Her latest episode of malevolence was on display earlier this month in Mannheim, Germany, when she publicly cursed out the nations of Israel and Germany. She targeted the German government with public profanity over its support for the Jewish state.
Thunberg’s anti-Israel expression was not a one-off for her. Immediately following the massacre of Israelis by Hamas last year, Greta stood against Israel, the victim. Last September, she was arrested during a protest at Copenhagen University organized by Students Against the Occupation that demanded the school cut off all ties with Israel.
In May at Stockholm University, she urged the same by writing, “We demand that the Stockholm University administration cut all ties, agreements and collaborations with the genocidal, apartheid state of Israel.” She also protested Eurovision for allowing an Israeli singer to participate in a singing contest.
Greta has not escaped blowback for this behavior. Last September, the group StopAntiSemitism named her the “Anti-Semite” of the week and stated, “she has sadly transformed her activism into a platform for vile Jew-hatred.” After this month’s episode, the organization wrote that “someone should remind Greta that Israel is a global leader in solving climate challenges,” as though that would somehow get her to rethink her priorities.
Thunberg has stated she is against the “horrific attacks by hamas” (sic) and denied knowledge about an antisemitic symbol she included in a social media post.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, there are nuanced differences among being anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and antisemitic. At a minimum, Greta has been flirting with the latter.
That comports with many others in the climate change movement, spearheaded by the United Nations — a bastion of animus against Israel and Jewish people. One of many examples was last year’s COP28 climate summit in Dubai, where I listened to a group of panelists excoriate Israel with zero mention of the Hamas massacre of Israelis just weeks prior.
Thunberg has been operating in an adult world starting as a young teenager. In 2018, she presented at the UN climate summit in Poland. The following year, she famously sailed across the Atlantic Ocean without fossil fuels (except for the materials and construction of the boat), to go before the UN General Assembly in New York, where she gave her petulant “How dare you” speech.
Bratty, obnoxious behavior from teens is nothing unique to Thunberg, and all of us can look back at cringe-worthy moments of our youth. Greta was given a pass because she was a celebrity youngster whose climate change agenda is embraced by the UN, most of the global media, and governments the world over.
Her global climate fame earned her TIME magazine’s “Person of the Year” in 2019, which placed her in the pantheon of numerous historic figures, for good or ill, including American presidents, other heads of state, heroes, and mass-murderers. The magazine just named President-elect Donald Trump its 2024 recipient, a second time for him.
Legacy media outlets such as TIME are no longer the standout, influential publications they were in the 20th century. Instead, TIME is a salient example of media that has jettisoned genuine journalism to become a just another organ for left-of-center politics. Thunberg’s Person-of-the-Year honor was more about the magazine promoting climate change policies than her as a newsmaker.
Four years ago, I wrote an empathetic review of the Hulu documentary “I Am Greta,” about her challenging life and rapid rise to international fame. I felt sorry for young Greta, who is on the autism spectrum and continually morose. I believe she was being exploited by the climate change industry to further its anti-freedom, anti-economic growth agenda that empowers politicians and bureaucrats, enriches corporate chieftains and NGO grifters, and manipulates and frightens credulous students of all ages.
Now that she’s a grown-up, Thunberg has translated her climate stardom to highlight something she cares about more than the planet these days: attacking Israel for responding to the violent, unprovoked aggression by Hamas 14 months ago against unarmed Israeli civilians. At this point, Thunberg is a full hour past her proverbial 15 minutes of fame. I hope she gets genuine help and finds fulfillment. But she doesn’t deserve worldwide attention.
Peter Murphy is Senior Fellow at CFACT. He has researched and advocated for a variety of policy issues, including education reform and fiscal policy, both in the non-profit sector and in government. This article was sourced HERE
Thunberg’s anti-Israel expression was not a one-off for her. Immediately following the massacre of Israelis by Hamas last year, Greta stood against Israel, the victim. Last September, she was arrested during a protest at Copenhagen University organized by Students Against the Occupation that demanded the school cut off all ties with Israel.
In May at Stockholm University, she urged the same by writing, “We demand that the Stockholm University administration cut all ties, agreements and collaborations with the genocidal, apartheid state of Israel.” She also protested Eurovision for allowing an Israeli singer to participate in a singing contest.
Greta has not escaped blowback for this behavior. Last September, the group StopAntiSemitism named her the “Anti-Semite” of the week and stated, “she has sadly transformed her activism into a platform for vile Jew-hatred.” After this month’s episode, the organization wrote that “someone should remind Greta that Israel is a global leader in solving climate challenges,” as though that would somehow get her to rethink her priorities.
Thunberg has stated she is against the “horrific attacks by hamas” (sic) and denied knowledge about an antisemitic symbol she included in a social media post.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, there are nuanced differences among being anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and antisemitic. At a minimum, Greta has been flirting with the latter.
That comports with many others in the climate change movement, spearheaded by the United Nations — a bastion of animus against Israel and Jewish people. One of many examples was last year’s COP28 climate summit in Dubai, where I listened to a group of panelists excoriate Israel with zero mention of the Hamas massacre of Israelis just weeks prior.
Thunberg has been operating in an adult world starting as a young teenager. In 2018, she presented at the UN climate summit in Poland. The following year, she famously sailed across the Atlantic Ocean without fossil fuels (except for the materials and construction of the boat), to go before the UN General Assembly in New York, where she gave her petulant “How dare you” speech.
Bratty, obnoxious behavior from teens is nothing unique to Thunberg, and all of us can look back at cringe-worthy moments of our youth. Greta was given a pass because she was a celebrity youngster whose climate change agenda is embraced by the UN, most of the global media, and governments the world over.
Her global climate fame earned her TIME magazine’s “Person of the Year” in 2019, which placed her in the pantheon of numerous historic figures, for good or ill, including American presidents, other heads of state, heroes, and mass-murderers. The magazine just named President-elect Donald Trump its 2024 recipient, a second time for him.
Legacy media outlets such as TIME are no longer the standout, influential publications they were in the 20th century. Instead, TIME is a salient example of media that has jettisoned genuine journalism to become a just another organ for left-of-center politics. Thunberg’s Person-of-the-Year honor was more about the magazine promoting climate change policies than her as a newsmaker.
Four years ago, I wrote an empathetic review of the Hulu documentary “I Am Greta,” about her challenging life and rapid rise to international fame. I felt sorry for young Greta, who is on the autism spectrum and continually morose. I believe she was being exploited by the climate change industry to further its anti-freedom, anti-economic growth agenda that empowers politicians and bureaucrats, enriches corporate chieftains and NGO grifters, and manipulates and frightens credulous students of all ages.
Now that she’s a grown-up, Thunberg has translated her climate stardom to highlight something she cares about more than the planet these days: attacking Israel for responding to the violent, unprovoked aggression by Hamas 14 months ago against unarmed Israeli civilians. At this point, Thunberg is a full hour past her proverbial 15 minutes of fame. I hope she gets genuine help and finds fulfillment. But she doesn’t deserve worldwide attention.
Peter Murphy is Senior Fellow at CFACT. He has researched and advocated for a variety of policy issues, including education reform and fiscal policy, both in the non-profit sector and in government. This article was sourced HERE
6 comments:
I've always felt sorry for Greta, as a child with intellectual disabilities exploited by the environmentalists, the left wing media and even her own parents who are both from the entertainment industry. They needed a girl as a figurehead for the movement to appeal to other gullible young people with anxiety problems. She's Europe's version of Chloe. However as with most left wing figureheads, like Jacinda,, she has no substance and is essentially just a spoilt brat.
This latest incident is another storm in a teacup. Europe has been inundated by Arabs, who want the destruction of Isreal. This is just one of many protests calling for all Israelis to be sent "back to Poland", presumably the concentration camps (these protestors are lovely people). Greta simply went along with the protest, just like all the flakey Green Party supporters do in NZ. The protest was at the Eurovision Song Contest, of which Grteta's mother was a finalist many years ago.
The push to lower the voting age to 16 is part of this issue to capitalize on the mix of idealism, ignorance and bravado which can characterize youth. Once indoctrinated in a certain area and lacking any real experience of the world, they can be relied upon to be noisy foot soldiers to support the leading players. Thunberg and co would never be labelled as " far Left" - as the " far " adjective is reserved to ostracize the moderate Right.
"Thunberg, now 21 years old, has called for “crushing Zionism” and repeatedly accused Israel of “genocide.”
In the above statement, I couldn't agree more.
Those that historically praised this misguided brat must look pretty foolish now.
Well, who would have thought I'd agree with Greta Thunberg on anything?
The thrust of the article is that because she is wrong about climate change and is manipulated by others to advance their agenda. the same must be true of Greta's anti-Israel stance.
That's an obvious logical fallacy that can be dismissed at once.
Another logical fallacy is that underlying "anti-semitism" - that is, because someone observes Jewish behaviour and judges that behaviour negatively, then that person is a "Jew-hating anti-semite." Obviously, that is ridiculous, but the aim of this tactic is to distract from the Jewish behaviour at issue and instead assign some pathological mental condition to the "antisemite."
You've even got very powerful Jewish special interest groups (if it's not "antisemitic" to suggest that there are such groups) like the ADL very helpfully informing us who "the real antisemites" are, and thus those who should be dismissed on the basis of the above logical fallacy.
So, antisemitism (like Greta's and no doubt mine) is based on a false premise, sustained by a logical fallacy, and promulgated and enforced by Jewish individuals and organisations whose job it to run interference for Jews and/or Israel and to make their actions be unanalysable and free of critique in polite company.
"now that she's a grown up"? sorry can't agree with that.
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