Greta Thunberg on her days in Israeli captivity during an interview with Aftonbladet: “They kicked me every time the flag touched my face”
Posted by TheBiasedSportsLover
Greta Thunberg on her days in Israeli captivity during an interview with Aftonbladet: “They kicked me every time the flag touched my face”
Posted by TheBiasedSportsLover
9 Comments
I am copy-pasting the full interview in case this interview gets paywalled, liked it happened with Swedish one
**Beating, kicking, and threats of being gassed in cages.**
**Greta Thunberg and several others from the flotilla are now sharing details about their five days in Israeli captivity – and how Swedish Foreign Ministry staff left them without help.**
**Aftonbladet’s investigation shows how the Foreign Ministry downplayed the abuse in its communications.**
Her red suitcase lies in the hall. “Whore Greta” someone has written in large black letters. Around the text: an Israeli flag and an erect penis.
The bag was confiscated by the Israeli military from the boat – and returned to her like this. She laughs.
– They’re like five-year-olds!
We meet Greta Thunberg at home in the shared accommodation where she lives with friends. Autumn sun streams in through the windows. We drink coffee. The walls are covered with posters from demonstrations around the world.
She only slept for half an hour last night. A nightmare about bombed boats woke her up.
She doesn’t want headlines about herself and the torture she says she was subjected to. That was one of the first things she said on the evening she returned home, at a press conference in Sergels Torg together with several of the other Swedes who participated in the large Global Sumud Flotilla that attempted to bring emergency aid to Gaza.
And she stands by that.
– This is not about me or the others from the flotilla. There are thousands of Palestinians, hundreds of whom are children, who are being held without trial right now, and many of them are most likely being tortured, says Greta Thunberg.
**The story, she emphasizes, is about international solidarity,** about people coming together to do the work that governments are not doing.
– And above all, it’s about the people who live in Gaza.
But there is a lot of public interest, and the way she was treated reflects something.
– This shows that if Israel, with the whole world watching, can treat a well-known, white person with a Swedish passport this way, just imagine what they do to Palestinians behind closed doors.
[News](https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/palestinian-prisoner-in-israeli-custody-dies-due-to-deteriorating-health/3710599) has just come in that a Palestinian boy from the West Bank, the same age as Greta, has died in Israeli custody.
– What we have been through is only a small, small part of what Palestinians have experienced. On the walls of our prison cells, we saw bullet holes with bloodstains and messages carved into the walls by Palestinian prisoners who had been there before us.
I ask her to walk us through the bombing of her boat off the coast of Tunis in early September. She would have been on board at that very moment, had she not been called in to help with a press conference. American intelligence agents have testified [to CBS](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/netanyahu-drone-attacks-gaza-aid-boats-tunisia/) that the attack was ordered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Nine critical questions for Greta Thunberg by Aftonbladet
**How could you go even though the Foreign Ministry advised against traveling to Gaza?**
– First of all, there was no advisory against traveling in international waters, which is where we were detained. In this context, it should also be noted that the government recently publicly praised the Swedes who traveled to parts of Ukraine, where there is a travel advisory, to work on humanitarian issues. So it is clear that this is a matter of racism, since Ukrainians are white. And the travel advisory does not generally apply to humanitarian organizations that go into war-torn areas and the like. This was a humanitarian mission. We did this to compensate for our governments’ passivity and active choice to go against virtually all human rights organizations, the UN, and break international law by not breaking their complicity in genocide.
**Israel has stated that there was no food or other emergency aid on your boats?**
– That is a complete lie. I personally packed emergency aid and checked all the boxes to make sure that everything that was supposed to be there was there. All the boats had humanitarian emergency aid. We checked several times during the trip to make sure that everything was as it should be. Turkey sent a ship to join us, with additional emergency aid that was transferred to us. Later in prison, I heard from the crew of one of the other boats that when they were captured, they were held down in the boat by soldiers, and then they heard someone from above deck recording videos and saying: “Look, they have weapons,” which was a complete lie. So it seems that Israel has hired influencers to record videos on the boats and spread lies.
**Why did you hold a press conference on October 7, the anniversary of the Hamas massacre?**
– It was Israel that decided to deport us home at that particular time, and we simply held the press conference immediately after we landed. You’ll have to ask Israel what they thought about the timing.
**Israel says that there are people in the leadership of the flotilla who are linked to Hamas?**
– That is absolutely not true. Israel continues to reuse the same arguments and smear campaigns. Just saying the word “Hamas” justifies all kinds of violence. They built up smear campaigns to be able to capture us and treat us like terrorists. Terrorism is defined as the calculated use of violence to instill fear in a civilian population for political control. That was not what we were doing by sailing peacefully in international waters to deliver food and medicine to the civilian population in Gaza. It is Israel’s behavior that fits the description of terrorism.
**Israel offered to let you leave the emergency aid with them so that they could pass it on to Gaza — why did you refuse?**
– Ever since 2008, when the flotillas began sailing to Gaza, Israel has constantly tried to offer to take over the delivery of emergency aid, and it has been a conscious decision over the years to say no to that. Because we know that Israel is telling lies: saying that their blockade is legal, that we are terrorists and Hamas supporters. And we have seen that Israel does not allow emergency aid to enter Gaza. The limited emergency aid that does come in does not benefit the people. Those who queue up to receive it get shot at. And it is not just food that needs to come in. The famine is not only caused by the lack of emergency aid – it is caused by Israel deliberately and systematically, with the help of the whole world, depriving the Palestinians of the opportunity to support themselves by bombing bakeries and other basic social infrastructure, destroying land so that it cannot be cultivated, prohibiting people from fishing – they shoot and arrest people who fish in their own territorial waters. So it’s not just about getting emergency aid in – it’s also a political statement to challenge this illegal blockade.
**Isn’t this just a publicity stunt – ”selfie boats” that risk doing more harm than good by taking the focus away from Gaza and putting it on yourselves?**
– No one is risking their life for a selfie opportunity. Personally, I am open about the fact that I will, of course, use my platform, my white skin, my Swedish passport to take advantage of the privileges I have to reach out to people and put the spotlight on Gaza. So, of course, we use the media attention we get to talk about the blockade in Gaza. This has been our deliberate strategy since the beginning in 2008—publicity and attention are among the few tools we have left when all our international institutions have failed to ensure even basic human rights. How dehumanized are Palestinians when it is white media personalities from the Western world who decide what constitutes a symbolic act? It is a symbolic act to bring emergency aid, but also to show that the world stands with Gaza.
**Where does the money come from — who’s funding you, Greta?**
– I wish there were someone! It’s CSN and student loans. If I get invited to speak at a conference, I try to get them to cover the train fare to get there. All the money I’ve received from awards or royalties from books and films I’ve participated in, I’ve donated to “charitable causes,” or whatever you call it. And the flotilla was funded by money raised through campaigns, and there were volunteers who dropped everything and devoted all their time to this without getting paid.
**Are you antisemitic?**
– Saying that all people should live in peace, justice, and equality, and that we shouldn’t commit genocide — I don’t consider that antisemitic.
**What does this have to do with the climate — you’re a climate activist?**
– Everything. For one thing, there are the simple links — there’s almost nothing as damaging to the climate as war and ecocide (destroying or killing ecosystems, editor’s note). Ecocide is a form of warfare aimed at destroying people’s ability to live on the land where they reside. But it should be simpler than that: I’m a climate activist because I care about people and the well-being of the planet. I don’t think I’ve changed focus. I’m still an activist according to the same principles that got me started: following principles of justice, equality, freedom, and sustainability. It’s the same for me. And even if one is so terribly selfish that one does nothing or feels nothing when seeing people bombed to pieces or starved to death — how can you expect a world that allows this to happen to take any steps back and focus on sustainability, or to stand up for you when you need help?
Timeline
**May 2, 2025.** The Freedom Flotilla ship Conscience, which is about to set sail with supplies and medicine, is fired upon by a drone off the coast of Malta. CNN reports that an Israeli Air Force Hercules aircraft has been circling at low altitude above the ship for some time in connection with the incident. This puts an end to Greta Thunberg’s first attempt to reach Gaza.
**June 1.** The sailboat Madleen sets sail for Gaza from Sicily but is stopped a week later in international waters by the Israeli navy. The twelve activists are taken against their will to Israel, where they are then deported by plane to their respective home countries.
**August 31.** More than twenty boats from the Global Sumud Flotilla leave the ports of Barcelona and Genoa on the first leg of their journey to Gaza. In Genoa, 50,000 people watch the departure, and a union representative for Italy’s dockworkers threatens to “shut down the whole of Europe” if the supplies are not allowed into Gaza.
At the same time, Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir announces that the aid convoy’s crew will be treated as terrorists.
**September 8–9.** A large number of the boats are anchored off Tunis, and for two nights in a row, the flotilla’s two main ships are attacked with some kind of incendiary bomb. CBS later reports that the attack was ordered by Benjamin Netanyahu personally, and that the drones that dropped the burning objects came from a nearby submarine.
**September 22.** General strike in Italy in solidarity with the people of Gaza and the Global Sumud Flotilla.
**September 23–24.** South of Crete, the convoy is attacked by drones firing various explosive projectiles and chemicals.
**September 24.** Several European governments inform their citizens on board that Israel has warned that it plans to escalate its attacks, with the risk of serious damage. The boats head for Greek territorial waters to seek protection and repair the damage sustained during the night.
**September 24–25.** Following widespread protests, Italy decides to send a warship to protect the flotilla from further attacks. Later that day, the Spanish prime minister announces that Spain will do the same.
**October 1–3.** The more than 40 ships are boarded one by one and the 460 participants are taken to the port of Ashdod, where they are arrested and taken to Ketziot prison. As a result, widespread protests break out around the world. Millions of demonstrators demand their release and in Italy alone, over two million people take part in various demonstrations that paralyze the entire country.
**October 8.** Another ten boats carrying emergency aid, doctors, and journalists from Thousand Madleens to Gaza and the Freedom Flotilla Coalition are stopped in international waters north of Egypt. The 144 volunteers are deprived of their liberty, taken to Israel, and detained.
**Sources:** CBS, Aftonbladet, The Guardian, BBC, Global Sumud Flotilla,
Aftonbladet (or any reputable Swedish news outlet) sharing something in English means Oh Shit Is Real Bad.
(lol that they paywalled the Swedish version, that’s some DN shit)
E: sv Aftonbladet artikeln paywall är bort, tack OP
thank you for sharing.
I know it’s long but it is incredibly powerful. What an amazing young lady.
Using the word Hamas to justify violence and extreme violence, it makes one sad and angry considering the history.
All of this is heinous but threatening to *gas* them is particularly shocking
I hope for the day that all these criminals against humanity face justice.
She’s brilliant, as are all the activists who went out on the flotilla.
I can just imagine how big and cool those absolute fucking losers felt cutting all her things up in front of her.