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 Palestinian students. Indonesia had successfully secured the return of Indonesian citizens detained by Israel. These, according to Teddy, were evidence of Prabowo’s active role in supporting Palestine.
But this is precisely where his argument collapses.
The flaw in Teddy’s reasoning is not merely political. It is moral. It is intellectual. And it is deeply revealing of a dangerous way of thinking about Palestine.
Take his proud assertion that Indonesia is among the few countries capable of conducting humanitarian airdrops into Gaza because such operations require extensive diplomatic coordination and overflight permissions. He presents this as though it were a geopolitical triumph—a testament to Indonesia’s diplomatic prowess under Prabowo.
But why should anyone celebrate this?
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Why should Indonesians applaud the fact that food must be dropped from military aircraft into one of the most densely populated territories on earth?
Humanitarian airdrops are not symbols of success. They are symbols of collapse.
Food is not dropped from the sky because diplomacy has succeeded. Food is dropped from the sky because ordinary systems of life have been destroyed so thoroughly that people can no longer feed themselves through normal means.
Airdrops are what happen when ports fail, roads are inaccessible, hospitals are overwhelmed, and civilian infrastructure lies in ruins.
To celebrate the ability to conduct humanitarian airdrops while saying little about the conditions that make them necessary is like boasting about the efficiency of ambulances while remaining indifferent to the causes of mass casualties.
Or, more bluntly, it is like celebrating one’s skill at applying bandages while refusing to acknowledge the ongoing amputation.
This is not merely a rhetorical mistake. It is a profound moral inversion.
Teddy asks Indonesians to celebrate Indonesia’s ability to manage the consequences of catastrophe while remaining curiously silent about ending the catastrophe itself. In his telling, the measure of success is not whether Palestinians become freer, safer, or closer to sovereignty. Success is measured by how effectively Indonesia can deliver food, deploy medical assistance, and administer relief.
But Palestinians do not dream of becoming permanent recipients of humanitarian aid. They dream of no longer needing it. That distinction is not semantic. It goes to the heart of what solidarity actually means.
For decades, Indonesia’s support for Palestine was rooted in anti-colonialism. Indonesia’s position was simple: no people should live under occupation, and no nation should be denied sovereignty. The objective was never to make occupation more humane. The objective was to end it. Humanitarian assistance was meant to alleviate suffering until justice could be achieved—not to become a substitute for justice itself.
Yet justice is strangely absent from Teddy’s remarks.
There is little discussion of sovereignty. Little discussion of self-determination. Little discussion of ending the conditions that have produced mass displacement, destruction, and humanitarian crisis. Instead, Palestine appears primarily as a site of humanitarian management: a place where Indonesia can send aid, dispatch hospital ships, and provide scholarships.
In other words, Palestine ceases to be a political struggle and becomes a humanitarian project.
That shift is not trivial. It is dangerous.
Because humanitarianism without politics risks normalizing injustice. When the conversation shifts from ending oppression to managing its consequences, the underlying reality begins to fade into the background. The blockade remains. The violence continues. The structures producing suffering persist. But attention turns instead to relief efforts, aid deliveries, and displays of compassion.
There is a word for becoming comfortable with the management of an injustice while losing urgency about ending it. Normalization.
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The same logic was evident in Teddy’s reference to the recent detention of Indonesian activists by Israel. What Teddy neglected to emphasize was that the Indonesian citizens in question were part of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla—an international humanitarian mission seeking to challenge the blockade on Gaza and deliver aid directly to Palestinians. Rather than engaging with the broader significance of the incident, Teddy transformed the episode into another public relations success story for the government.
But bringing home detained citizens is not extraordinary diplomacy. It is among the most basic obligations of any state.
To present routine consular protection as evidence of exceptional leadership is to set the bar for government performance astonishingly low.
What ultimately makes Teddy’s intervention so troubling is not simply that it was politically biased. Governments defend themselves all the time. The real problem is that his argument reveals a failure of imagination—a failure to imagine Palestine as anything other than a humanitarian emergency to be managed rather than a political injustice to be resolved.
A senior official should understand that hospital ships are not symbols of peace; they are evidence that people continue to be wounded. He should understand that humanitarian aid is not proof that diplomacy is succeeding; it is proof that politics has failed. Most importantly, he should understand that no people aspire to become permanent beneficiaries of international charity.
Palestinians do not need a world that becomes increasingly efficient at delivering aid. They need a world that becomes increasingly committed to ensuring that such aid is no longer necessary.
By celebrating the bandages while remaining largely silent about the wound, Teddy Indra Wijaya did more than defend Prabowo’s diplomacy.
He unintentionally revealed how easily humanitarianism can become a substitute for justice—and how dangerously comfortable political elites have become with managing suffering instead of ending it.
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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
