BERLIN: Greta Thunberg came under fire on Monday over her pro-Palestinian stance in Germany, where the local chapter of climate movement Fridays for Future had distanced itself from her views on the Zionist war on Gaza. Thunberg, wearing the Palestinian black and white scarf, had urged “ceasefire now” at a climate protest on Sunday in Amsterdam.

She was interrupted by a man who sought to snatch the microphone from her, saying he had come for a climate protest, not for her other views. After he was removed by security officers, she began chanting, along with the crowd, “no climate justice on occupied land”. “Greta Thunberg misused the absolutely necessary and correct concern on climate protection for a one-sided position on the (Zionist)-Palestinian conflict, in which she does not name the perpetrators, in which she does not condemn the absolute atrocities by Hamas,” said Ricarda Lang, co-leader of the Greens, which is a junior partner of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition.

“She has in fact discredited herself as the face of the climate movement through these statements,” added Lang. The statements in Amsterdam marked “the end of Greta Thunberg as a climate activist,” added Volker Becker, the president of the German-(Zionist) Society DIG, adding that “from now: (Zionist entity) hater is the main job” for the Swedish activist.

The Zionist embassy in Germany also wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, that it was “sad that Greta Thunberg is again misusing the climate stage for her own purposes.” Since October 7, when Hamas fighters infiltrated the Zionist entity’s borders, Fridays for Future International has been putting up solidarity calls on social media with Gaza, which has come under relentless Zionist bombing over the Hamas attack.

Fridays for Future’s international group has blasted the “genocide” in Gaza, and slammed “Western support and misinformation machines”. Luisa Neubauer, who heads the German chapter of Fridays for Future, recently told Die Zeit weekly of her regret over what she called Thunberg’s one-sided view of the conflict. “I’m disappointed that Greta Thunberg had nothing concrete to say about the Jewish victims of the massacre of October 7,” she said.

Germany’s climate activist branch had also distanced itself from the international group over its pro-Palestinian posts on Instagram. Neubauer said that Thunberg was “extraordinarily reflective and far-sighted” in the past but that the German climate branch will now have to examine “with whom we still have a basis to work based on common values”. “It is obvious that for many global organizations, global realities diverge when it comes to (the Zionist entity) and Palestine. But that does not justify anti-Semitism or disinformation,” warned Neubauer.