Inside Sources and the Boston Herald published an op-ed by B’nai B’rith International Director of U.N. and Intercommunal Affairs David Michaels about Greta Thunberg’s disappointing, one-sided activism that fails to even mention Israel or Jewish people, or acknowledge rising anti-Semitism.

Read on Inside Sources. Read in the Boston Herald.

Recent bloodshed in Israel has exposed the world to scenes that have shocked even those inured to conflict in the region. 

Jewish infants beheaded. Families burned alive. Festival-goers mowed down. A disabled grandmother taken captive. A Holocaust survivor executed. A child hostage taunted on camera. A woman’s body desecrated in the Gaza Strip. Palestinian rockets sometimes falling on Palestinians themselves – as seems to have happened outside Gaza’s al-Ahli Hospital. 

For even Jews far outside Israel, each of these – along with a surge of antisemitism, particularly in European countries with small Jewish communities – has taken a profound emotional and psychological toll. They have eroded once again our sense of safety, our hope in humanity, and our optimism in a better future. 

For me, amid all this, it was Greta Thunberg who delivered an exceptionally cruel blow. 

Just over a week ago, the 20-year-old took to social media, posting a picture with three of her friends. Crowding, one holding a “Climate Justice Now!” placard, the others, faintly smirking, hold up signs declaring “Free Palestine” and “This Jew Stands with Palestine.” Thunberg herself holds a sign reading, “Stand with Gaza.”

Sitting cutely above her shoulder is an octopus plush toy. 

To be clear, Thunberg has the right to her own opinions and to express them. It is admirable to care about the needs of all suffering people, and I wish fervently for a genuine, lasting, and comprehensive peace between Israel and all its neighbors, including Palestinians. 

But what is devastating about Thunberg’s post is that an otherwise sensitive and smart young activist reacted to the most brutal massacre of Jews since the Holocaust with an image and an accompanying text not even mentioning the word Israel or Israelis. Those human beings include some 1,400 slaughtered and at least 229 taken hostage, almost all civilians, by Iran-backed jihadists. 

It is stunning that Thunberg’s own calculations, or the information reaching her, would have her act so utterly callously – even at potential harm to her broad-based movement for climate action, and even as the terrorism against Israel is ongoing, with over 7,500 rockets now fired at a country that has almost the same sized population as Sweden but less than two percent of its landmass. 

Thunberg’s inexplicably one-sided message stands to have an outsized impact on an admiring young generation globally, and it was experienced as a grave betrayal by her allies and supporters among Israeli and other Jews who have repeatedly been not just terrorized and traumatized but dehumanized, marginalized, maligned and abandoned. 

Coming from someone who has championed facts and practical solutions over shallow assertions, her message more closely mimicked the slogans of those who deny the reality of COVID-19 or climate change because of loud but uninformed voices preferring to disregard evidence. 

We all know that Israel has greater conventional military strength than Palestinians and, unlike Palestinians, a full-fledged state. But before opining on this complex subject, did Thunberg become aware that Israel withdrew completely from Gaza in 2005 – including every single soldier and settlement – and that Palestinian leaders rebuffed sweeping offers of a state in 1947, 2000, and 2008? Does she know that Hamas, which violently seized control of Gaza but is also likely Palestinians’ most popular political faction, is openly committed to Israel’s destruction?  

Did she realize that Hamas, which has clearly diverted enormous resources for terrorist weaponry and infrastructure, deliberately attacks Israeli civilians from among Palestinian civilians? Does she recognize that Israel has eagerly established peace with each willing Arab and Muslim state – and taken unparalleled risks to limit civilian casualties while battling ideological fanatics?  

In researching the current situation, did Thunberg read the Hamas charter, with its classic antisemitism of the most deplorable kind? In turn, has she read the pluralistic values enshrined in the Declaration of Independence of Israel – the Middle East’s only democracy, with a continually growing Arab minority comprising fully one-fifth of its citizenry?

In other words, for all their imperfections in an immensely imperfect neighborhood, are the people in Jews’ sole ancestral homeland – home to half the world’s Jewish population – not entitled to equal solidarity from those committed to social justice? 

After an outcry over her social media post, Thunberg pulled down then reposted her message and picture – only cropping out the toy octopus, which, she was told, might be interpreted as an antisemitic symbol.  

She missed the main point, writing that “of course” she opposes antisemitism. One day later, she added, “It goes without saying – or so I thought” that she opposed Hamas’s attacks, though again called only for “justice and freedom for Palestinians and all civilians.” She doubled down: “#StandWithPalestine.” 

Clearly, outrage over anti-Jewish atrocities doesn’t “go without saying.”  

Thunberg’s messaging has signaled that there is literally nothing Israel’s attackers can do to inspire equal care for the legitimate rights and very lives of Israelis.

This does no favor to Palestinians – who require freedom from Hamas just as much as Israel does.