EDITORIAL: Greta’s flotilla needs a moral compass

Published Jun 11, 2025 • Last updated Jun 11, 2025 • 2 minute read

Swedish activist Greta Thunberg talks to journalists as she arrives at Stockholm Arlanda Airport outside Stockholm, Sweden, Tuesday June 10, 2025. Photo by Anders Wiklund /AP

The hypocrisy of Swedish activist Greta Thunberg was once again on full display this week as she set off for Gaza with 11 other celebrity protesters.

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As a teenage climate activist, Greta irresponsibly urged students around the world to skip school on Fridays to demonstrate against global environmental policies. Now she’s moved on to geopolitics.

With a boatload of high-profile activists, Thunberg claimed she was going to deliver aid to Gaza from a sailboat, Madleen.

The boat was intercepted by Israeli forces on Monday. They arrived at the port of Ashdod and were taken to Tel Aviv, given sandwiches and water and Thunberg was deported. She later claimed to have been “kidnapped,” a loathsome allegation, given that, according to the BBC, there are an estimated 54 Israeli hostages believed to be in Gaza, 31 of whom are believed to be dead. There would be no conflict in Gaza if Hamas returned them.

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Israel has dismissed the so-called Freedom Flotilla as a “selfie yacht.”

Israeli spokesman David Mencer said the boat was carrying only a “meagre” amount of aid, which he said would “of course be sent into Gaza.”

He had some pointed questions: “To poor Greta, we say, who is really feeding Gaza and who is feeding their own ego?”

Israeli authorities urged Thunberg to watch a video of the hideous attacks on the Nova music festival on Oct. 7, 2023, in which young women were brutally raped and hundreds of people murdered. In other attacks on Israeli communities, babies and old people were slaughtered.

Thunberg refused to watch. So much for getting both sides of the story.

Meanwhile, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for human rights in the Palestinian territories used social media to urge other boats to join the flotilla.

“While Madleen must be released immediately, every Mediterranean port should send boats with aid, solidarity and humanity to Gaza. They shall sail together — united, they will be unstoppable,” Francesca Albanese posted on X.

It’s highly irresponsible for a representative of an organization that seeks to find consensus and world peace to take such a one-sided view of the conflict. Who started the war anyway?

It’s time to call out Thunberg for what she is: A self-serving publicity-seeker, and her mission for what it was: A stunt.

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