Indonesia’s cabinet secretary turned Palestine into a public relations campaign

There is something profoundly disturbing about the way Indonesia’s Cabinet Secretary, Teddy Indra Wijaya, chose to defend President Prabowo Subianto’s diplomacy on Palestine. The problem is not that he defended his president; that is, after all, part of his job. The problem is that in trying to elevate Prabowo into a heroic statesman, Teddy ended up revealing a far more troubling reality: the extent to which Indonesian officials have begun mistaking the management of catastrophe for the achievement of justice. Responding to criticism over Prabowo’s remarkably frequent overseas trips, Teddy offered a list of accomplishments that he apparently believed would silence critics. Indonesia had conducted humanitarian airdrops into Gaza. Indonesia had deployed a hospital ship. Indonesia had provided scholarships for […]