Dutch climate change activist Erjan Dam attempts to grab a microphone from Greta Thunberg at a climate change rally in Amsterdam. Photo: Reuters/Piroschka van de Wouw

The outspoken Swedish climate change activist Greta Thunberg has encountered a storm of criticism in Germany over a speech she delivered to a rally in Amsterdam last weekend that sought to insert opposition to Israel’s defensive war in Gaza into the environmentalist movement’s agenda.

Thunberg’s statements on the war are being closely watched in Germany, following the decision last month of the German section of the “Fridays for Future” green movement she launched to suspend ties with its international organizers over a series of anti-Israel statements. Luisa Neubauer, the head of the German section, said that her group would have no interactions with the the global social media accounts of “Fridays for Future” until “we can be sure that a single group can no longer use global Fridays for Future accounts for disinformation and hate.” Recent posts from the account condemned Western media coverage of the Israel-Gaza conflict as “imperialist brainwashing” and described the Hamas terrorists who carried out the Oct. 7 pogrom in southern Israel as “martyrs.”

In the interim, Thunberg has doubled down on her statements. With a Palestinian keffiyeh scarf draped around her neck at the rally in Amsterdam on Sunday, she introduced a Palestinian speaker — Sarah Rachdan, a doctoral student — with the claim that “as a climate justice movement, we have to listen to the voices of those who are being oppressed and those who are fighting for freedom and for justice. Otherwise, there can be no climate justice without international solidarity.”

Rachdan has justified the Oct. 7 atrocities in social media posts that praised the “Palestinian resistance.” And in an earlier post last April, she mocked the Holocaust, commenting on a story about Israeli soldiers “gassing” Palestinian demonstrators by asking, “I wonder where we’ve seen that before?”

Rachdan’s speech was received critically by many climate activists frustrated by Thunberg’s insistence on linking Palestinian solidarity with climate change. Erjan Dam — a Dutch activist who attempted to seize the microphone from Thunberg’s hand before being bundled off the stage — told the Suddeutsche Zeitung news outlet that he and others present at the Amsterdam rally had felt “abused” by her actions.

“The climate protection movement should concentrate on its core issue: climate protection,” Dam said. “When Greta Thunberg or other leading activists constantly talk about the Palestine issue, it creates disunity.”

German politicians and Jewish leaders also expressed anger with Thunberg following the scenes in Amsterdam. Ricarda Lang — a German parliamentarian and the co-leader of the left-wing Green Party — said that Thunberg’s comments were “not only depressing, but absolutely indecent.” Thunberg had “brushed aside the question of Israel’s right to exist” and was guilty of “swapping the victim with the perpetrator,” Lang continued.

Martin Huber — the secretary-general of the center-right Christian Social Union (CSU) — went even further, calling Thunberg an “antisemite who supports Hamas and stirs up hatred of Israel.”

In a separate TV interview, Josef Schuster — president of the Central Council of German Jews — said he was reaching the conclusion that Thunberg was motivated by anti-Jewish bigotry.

“There is no doubt that she is very, very naive,” Schuster remarked in the Monday night interview. “Assuming antisemitism is always a serious accusation. But what I am seeing here — I am very close to that on this accusation.”

Schuster urged the German section of “Fridays for Future” to sever all ties with Thunberg, expressing concern that impressionable young activists with little knowledge of the Middle East would be influenced by her statements to adopt anti-Israel positions.