Editorial: Why Greta Thunberg's ignorance of Oct. 7 is a missed lesson for all
Published in Op Eds
Activist Greta Thunberg is a hypocrite for refusing to watch all the footage of the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack on Israel.
The Herald did the opposite.
The heart-wrenching clips compiled by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are a “place beyond words,” as we wrote in November of 2023, leaning on author Jerzy Kosinski’s Holocaust tale “The Painted Bird.”
The Jerusalem Post reported this week that Thunberg and others on her pro-Palestinian flotilla that was intercepted before reaching Gaza cut the IDF showing off, and she has since been put on a plane back to her native Sweden. Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, is quoted as saying Thunberg walked out.
Yes, that footage is barbaric. Women and babies are burned beyond recognition. They were alive before Hamas terrorists — armed with glistening-new AK-47s — tortured them in what is a recurring nightmare without end.
Greta used her global platform as a climate warrior to cheapen the horror by turning away. She, like so many others on campus here in Boston and in the streets, dismissed a day that will truly live in infamy.
The anniversary of D-Day, June 6, 1944, just passed; 9/11 will come soon, as will Oct. 7. What transpired on each day must never be forgotten.
You can’t turn away! Greta, at 22, is a young woman with a lot to learn. But she missed an opportunity so many others have failed to grasp. The Hamas attack, underwritten by Iran, is an assault that cannot go unchallenged. Now the innocent are paying for the sins of a few, but Oct. 7 was Hell on Earth.
In about 43 minutes of footage, you see “138 murders,” said Ambassador Meron Reuben, Consulate General of Israel to New England. He said this in the fall of 2023 when the first clips of the Oct. 7 attack were shown to a select few journalists. The Herald was in that room — and we did not walk out nor turn away.
Seeing women posed in sexually obscene positions after being burned alive is beyond gruesome.
Seeing babies torched so badly their faces are flattened boils the blood.
A courageous father who jumped on a hand grenade to save his two young boys, who were then kidnapped, was the height of bravery. Love. Sacrifice. Hate. It’s all there on the IDF tape.
Greta turned away. We didn’t. It would have been the ultimate insult to do so.
Peace is the only answer, but how do you respond when young teenage girls crying together are rounded up by Hamas terrorists, hepped-up on drugs and blind rage, to be used as pawns? That’s in the IDF footage.
That’s what Greta turned away from. She had her publicity stunt and then betrayed women her own age.
What would she say about the Hamas terrorist seen on those clips calling his parents in Gaza to gleefully report their son is a “hero?” The mom and dad began crying. Why? They knew what was going to come next. Diplomacy was raped that day. That’s what Hamas and Iran wanted, and that’s what they got.
Saudi Arabia and Israel were reportedly close to a peace agreement. Now that is far off, again.
Greta’s missed opportunity to understand the deep roots of this misery is another lesson lost to the world.
Oct. 7 is everything that’s cruel about this world. “Courage (is) not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it,” said Nelson Mandela.
Greta exhibited the opposite.
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