SHARE
COPY LINK

MIDDLE EAST CRISIS

Greta Thunberg slammed over pro-Palestinian statements at climate rally

Greta Thunberg came under fire over her pro-Palestinian stance on Monday in Germany, where the local chapter of climate movement Fridays for Future had distanced itself from her views on the Israel-Hamas war.

Greta Thunberg slammed over pro-Palestinian statements at climate rally
Climate activist Greta Thunberg is interrupted on stage after expressing solidarity with the Palestinians at a climate protest in Amsterdam. Photo: AP Photo/Peter Dejong

Thunberg, wearing the Palestinian black and white scarf, had urged “ceasefire now” at a climate protest on Sunday in Amsterdam, before being interrupted by a man who sought to snatch the microphone from her, saying he had come for a climate protest, not for her other views.

Her statements in Amsterdam marked “the end of Greta Thunberg as a climate activist”, said Volker Becker, the president of the German-Israel Society DIG, adding that “from now: Israel hater is the main job” for the Swedish activist.

The Israeli embassy in Germany also wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, that it was “sad that Greta Thunberg is again misusing the climate stage for her own purposes”.

Since October 7th, when Hamas fighters stormed Israel’s borders, killing around 1,400 mostly civilians, Fridays for Future International has been putting up solidarity calls on social media with Gaza, which has come under relentless Israeli bombing over the Hamas attack.

Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas, the Islamist rulers of Gaza, in a war that the Hamas-run health authority said has killed 11,000 people, mostly civilians in the territory.

Fridays for Future’s international group has blasted the “genocide” in Gaza, and slammed “Western support and misinformation machines”.

Luisa Neubauer, who heads the German chapter of Fridays for Future, recently told Die Zeit weekly of her regret over what she called Thunberg’s one-sided view of the conflict.

“I’m disappointed that Greta Thunberg had nothing concrete to say about the Jewish victims of the massacre of October 7th,” she said.

Germany’s climate activist branch had also distanced itself from the international group over its pro-Palestinian posts on Instagram.

Neubauer said that Thunberg was “extraordinarily reflective and far-sighted” in the past but that the German climate branch will now have to examine “with whom we still have a basis to work based on common values”.

“It is obvious that for many global organisations, global realities diverge when it comes to Israel and Palestine. But that does not justify anti-Semitism or disinformation,” warned Neubauer.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

CLIMATE CRISIS

Climate protesters wrap Swedish parliament in giant red scarf

Several hundred women surrounded Sweden's parliament with a giant knitted red scarf to protest political inaction over global warming.

Climate protesters wrap Swedish parliament in giant red scarf

Responding to a call from the Mothers Rebellion movement (Rebellmammorna in Swedish), the women marched around the Riksdag with the scarf made of 3,000 smaller scarves, urging politicians to honour a commitment to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

“I am here for my child Dinalo and for all the kids. I am angry and sad that politicians in Sweden are acting against the climate,” Katarina Utne, 41, a mother of a four-year-old and human resources coach, told AFP.

The women unfurled their scarves and marched for several hundred metres, singing and holding placards calling to “save the climate for the children’s future”.

“The previous government was acting too slowly. The current government is going in the wrong direction in terms of climate policy,” said psychologist Sara Nilsson Lรถรถv, referring to a recent report on Swedish climate policy.

The government, led by the conservative Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson and supported by the far-right Sweden Democrats, is in danger of failing to meet its 2030 climate targets, an agency tasked with evaluating climate policy recently reported.

According to the Swedish Climate Policy Council, the government has made decisions, including financial decisions, that will increase greenhouse gas emissions in the short term.

“Ordinary people have to step up. Sweden is not the worst country but has been better previously,” 67-year-old pensioner Charlotte Bellander said.

The global movement, Mothers Rebellion, was established by a group of mothers in Sweden, Germany, the USA, Zambia and Uganda.

It organises peaceful movements in public spaces by sitting and singing but does not engage in civil disobedience, unlike the Extinction Rebellion movement, which some of its organisers came from.

SHOW COMMENTS