Greta Thunberg’s implicit support for Hamas is unsustainable

In a recent opinion piece in the Guardian, Greta Thunberg and her colleagues claim that they stand with marginalized people when they call for the end of violence. It is disappointing that someone as formidable as Thunberg, a symbol of a younger generation speaking truth to power about the climate crisis, chooses not to see, or state, the obvious: for there to be peace and freedom for the people of Gaza, the Hamas terrorists need to lay down their weapons and free the Israeli hostages it kidnapped during its savage attack on October 7.

The people of Gaza are begging for Hamas to end the war. Greta should join that call.

Not only does Hamas’s ruthless, undemocratic regime hold more than 100 Israeli hostages, it exploits millions of Palestinians in Gaza – deploying them to protect its acts of terror. That’s why Hamas places its military headquarters, armories and staging grounds in mosques, schools and hospitals, storing its RPGs in children’s rooms and under baby beds, while forcing doctors and UNRWA personnel to guard captive hostages in attics of their private homes.

Thunberg’s failure to even acknowledge that Hamas brutally started this war with the most vicious massacre of Jews since the Holocaust is inexcusable. Hamas continues to fire thousands of rockets across Israel, targeting civilians. Such barrages have been going on for years. Would any country and its citizens accept such a daily reality?

She also speaks of “justice,” but ignores the fact that Hamas’s oppression of the Palestinian people did not start on October 7^th. It began when Hamas won the 2007 elections, murdering its political opponents and canceling any subsequent voting. The Hamas terror organization trains child soldiers, uses child labor to dig its tunnels and conducts public executions of those suspected of dissidence or being part of the LGTBQ community. Hamas does not constitute a “marginalized group.” It is a death cult that hates women, queer folk, Jews, free-thinking people and, ultimately, non-Muslim humanity.

Thunberg and colleagues accuse Israel of a range of offenses, from employing starvation as a weapon of war to targeting civilians during the Gaza war. Implicitly, she accuses Israel of genocidal intentions and actions.

Israel is not committing genocide. The thousands of Palestinian casualties killed during this conflict are heartbreaking. Israel has made extraordinary efforts to reduce civilian losses, dropping millions of leaflets and making millions of calls begging Palestinians to get out of harm’s way while creating humanitarian corridors to enable this. Sadly, it has not been enough. But surely Greta can see that Hamas engineered the present dynamics. Israel is not targeting schools, hospitals, or mosques. Rather, it seeks to neutralize rocket-launching sites and terrorist command centers, which Hamas strategically placed in civilian institutions.

When Greta chooses to spend her time supporting the position of countries like Iran, Yemen, and Syria and making ludicrous assertions about Israel’s “genocidal intentions” – she takes her focus away from the issue where her presence has been so important. It was ironic that she had so much time to go after Israel when the UN climate convention was going on in Dubai Unfortunately, her voice and moral clarity on the crisis threatening the future of the planet suffer when she tacitly sides with Hamas by directing her criticism solely at Israel.

The Middle East is one of the fastest-growing regions on the planet: spiraling from 100 million people in 1950 to over 400 million today. It contains countries with some of the highest per capita carbon footprints in the world. Reining in these emissions requires cooperation in accelerating electrification and decarbonizing our energy sources. Hamas and its radical Islamic allies have consistently done everything they could to violently disrupt any collaborative efforts. But they have failed.

A new era of pragmatism is past the point of no return the Middle East. This is a source of optimism among local environmentalists. Today, the vast majority of Arabs in the Middle East live in countries that enjoy diplomatic relations with Israel. Since Israel responded to the October 7th Hamas attack, none of these countries has chosen to discontinue these ties, limit Israeli access to their airspace or taken concrete steps to sanction Israel for defending itself. They know that the Hamas jihadist regime should have been removed years ago.

When Greta Thunberg is unable to distinguish between Israeli and Hamas morality, she is no longer worthy of being a spokesperson on behalf of climate justice. Unfortunately, progressive newspapers like the Guardian do not offer the opportunity for rebuttals so that an alternative environmental view can be available. The truth is that if she is unable to realize that there are times on the world stage when evil seizes power and ethical responsibility requires its removal, then she is dangerously naïve. When she chooses to abuse her stature to demonize Israel and deny the right of the Jewish state to defend itself and defeat a terrorist Hamas army committed to slaughtering its people, her impaired vision leads the world away from a sustainable future.