Why privileged Israelophobes can’t handle Azealia Banks

We live in an age of grotesque double standards and cloying fakery from celebs. The overwhelming majority seem to think that their job is not to entertain us, but to strike fashionable poses and shove hypocrisies down our throats.

And then there’s Azealia Banks. She is, as the kids say, a real one.

The 34-year-old rapper from Harlem has been controversial for quite some time, sounding off on social media on a variety of topics. But last week she outdid herself by bluntly standing up for Israel at a time when pretty much all of the luvvie class has gone the other way.

‘I’m a Zionist’, she posted last Wednesday. Unsurprisingly, this unleashed a torrent of largely hostile commentary. Many young, privileged Westerners now unthinkingly loathe Israel. For them, a black rapper’s refusal to toe the ‘progressive’ line just doesn’t make sense.

It’s been particularly difficult for woke, finger-snapping white girls. They’re normally only too eager to shout ‘yaaas queen!’ when a black woman speaks. But on this occasion, they’re struggling, as Banks has not stuck to the script.

It should be said that, at points, Banks’s Israel commentary has veered off into dodgier, identitarian territory. ‘BITCH DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY FUCKING BLACK CHILDREN HAVE BEEN MURDERED AT THE HANDS OF ARABS?’, she tweeted last week. Then there was this: ‘I do not support the expansion of genocide of any more peoples of the world at the hands of Arab Muslims.’ Banks, it seems, was referring to the the centuries-long Arab slave trade, which involved the enslavement of millions of Africans right up until the 20th century.

No wonder Banks got progressives’ knickers in a twist. We know that blaming anyone other than the bad white / Jewish man for slavery and genocide is enough to trigger a mass-casualty event at Columbia University.

We live in an age where female celebrity takes mainly two forms: Meghan Markle’s grandiose self-delusion and manufactured virtue, or hectoring harpies with pronouns in their bios. But here comes Banks to shred her opponents openly, and with the most inventive use of swear words I have ever heard. And I grew up in Brooklyn!

She is certainly a one-off. And in the arena of social-media combat, she has form. She is a master of short-form insults, which she marshals in aid of the most unpopular causes of the day. In 2020, as Covid and lockdowns descended, she took on the trans-rights mob on Twitter, and promptly earned herself a suspension:

‘Cancel all these dumbass luxury transgender healthcare “rights” and redirect the castration funds to the Latino farmers working to actually feed any of us through this crisis.

‘They deserve access to the Trump Covid treatments more than any of you assholes *need* to chop your cocks off and get breast implants and hormones. This is bullshit.’

After the suspension, she went to the now defunct alternative social-media site, Parler. There she wrote the most exquisite takedown of the privileged white liberal male I have ever seen:

‘I’m REALLY tired of these white men who think parroting liberal rhetoric from Twitter is somehow impressive or sexy to black women. Black women are extremely sharp and very aggressive. If we are dating any white men this year they must be conservative. I like white men who exercise their white privilege and take full advantage of it. Who wants to sleep on a full-size mattress in a studio apartment with some liberal hipster wearing some stinky-ass, thrift-shop flannel and eating Trader Joe’s curry while you listen to him complain about all the white guys who decided to not be a bum? Fucking pitiful.’

Now, she’s coming for the anti-Israel lunatics, who are effectively bowing at the feet of terrorists. As she said, in response to a charming man who called her ‘a dumb zio’ and ended his tweet with ‘Free Palestine’: ‘So go free it honky!!! If u feel so strong get up and go join Hamas u fucking soft tiddy.’

She was at it again on Sunday. Lefties everywhere were glued to their $1,000 smartphones watching climate-goblin-turned-Israelophobe Greta Thunberg sail on a supposedly blockade-busting yacht in the eastern Med. Banks was not impressed, rightly noting that Thunberg ‘would have been kidnapped and held hostage in Palestine’.

Not that Banks has always been an uncritical friend of Israel – she once complained about racism there. But, as she explained in a recent tweet, her criticisms are of a different order to those of ‘progressives’ denying Israel’s right to exist:

‘ISRAEL IS JUST LIKE THE UNITED STATES.
How many times have I complained about the United States and never denounced my passport?… I be complaining about EVERYBODY and to their face!!’

You are free to dislike Banks’ style. Some of her views on Arabs feel like mirror-image grievance politics. But at a time when a poisonous anti-Israel consensus reigns among right-on liberals and middle-class leftists, Banks’s willingness to declare ‘I’m a Zionist’ is positively revolutionary.

Jenny Holland is a former newspaper reporter and speechwriter. Visit her Substack here