SectionRead the video transcriptexpand here
Scuffle with Greta Thunberg at a climate demonstration in Amsterdam:
"I'm here because of a climate demonstration, not because of a political opinion."
The man is led off the stage. What had happened? Wearing a black and white Palestinian scarf around her neck, the world's best-known environmental activist declared that the climate movement had a duty to "listen to the voices of those who are oppressed and who are fighting for peace and justice." Palestinian flags can be seen in the audience and chants of "Palestine will be free" can be heard. Speakers were constantly talking about the Middle East and some were inflamed against Israel.
Greta Thunberg, climate activist: "No climate justice on occupied land!"
In doing so, she was clearly alluding to the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel. The performance was criticized from many sides, including German climate activists who condemned this political appropriation.
With her school strikes, Greta Thunberg launched the group "Fridays for Future" in 2018 to draw attention to the urgent problems of the climate crisis. In the same year, when she was only 15 years old, she was invited to a world climate conference. Again and again, she urges the most powerful heads of state to act.
Greta Thunberg, climate activist: "We have to see it above all as an existential crisis. And as long as it is not treated as a crisis, we can still hold as many negotiations, talks and conferences on climate change as we like. It's not going to change anything."
In the years that followed, "Fridays for Future" grew into a worldwide movement, and Thunberg became its icon. In 2019, true to her convictions, she will travel with the German skipper Boris Herrmann by sailboat across the Atlantic to the UN climate summit in New York. Again and again, she is perceived as a political opponent of climate deniers, such as at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2020 with her grimace towards Donald Trump.
Protest chants: "What do we want? Climate justice! When do we want it? Now!«
In 2019, she wrote on X, then Twitter: "I am sometimes referred to as 'political'. But I have never supported any political party, politician or ideology. I communicate the science and the risks that arise if we don't act on it."
The international Instagram account of Fridays for Future, on which Greta Thunberg is said to have great influence, glorified Palestinian terrorism as early as 2021. "Our hearts are with the martyrs," they wrote at the time. "Their blood will not be forgotten." On Instagram, Thunberg also recommends social media accounts, one of which described Hamas' terror attack as a "revolutionary day" to be "proud of." In mid-October, it called for a strike on social networks in solidarity with the Palestinians.
Many of her former supporters criticize her for putting her pro-Palestine stance above climate protection and thus harming the movement. In addition, the activist played down Hamas terror and did not specifically mention the Israeli victims of the Hamas massacre. And it would provide a stage for anti-Semitic activists. Thunberg subsequently defended herself with a tweet on X: of course she was against the terrible attack by Hamas.
But the recent conflict in the Middle East is already dividing the climate movement. The German climate activist Luisa Neubauer told the German Press Agency at the end of October: "We emphatically distance ourselves from the anti-Semitic posts on international channels."