Greta Thunberg has been released from Israeli captivity, and she talks about her capture. What’s surprising is just how childishly stupid and misogynistic the Israeli soldiers were.
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!
She was not allowed to wear her T-shirt with “Free Palestine” on it and was ordered to change, she explains. She put on an orange one with the text “Decolonize” instead.
– And then I put on my frog hat. When I’m about to get off the boat, there are a bunch of police officers waiting for me. They grab me, pull me to the ground, and throw an Israeli flag over me.
Here, everything goes “from zero to a hundred,” several witnesses describe – the violence escalates.
Greta Thunberg describes how she is dragged to a paved area fenced in with iron fences. This is a protracted scene that lasts for over six hours, according to Greta, and is confirmed by several participants in the flotilla that Aftonbladet talks to.
– It was kind of dystopian. I saw maybe 50 people sitting in a row on their knees with handcuffs and their foreheads against the ground.
Greta gets up from the sofa and lies down, showing the position on the striped living room rug.
– They dragged me to the opposite side from where the others were sitting, and I had the flag around me the whole time. They hit and kicked me.
Greta laughs.
– Then they ripped off my frog hat, threw it on the ground, stomped and kicked it, and kind of threw a tantrum.
– They moved me very brutally to a corner that I was turned towards. ‘A special place for a special lady’, they said. And then they had learned ‘Lilla hora’ (Little whore) and ‘Hora Greta’ (Whore Greta) in Swedish, which they repeated all the time.
Every time someone looked up from the ground, they were knocked back down to the ground, Greta and the other Swedes recount. In the corner where Greta was sitting, the police placed a flag.
– The flag was placed so that it would touch me. When it fluttered and touched me, they shouted ‘Don’t touch the flag’ and kicked me in the side. After a while, my hands were tied with cable ties, very tightly. A bunch of guards lined up to take selfies with me while I was sitting like that.
They’re like spoiled children. Unprofessional and eminently mockable. You might think it’s because these are young soldiers, with the mentality of a college freshman at best, but even the older, unwiser senior politicians are like that.
Suddenly, the far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir entered the area and stood in front of everyone, Greta recounts.This smug asshole
– He shouted, ’You are terrorists. You want to kill Jewish babies.’ Those who shouted back were taken aside and beaten. They were thrown to the ground and beaten. But I could only see it out of the corner of my eye, because every time I lifted my head from the ground, I was kicked by the guard standing next to me.
They were humanitarians, who wanted to deliver aid to Palestinian children.
The US has given over $20 billion in aid to Israel in the last two years. It’s past time to turn off the faucet — no more aid to these immature thugs, ever. Force them to learn how to live with their neighbors in a civilized manner.
I’m not sure “surprising” is the word I’d use to describe the soldier’s idiotic behaviour sadly.
There is a good reason for calling soldiers ‘grunts’.
Misogyny is SOP for the jack-booted thugs.
Such schwine.
Israel should be officially declared a terrorist state. Sadly, nothing likely to be done thanks to the US’s continued slavish devotion to it.
I agree about turning off the faucet. The problem is too many of our lawmakers are captured by money. So that won’t happen.
The recent peace notion will go the way of all the others. I’m glad surviving Israeli hostages were released. They should not have been taken in the first place. Hamas is shit. Oct 7th was heinous. The Israeli response was even worse.
This conflict will continue to spiral and ratchet as it has for longer than I have been alive, going back to the aliyah waves that were understandable responses to pogroms and other instances of antisemitism in Europe and Russia. Vlad Jabotinsky eventually called it for what it had become though— settler colonialism. He wasn’t one to mince words.
We are seeing the boiling frog of creeping annexation as it currently stands with eyes on the West Bank and uncertainty for Gaza. This was a sequel to Arik’s disengagement which was a mixture of motives, including what was regarded as the Palestinian demographic bomb. Also he had a corruption scandal hanging over his head, which is ironic given his Likudnik nemesis Bibi has his own corruption scandal looming over his head as he reengaged Gaza. That’s very curious, no? Hamas conveniently or coincidentally helped him with that while itself engaging in heinous actions that would bring the wrath of the post-Revisionist and settler religious Zionists down upon the heads of so many other Palestinians. How many watched from the comfort of Qatar?
Israel cheering propagandists often brag of how Israel worked the miracle of making the desert bloom unlike the virtually nonexistent Arab inhabitants (see Mark Twain in The Innocents Abroad for your demography). A land without a people for a people without a land indeed. If the various sorts of Zionists (namely Labor and Revisionist) were so self-sufficient, they should be able to now survive on their own without all the largesse flowing in from the US.
As for Greta’s journey, they fared much better perhaps than the US sailors on the USS Liberty. There’s that consolation.
So, the israelis must’ve known when they did this that we’d find out about it.
They must;ve known that -and still done it.
What then does that tell us about their attitudes and their certainty of immunity and being able to get away with stuff like this?
Also, if they know that we’ll all know – that globally people globally will know – and yet are happy to do thsi knowing that?
What will they do, what ar ethey doing and what have they already done – knowing that people probably won’t know they’ll do? (Are doing / Have done.)
The “chosen people,” indeed.
These are the people who flew sniper drones in Gaza killing women and children. The cycle of tit-for-tat will never end and all over who can pray to their imaginary sky fairy from a rock.
Specifically the IDF soldiers & the Netanyahu govt in charge of them here.
“If they do this in a green tree what will they do in a dry”
Frank Herbert quoting from memory via novel character Jesus (yeah that one) in ‘The Jesus Incident or maybe it was The Lazarus Effect SF novel?
( See : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jesus_Incident )
Oh and the whole gods dammed region stuillha sGlobal Overheating tolok forward to.. as do we all butespecially there.
Heatwave, fire, rising seas over coastal plains..
With a dash of Nuclear apocalpyse thrown into the bargain* too..
.* Bargain with whoem and for what? Cut price blood stained land and history-crushed ruin and horrorscape. Perfect place for Trump casinos and golden idols.. (Doe sthat seriously really need a sarc tag?)
@ Doc Bill : There’s no “chosen people”, there’s just people. Very human every last individual one of them with the full potential at both ends of the ethical spectrum for all that means and implies.
Clarity fix coz I cannot type for shit :
Oh and the whole gods dammed region still has Global Overheating to look forward to.. as do we all but especially there.
(Have people not modelled and looked at how that is going to affect that blasted & blasted again and again and again blasted splinter of bomb-cratered, traumatised, blood soaked Southwest Asian land?)
This is what happens when you appease Nazis. Yes I’m going there. Israel can’t live with its neighbours because it keeps murdering them to create lebensraum for yet more terrorist blow ins from the USA and Europe.
What can I say? I was once a supporter of Israel. Not rabidly so, but I had a great deal of sympathy for the Jews after the horrors they’d experienced in Europe. I also felt a surge of sympathy for them after the Oct. 7 atrocities. But that gradually faded as the Gaza death toll went up and up and up. When they wantonly, you could say gleefully, started killing babies and children by the thousands, my sympathy turned into revulsion. It was a combination of revenge killing and a cold, calculated strategy to make Gaza unlivable. It became obvious that Netanyahu’s ultimate goal is to expel the Palestinians from both Gaza and the West Bank.
Crossposted from the infinite thread:
.
Israel lobby panicking?
Prof. John Mearsheimer: “Israel is in DESPERATE STRAITS”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=La7dSCZCGmo
Shouting insults in very bad Swedish?
It may not have the impact they had intended.
I am reminded of when Pakistanis burned home-made Swedish flags, except they gor the colors “inside out’, a blue cross on a yellow field.
Katie Halper:
“Israel’s NOT Winning – Here’s What They Don’t Want You To Know”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=IaQWfGMetWE
DRM news on youtube “No One Can Say We Didn’t Know”: Greta Thunberg, Others Speak After Israeli Detention w Greta Thunbergh speaking at the 4mins 30 secs mark approx – 15 mins total length. (Lots ofchanting toskip thro’.)
Also, Doc Bill :
Oh, it”ll end eventually. Not even the proton is forever let alone our planet let alone that particular tiny fragment of it.
Question is how will it end.
The way Nina Paley shows incontext of regional history here? 3 mins 30 secs
Or.. ? Also, Doc Bill :
Oh, it”ll end eventually. Not even the proton is forever let alone our planet let alone that particular tiny fragment of it.
Question is how will it end.
The way Nina Paley shows incontext of regional history here? 3 mins 30 secs
Or.. ?Also, Doc Bill :
Oh, it”ll end eventually. Not even the proton is forever let alone our planet let alone that particular tiny fragment of it.
Question is how will it end.
The way Nina Paley shows in context of regional history here? 3 mins 30 secs
Or.. ?
A better ending than isn’;t mass death for all?
Huh. That wasn’t supposed to be in triplicate…
Zeteo Mehdi Connects the Dots Between ICE and Gaza over 30mins long and, no, I haven’t seen / heard it all yet myself but I do trust Mehdi Hasan here.
@12. birgerjohansson : “Shouting insults in very bad Swedish? It may not have the impact they had intended.”
I don’t know what the IDF – Netanyahu govt intended to achieve by what they did here but I reckon they probly achieved the exact opposite in so many ways and on so many levels. Dunno what else they expected really.. presumably NOT it all backfiring on them and yet ..predictable.
Looks like the Israels are becoming their Nazi nemesis.
Look at the big picture.
You won’t be able to for very long. It is horrible.
The Israelis have discovered that you can ethnic cleanse and/or genocide the Palestinians, as long as you go slow.
And, no one can or will stop them. Not the USA, not the EU, not the Arabs, not anyone.
So they will just keep pushing and massacring the Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank until they are all…somewhere else. Dead or fleeing death and destruction.
Will it work?
It has so far. It may well work in the end. The Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have lost so much already that they almost don’t have enough left for a viable society.
PS Hamas are idiots. They made the calculation that they can outviolence the Israelis. It turns out no one can outviolence the Israelis.
Hamas killed 1200 people. Israel has so far killed 67,000 people.
If you ask a lot of Israelis how many Palestinians they need to kill for revenge, a frequent answer is…all of them.
We have a puppy. Who destroys things, including his toys, my shoes, and various items of furniture. Given this kind of human behaviour I am less mad at the darling beast. I do think it is important to keep in mind that these assholes are part of OUR family.
Does the far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir have anything more important to do than scream at kids detained off an unarmed boat?
Offhand, I’m gonna guess he’s one of the Likud folks who would abandon Netenyahu if he were to actually stop his genocidal actions.
No.
He would say yes though.
Those Palestinians aren’t going to ethnic cleanse and genocide themselves.
Voluntary emigration isn’t even possible.
Those 2 million in Gaza have no where to go and no one will take them.
Itamar Ben-Gvir is one of the worst of a bad lot of humans.
How is this not in all the major news outlets? If that continues, that would show that Western journalism has a serious problem.
Raging Bee @21: Ben-Gvir is not a Likud member. He is a member of a party called ‘Otzma Yehudit’, which translates literally to ‘Jewish Power’. He was such an extreme right winger that the IDF exempted him from service when he was 18. He is currently Minister of National Security (responsible for all internal law enforcement – police, prison service, fire and rescue, border police, etc). He has attempted to sabotage the cease fire negotiations multiple times by pressuring Netanyahu from the right.
Raven @19
Hamas killed 1200 people. Israel has so far killed 67,000 people.
If you ask a lot of Israelis how many Palestinians they need to kill for revenge, a frequent answer is…all of them.
The pre October 7 ratio of Palestinian deaths to Israeli deaths was 28:1 or thereabouts.
Disproportionate Retaliation – How German* of them
*In the “Myth of the Clean Wehrmacht” episode of the Professor Buzzkill Podcast his guest Professor Nash said that disproportionate retaliation against civilians was something the German Army was known for for as long as there has been a German Army.
So, I’ve been of the opinion that the Gaza genocide of Palestinians would continue for one trumped-up reason or another (capital-T “Trumped-up?”) because as soon as it stops, Bibi’s far-right coalition would disintegrate and he’d be out of power.
They really do hate each other quite a bit, and are held together pretty much only by the drive to eliminate Palestine as a national identity. Netanyahu has said as much, declaring that there will never be a two-state solution as long as he’s in power. And he stays in power as long as there’s a war on, not a minute longer. Well.. give him a month. Maybe.
So, some part of the slaughter has been simply to keep him in office. Which means his coalition is about to dissolve, he won’t be Prime Minister anymore and so won’t be afforded the protections of a sitting head of state, and therefore should be dragged before a human rights tribunal at The Hague in short order.
But he let the genocide stop. His fig-leaf “war” has ended. He’s got to know he’s in jeopardy of a set of life sentences. So, I’ve got to conclude there are back room deals made to keep him free and—probably—living comfortably while he writes his memoirs.
I bet $0.25 he’ll be exiled from Israel to the US.
The 67,000 figure is names of people who have been confirmed to have been killed. It’s impossible to believe that record-keeping managed to count everyone. There are likely thousands, indeed probably tens of thousands more people who died.
But it’s not human rights violations when Israel does it!! 😡
Border Patrol Posts Instagram Propaganda Video Featuring Antisemitic Slurs
Just another reminder that the US right wing’s rabid pro-Zionism has nothing to do with opposition to anti-semitism, and is instead driven by Protestant Christian yearning to fulfill conditions for the apocalypse spelled out in the Book of Revelation.
@StevoR FYI Paley is a TERF.
Of all the ways it could have gone, it became a failed state propped up by apartheid. And now with a genocide on record.
And concerning the behaviour of those jack-booted thugs with the flotilla personnel, see the preceding post about young Rethuglicans: same brand of people and mentality.
Chidish yes, but deadly when weapons and lack of accountability are there for the taking.
@raven: Hamas are horrible, but not idiots.
Assuming your opponent is an idiot is how you lose.
7 Oct may very well have happened because Israel underestimated them.
Hamas wanted the Israeli predictable overreaction, betting that the atrocities would get the Arab states to intervene.
They bet the lives of Palestinians, and they lost.
Turns out, Arab states really want that sweet surveillance and repress.. ehm I mean “security” tech coming from Israel.
F.O.@32:
Hamas bet the lives of Palestinians, and Palestinians lost.
Israel lost a lot. Saudi was on the verge of signing a peace treaty; that’s off the table. And the western pro-zionist consensus is badly wounded. Meanwhile, Hamas is still in power (it’s currently exacting revenge on opposition to its rule).
7 Oct may very well have happened because Israel underestimated [Hamas].
Israel didn’t underestimate Hamas at all. 7 Oct happened because Beginyahu knew what Hamas intended (having got ample intel from Egypt and the USA), and chose to allow it; thus giving him “Israel’s 9/11” and all the excuse he needed to ramp up a pre-existing genocide even more.
raven #19:
Hamas isn’t trying to outviolence the Israelis. They’re trying to give Palestinians nowhere else to turn but them. It’s all about keeping the violence going and the people trapped in the abusive relationship. And Israel has been actively helping them, just like Bush’s overreaction to 9/11 gave bin Laden’s supporters nowhere else to turn but him.
Reginald Selkirk #29:
That, of course, is part of the problem, that a lot of U.S.-specific support for Israel comes from the ‘Left Behind’ types that have been mainlining their carefully curated Scofield Reference Bible that was annotated near the end of the 19th century. While general ‘the world is going to end in our lifetimes’ cults have popped up within Christianity since within a few years of its founding, the current Rapture-mania is a lot more recent than most people think.
Unless there were safety concerns about having such easily identifiable luggage, I would keep that and use it with pride. Way to piss off the right people Greta!
Trio of lins on Gaza / Israel / Palestine now and future here :
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/10/01/infinite-thread-xxxvii/comment-page-2/#comment-2280845
They could’ve killed her and her friends if they had the chance to do that. Glad she was able to make it out of there alive.
@30. F.O.: “@StevoR FYI Paley is a TERF.”
She is? Really? Damn. That’s disappointing, didn’t know that.
That video is still good tho’.
@23
You might want to watch this
https://www.pbs.org/video/stripped-for-parts-american-journalism-on-the-brink-dyEAIs/
The short answer is vulture capitalism, toxic billionaires and an entire country that feels like it’s entitled to their own facts and gets all its “news” from social media like faceflop and Sh*tter. If people actually valued real journalism, the kind that might make them uncomfortable, they would 1) actually watch it and 2) actually pay for it.
@raven, Hamas didn’t kill 1200 Israelis.
There are many reports that Israel used the Hannibal directive on 7 October. The Defense Minister from that time, Yoav Gallant admitted on television that Hannibal directive was used. According to him the problem was that it wasn’t used everywhere. There are also witnesses that said that they were inside houses that were shot by IDF tanks killing most of the people inside. A UN report from June 2024 also found that the Hannibal directive was used on 7 October with tanks and helicopters firing in vehicles at the Gaza border indifferently if they had hostages inside or not. Israel later on buried all vehicles that were destroyed on 7 October and an investigation on what happened on 7th of October was proposed many times in Israel but Netanyahu refused to have it done on fears that it might affect the moral of the troops.
I live you with a translation of a Israeli article that I found on wikipedia and which remained burned in my mind:
“Subsequent investigation has determined that militants had been instructed not to run so that the air force would think they were Israelis.This deception worked for some time, but pilots began to realize the problem and ignore their restrictions. ”
The way I read it is that it worked for Palestinian fighters to walk calmly until the Israeli helicopters started shooting on everyone.
Israeli soldiers and politicians sound exactly like American ICE Gestapo and GOP politicians. Cut from the same shitty cloth.
To paraphrase Naomi Klein from Doppelganger, there are two different versions of “Never again”: “never again to anyone” and “never again to us”, with Israel embodying the latter.
zakalwe: Hamas launched the military action in which 1200 Israelis were killed. They’re responsible for that.
Israel launched the military action in which tens of thousands of Palestinians, possibly even more than 100k, were killed and led the total blockade of Gaza that created a famine, while also leading attacks in the West Bank at a scale that would have made major international headlines if not for the even worse stuff going on in Gaza. They’re responsible for that.