Iranian oil tanker. Photo: WikiCommons.

On Sunday, demonstrators marched to Wall Street and then blocked lower Broadway between Bowling Green and Morris Street in order to protest the role that big business plays in climate change.

This shouldn’t surprise us, since leftists, who oppose Wall Street and big business, also oppose the widespread use of fossil fuels that lead to an increased amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But things are not so simple. The Rockefeller family, famous for its money and its link to petroleum – that most widely used fossil fuel – will sell assets tied to fossil fuel companies.

We associate the word “divestment” with anti-Israel activism. The Rockefellers, however, are divesting their funds not from companies that do business with Israel, but from petroleum companies.

Where does petroleum come from? Many of the countries associated with oil fields are in the Middle East, among them Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar. An especially oil-rich country in the Western hemisphere is Venezuela, Iran’s good friend and ally. Saudi Arabia has been a major source of funding for Hamas. So has Qatar. Qatar has also funded the Muslim Brotherhood and has probably helped ISIS as well, although there have been denials from Qatar’s leaders.

The leftists who are opposing the petroleum industry think they are fighting against American capitalists. Little do they know what the Rockefellers have done. It turns out the leftists are indirectly supporting Israel.

How could such a thing happen? Leftists have consistently abandoned their own causes in order to oppose Israel. Gay-rights activists have never made a big issue of the fact that nine countries – Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Mauritania, Nigeria, Somalia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Yemen, and Iran – have made homosexuality a capital offense. Why haven’t there been demonstrations against the anti-gay policies of these countries? The reason is that it might make Israel look less bad.

Women who have been raped can be stoned for adultery in some countries. A 13-year-old girl was stoned in Somalia. Were there huge protests? Of course not. It might make Israel look less bad.

The demonstrators who demonstrated in lower Manhattan to oppose the petroleum industry have no idea that they are opposing Israel’s enemies. If they did, that would end their protest.