“I felt abused”
Climate activist speaks about confrontation with Greta Thunberg
November 14, 2023, 12:16 a.m
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This weekend, Greta Thunberg once again took sides with the Palestinians at a climate rally in Amsterdam. An activist then comes onto the stage and interrupts the 20-year-old. Now the pensioner is speaking about the incident for the first time.
The Dutch climate activist, who opposed Greta Thunberg at a rally in Amsterdam after she again clearly took sides with Palestine in the Gaza war, warns of a split in the climate protection movement. “When Greta Thunberg or other leading activists constantly talk about the Palestine question, it causes disunity,” Erjan Dam told “Spiegel” in an interview published in the evening. “People who have different opinions are repelled by such speeches. That damages the cause,” Dam continued and demanded: “The climate protection movement should concentrate on its core issue: climate protection.” In any case, he was disappointed: “I felt abused – and so did many other participants.”
Dam, a retired physiotherapist who, according to “Spiegel”, has been committed to nature and water protection for years, jumped on stage in front of the cameras on Sunday and shouted into the microphone: “I came here for a climate demonstration, not for the sake of it to hear political views.” Thunberg then called on participants to remain calm and then chanted several times: “There is no climate justice on occupied land.” She was obviously alluding to the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel. After a similar action last month, Thunberg had already been criticized for not specifically mentioning the Israeli victims of the Hamas massacre on October 7, which left around 1,200 dead.
“We came to protest for climate protection”
After the rally in Amsterdam, Green Party leader Ricarda Lang accused Thunberg of not condemning Hamas’ atrocities. “I have to say, I find these statements not only depressing, but absolutely indecent,” said the politician in Berlin. “At this point, Greta Thunberg is abusing the absolutely necessary and correct concern of climate protection for a one-sided position on the Israel-Palestine conflict.” One could almost say that she “ultimately swaps perpetrator and victim” and that Thunberg “brushes aside Israel’s right to exist.”
According to the organizers, around 85,000 people took part in the climate demonstration; It was the largest such demonstration in the Netherlands to date. Dam went on to say in the interview that he had always admired Thunberg. “But if she’s constantly talking about Palestine instead of climate protection, that’s not doing the climate protection movement any good.” Like many others, he “traveled to Amsterdam specifically for this demonstration.” But the protest was hardly about climate protection or the environment, “but mainly about the Palestine problem.”
Speakers on the podium constantly talked about the Middle East; some had fueled anti-Israel sentiment. “We came to protest for climate protection.” Many listeners were so disappointed that they walked away. At some point he got up on the podium to say “that this is about climate protection and not about the Middle East.”