pic.twitter.com/8sJxAxijU0
...and has for years.
Anyone in the enthusiastic Global March for Gaza think to take a peek at Google or check with local authorities what they thought of the big plan to bring relief to suffering Gazans?
...World leaders have repeatedly attempted the diplomatic solution. Sanctions have been imposed and court orders issued. Meanwhile, the media has done what it can to shed light on the bloodshed.
Yet until this month, nobody had thought to try what now seems like an obvious solution to a complex, never-ending situation in the Middle East: sending a convoy of optimistic foreign activists to simply walk across Egypt and straight into war-torn Gaza, where they can offer help, support and peace directly to those who need it most.
Would the Egyptian authorities be broadly OK with their country being used as a cut-through? Would locals be supportive of the cause? Would weather conditions in June in a famously hot, dry country lend themselves to a ramble? And would the activist group absolutely, definitely, be across the geography of the region?
All matters presumably deemed trifling and answered with a blanket “Yeah, I guess?” by the Global March for Gaza before it set off at the end of last week. And march they did, for a bit, some 4,000 of them hailing from more than 80 countries – including Britain, the USA, Canada and Ireland – laden with the best of intentions and, it turned out, the world’s most deluded travel plans.
Nope.
WE CAN MARCH 'TIL OUR LEGS FALL OFF IN AMERICA!!!
Thousands of activists from around the world are expected to descend on Egypt on Thursday for a “Global March to Gaza,” a movement aiming to break the Israeli blockade that has pushed the territory to the brink of famine.
Welp.
I'm SORRY, SIR - THIS IS EGYPT
We came to Egypt to ask for permission to walk towards Gaza. Now we are being treated like terrorists. They hijacked our taxi and held us for 5-6 hours and then deported my friend. The #GlobalMarchToGaza is not an ideological movement! It's not anti-Egypt! Pic: deportation bus pic.twitter.com/v1eB0nppSY
— Fabian, der Nervige (@FlotterUsername) June 15, 2025
It looked like every Egyptian in the area pitched in to pitch the activists out.
Egyptians forcibly drag and remove foreign pro-Palestine activists who arrived in Egypt in an attempt to ‘March to Gaza.’
— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) June 14, 2025
pic.twitter.com/XABVEIU0g3
Thumpety thump thump
Thumpety thump thump
Look at marchers go!
I swear to God, it's almost like a foreign country and damned near...what's that term? Like third world or something.
If only someone had told them.
Egyptian civilians and security forces dragging away the Western activists who came to Egypt with the aim of breaking through the border to Gaza in order to deliver aid
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) June 15, 2025
The activists are shocked by the opposition their ”Global March to Gaza Initiative” has been met with in Egypt pic.twitter.com/R6b6pel3dp
WE CAN DO THIS IN AMERICA!
Tourists behaving badly when things don't turn out their way is one hallmark of clueless Western types.
The other is just being clueless.
THEY TOLD ME THIS WAS A TOUR OF EGYPT AND NOW I CAN'T SEE ANYTHING
...Some of the dispatches on social media didn’t entirely help. Tearful protestations from activists are met mostly with silence by Egyptian riot police. “Please stand with your Islamic brothers and sisters,” begs one man, a Welsh nurse who says he previously volunteered in Gaza, of a line of officers blocking his path to waiting, empty buses. “We’re here for humanity... allow us to march to Falestin [the Arabic word for ‘Palestine’]. Please, you’ve got to listen to me.” One woman complains that “the Egyptian authorities, they hold us under the sun. It’s 40 degrees!” before claiming they are “saving lives” – specifically those of two activists with “heat disease”.
Another tells the camera that the Egyptians “tried to distribute passports in a disgusting manner, a manner equal to the Zionists distributing the food in the cages for the Palestinians.”
A confused British woman in a hat and sunglasses was asked for her thoughts. “I’ve come to sightsee, it’s my first time here and I want to see Egypt,” she says, in a Merseyside accent. “I’m not being allowed to do that, it’s very oppressive.” And judging by the footage, she genuinely does seem like an oppressed sightseer who asked her taxi driver to take her to Sharm El-Sheikh but ended up caught in an international incident.
In true progressive fashion, it's all the fault of the Egyptians that the Globalist Gaza marchers invaded and weren't welcomed with open arms.
...Later, a video emerged of some activists chanting “F--- you Egypt” on a bus, which can’t have helped relations, but it isn’t always obvious what the activists’ goal was. “We are the police, please respect our country, we are asking, with politeness, you must respect our country. Your message has been received. You can go back to Cairo now,” one Egyptian policeman is seen telling a crowd.
And then the pièce de résistance of privileged American insular bubble-speak.
...“We can do it in America, why can’t we do it here?” an American-accented voice calls out. The policeman just looks confused and asks: “What are you doing here?”
Really.
I'd ask what they 'thought' they were doing there, but thinking didn't really come into it.
Bubble people are dangerous, mostly to themselves.
They should get out more - SEE the world before trying to change it.
Things are different out there.
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