Has Greta Thurnberg suddenly come to her senses?

Suddenly I saw a video on social media that I had not seem before. Someone I respect shared it, thanking Thunberg — for supporting Israel after the Oct 7th massacre and abductions, I suppose. Others shared it on. This video does seem to powerfully make the case for moral clarity.

But it confused me.

We know that Thunberg’s new fashion statement is the kefiyeh she seems to wear all the time.

Greta Thunberg at a pro-Hamas demonstration outside the Eurovision competition venue.

So what happened? Has she had a change of heart? Has Israeli hasbara (explaining our case to the world) actually had some impact?

The video is short. Watch to the end and I will discuss it shortly below.

I don’t know if this is legal — if ‘Israel’s Story,’ who produced it got permission to use it, to edit the original and make it look like she supports something she very clearly does not.

The editors left in the last frame where we see that it is a clip of Thunberg talking at the Climate Action Summit in 2019 when she was 16 years old. Perhaps it should be called her “How Dare You!” speech.

You can see the original video of that speech here.

Now I discover that Yoseph Haddad posted this video already in Oct 2023, admonishing Thunberg to listen to her own words. Therefore, it is not a new video, just new to me and, I suppose, to many other people who will now be exposed to it.

I find it misleading, however, that the video did not make it clear at the beginning that this was an edited version and likely one of which she would not approve (to put it mildly). Had Haddad’s admonishment to her been in the opening frames of the video, it would have not have confused me. And I have the feeling that many people will not watch until the very end and will not know that this is an edited clip from 2019 having nothing to do with Gaza, Hamas, or Israel.

It is important for us consumers of media, social and conventional alike, to apply our critical faculties to what we see and hear. For THIS is Greta Thunberg:

And yesterday, 11 Oct 2024, Thunberg was in Milan in support of Palestinians. She made a speech there:

If anyone wants to claim that she is not antizionist just because she supports Palestinians, you probably did not pay attention to the part where she says the words, “anti-colonialism and oppression.” While she referred to global anti-colonialism and oppression, when it comes right after “free Palestine” with barely a breath between phrases from someone wearing a kefiyeh, well….

“You cannot be neutral in a genocide,” she says. And, with no other place in the world mentioned (where there are real genocides happening today), we hear “Free free Palestine.” We all know what that means.

And here is something to show the hypocrisy some people attribute to her: