At some point, he could no longer stand it, and he climbed up onto the stage. Nobody tried to stop him. He grabbed for the microphone and tried to speak into it, but she refused to let go, resulting in a brief tug-o-war. At some point, Dam was able to speak into the microphone: "I came here for a climate demonstration, not a political view." Some in the audience booed and other activists on stage pulled him away.

Thunberg smiled – a strangely condescending smile.

She pulled the microphone back and called after Dam: "Calm down, calm down, calm down." It sounded like an order. Or was it a request? Calls for others to calm down usually come from a position of superiority. It was a brief scuffle between young and old, between a woman and a man.

Greta won on Sunday, for the time being. Soon after Dam was ushered off the stage, she joined in with chants of: "No climate justice on occupied land!" And soon, she was back in control of the stage and of the crowd. She had managed to defend herself. But at what cost?

She showed the world where she stands on the Middle East conflict. And demonstrated her approach to Israel – cold and distanced.

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A few days after the incident, it can no longer be said that Greta Thunberg is the clear victor of the mini conflict on the stage in Amsterdam. She now finds herself on the business end of serious, justified criticism. And dismay, particularly in Germany. Many are left with the feeling that the admiration they once had for Thunberg was mistaken.

...

Indeed, since the orgy of violence visited upon Israel by Hamas on October 7, she has never expressed sympathy for the Jews murdered and molested by Hamas of her own accord. She has only said anything about the victims when pressured to do so, and even in such instances, she has been evasive.

Thunberg has shown no solidarity with Jews despite the fact that Hamas has made no secret of their desire to annihilate Jewish life. Despite the fact that anti-Semitism around the world has swelled since the attack. Despite the fact that Israeli flags are being burned, Jewish children are afraid to go to school and Jewish adults are seeking to avoid being recognized as Jews on the streets.

Israel's allies have also found it necessary to repeatedly warn the country's government to adhere to international humanitarian law and ensure proportionality. But the existence of the nation of Israel is not up for negotiation. Jews have been persecuted for centuries. And 6 million of them were murdered in the Holocaust.

Those who, like Thunberg, gloss over the suffering of the Israeli women who were raped by Hamas terrorists in front of their children on October 7, and the suffering of parents whose children were murdered before their very eyes – those who ignore such suffering because the victims were Jewish Israelis, they are aligning themselves with the views of anti-Semitism. At the very least.

Volker Beck, president of the German-Israeli Society, says that her appearance in Amsterdam "marks the end of Greta Thunberg as a climate activist." In a post on the social media platform X, he wrote that she is "from now on, a full-time Israel hater."

The Israeli Embassy in Berlin also took to the X platform, writing that it was "sad how Greta Thunberg again used the climate stage for her own purposes." The post continued in English: "No stage for antisemites!"

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At universities in the United States, left-wing students are holding pro-Palestinian demonstrations, some of which give vent to pure anti-Israeli hatred. At Harvard, one of the most respected universities in the world, some left-wing students blame Israel alone for the escalation of violence in the Middle East. Jewish students there no longer feel safe.

For many, he says, the lesson of the Holocaust is that we must stand up against racism and violence. Anti-Semitism is only perceived as an historical problem in this context, and in the eyes of young activists, Muslims and minorities are quickly seen as the new victims – or the Israelis as well. "They say Zionism, but it’s against Jews. We are currently seeing anti-Semitism as we have never seen it before," says Mattsson. He and his colleagues describe it as structural anti-Semitism, because although it is not consciously expressed, it is still nonetheless clearly anti-Jewish at its core.

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Yes, criticism of Israel’s settlement policy, the current government and aspects of Israeli warfare are justified.

But no, the accusation that Israel is acting like a colonial state is unjustified – because it negates the Holocaust and the fact that the people who sought a home in the terroritory of today’s Israel were the victims of it. And the fact that it is a region where Jews lived many centuries ago. The accusation that Israel is committing "genocide" is also unjustified. Israel’s declared goal is not the extermination of the Palestinians. Israel was attacked. That’s why the counterattack, as the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas recently wrote in a statement, is "justified in principle."