Madleen Freedom Flotilla: Not all heroes wear kuffiyehs, but Greta Thunberg does

Once again, grown men are spiralling into hysteria over Greta Thunberg.

This time, it’s her participation in the Madleen Freedom Flotilla to Gaza, delivering aid to a besieged population, that has triggered the outrage.

Donald Trump called her “strange” and said she needs to “go to anger management class.” The Israeli state dismissed the humanitarian mission, which included French-Palestinian MEP Rima Hassan and other prominent international activists, as a glorified “selfie” op. Piers Morgan labelled her an “attention-seeking narcissist,” claiming she’s made “zero difference to the plight of Palestinians", despite spending most of Israel’s assault on Gaza platforming anti-Palestinian voices on his talk show.

So what is it about Greta Thunberg that provokes such loud, vitriolic scorn from the establishment and its defenders?

Her trajectory in the public eye has become a revealing litmus test.

As a solitary teenager skipping school to protest for the climate, Greta Thunberg was hailed as brave, inspirational, and endearingly passionate. World leaders praised her resolve, referenced her in speeches, and welcomed her into the halls of power for photo ops. She was seen as a product of liberal parenting done right.

Sure, she was bunking off school, regrettable, perhaps, but her activism was harmless, quiet. What threat was one small European girl with a placard to the roaring gears of global capitalism?

But as it became clear her activism wasn’t a fleeting adolescent phase, the mood shifted.

Greta grew up, and when she didn’t trade protest for a corporate job like a well-behaved citizen, the media’s affection curdled. Sometimes, she was simply ignored. When she was arrested at the London oil summit in 2023, the elite barely flinched, eyes rolled, and business continued. Other times, she was openly vilified.

The Telegraph branded her “a ruffian masquerading as a latter-day saint,” reducing her activism to ego-driven theatre. And when she was named TIME’s Person of the Year in 2019, Donald Trump called it “ridiculous” and (again) suggested anger management, prescribing a “good old-fashioned movie with a friend” as the cure for her despair over climate collapse.

Lately, as Greta Thunberg has been seen more often with a keffiyeh around her neck at pro-Palestine rallies and taking direct action against the Israeli state and its machinery of destruction, the criticism has sharpened into something darker.

The most common charge: that by becoming a consistent voice against Israel, she’s leaping from one moral crusade to another—abandoning her loyal cause, the planet, for a shinier one: genocide in Gaza.

A Telegraph article this month opened with the line: “Bored with saving the planet, Greta Thunberg now wants to save Gaza.”

At their core, such absurd accusations aim to discredit anything she says, to dismiss her outrage over a live-streamed genocide, condoned by our leaders and funded by our taxes, as meaningless and fickle.

But what fuels them is the blinkered, self-involved logic the Western capitalist system breeds in us all.

Climate change has been reduced in the public imagination to a few scorching summer days and distant floods affecting people we’ll never meet. And that’s no accident. When direct action erupts, why else are commuters more outraged by delays than by what the protests demand?

Even more insidiously, when we treat the planet’s destruction as separate from the people who live on it, and the leaders making the decisions, then, of course, Gaza feels like a separate issue.

But the dots are there, clearer than ever. The companies profiting from the massacre of Palestinians are the same ones cashing in on climate collapse. Climate denial and Zionism are parts of the same blood-soaked system, where elites oppress, maim, and kill the powerless, while we’re conditioned to look away.

The leaders funding Gaza’s destruction are the same ones lining their pockets with profits from the industries killing our planet.

There’s a reason Greta Thunberg enrages the establishment: she’s right. How can we claim to care about the planet if we turn away from the people being erased on it?

Nadeine Asbali is a freelance writer and secondary school teacher based in London. She is the author of Veiled Threat: On Being Visibly Muslim in Britain

Follow her on X: @nadeinewrites

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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.