Greta’s ‘Selfie Yacht’ Was A Floating Monument to Narcissism

Greta "How Dare You" Thunberg is a publicity whore, out to garner column inches and videos by any means possible, including exploiting suffering.

From The European Conservative

By Lauren Smith

The farcical Madleen voyage epitomised the vapid virtue-signalling of pro-Palestine Westerners.

If you thought the interception of Greta Thunberg’s ‘selfie yacht’ off the coast of Gaza this week would be enough to shut the pint-sized pro-Palestine virtue-signaller up for good, you would be—unfortunately—sorely mistaken. 

When Israeli forces prevented Greta’s sailboat, Madleen, from reaching Gaza on Monday, you might have assumed by her reaction that she was being hauled away to Guantanamo Bay. She and her fellow activists immediately released a pre-recorded video on social media claiming that they had been “kidnapped” by the Israeli authorities. Another of her companions screeched about how this might be a “war crime.” Another described it as “a pirate attack in international waters.” British journalist Owen Jones feverishly wondered aloud if Israel might literally kill Greta. As she was being deported back to Sweden, Greta cried that Israel had committed “an illegal act of kidnapping.” 

The reality, of course, was much different. Greta and her fellow activists—including Franco-Palestinian MEP Rima Hassan—were brought ashore, handed sandwiches and taken to Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv. Here, Greta was transported back to her native Sweden via France (that flight looks to have emitted 300 kilograms of CO2, which Greta will presumably now have to offset somehow, given she’d supposedly sworn off air travel). That’s not to mention the fact that, despite all the hysterics, Israel was well within its rights to stop the boat, given that the ‘aid operation’ was reportedly partially organised by a “Hamas operative.” Israel’s foreign ministry also announced that “the tiny amount of aid that was on the yacht and not consumed by the ‘celebrities’ will be transferred to Gaza through real humanitarian channels.” 

This bizarre international episode did, at least, produce a hilariously stupid image—Greta wearing a frog hat, smiling dimly, while being offered a pastrami sandwich by an IDF soldier. Without a hint of irony, she dismissed this as a “PR stunt,” apparently ignoring the fact that her entire voyage and ‘Freedom Flotilla’ was itself a PR stunt. By its crew’s own admission, the Madleen was carrying a meagre, purely “symbolic” load of humanitarian supplies, barely enough to feed a dozen people. 

By far the funniest outcome for this supposedly crucial aid mission would have been for Israel to actually let Greta and Co. land in Gaza. Needy Gazans would hardly have been impressed with her paltry offerings of a few bags of flour and bottles of water. According to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, the boat contained “less than a single truckload of aid.” By contrast, 1,200 aid trucks have entered Gaza from Israel in the past couple of weeks alone. 

Israel was spot-on when it described the Freedom Flotilla as a “selfie yacht” designed purely “to gain publicity.” Greta and the gang’s retort to this, of course, is that they were “raising awareness.” As if the entire Western world hasn’t already been subjected to shrill hysteria about Israel’s supposed genocide and ‘mass starvation’ in Gaza for the past 20 months. 

To give Greta some perspective, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz also said the activists would be shown videos of atrocities committed during the October 7th 2023 Hamas attack when they arrived in Israel. Now, though, it has emerged that Greta refused to watch the footage. Katz announced yesterday that “Greta and her flotilla companions were taken into a room upon their arrival for a screening of the horror film of the October 7th massacre, and when they saw what it was about, they refused to continue watching.” 

This was a serious allegation, and one that Greta then herself confirmed. Upon landing in Paris, she told reporters that Israel “tried to make us watch all kinds of propaganda videos,” but that she and her fellow sailors refused because “this is nothing compared to what is happening in Gaza, which is in desperate need of humanitarian aid.” 

This is by far the most revolting aspect of this entire incident. To first of all describe actual footage—much of it taken by Hamas militants and Palestinians themselves—of the rape, murder, torture, and kidnapping of Jews as “propaganda videos” can only be described as morally bankrupt. It may be inconvenient for Western activists like Greta to admit, but there was, in fact, a genocidal mass killing in southern Israel on October 7th 2023. 

And then to claim that that atrocity was “nothing compared to what is happening in Gaza”? This is particularly outrageous, given that Greta herself doesn’t even seem to know what is really “happening in Gaza.” For all her wailing about war crimes and mass famines, it has been proven time and again that Israel is not waging some kind of genocide against Palestinians. In fact, it routinely attempts to mitigate the damage against Palestinian civilians as much as it reasonably can, giving advance evacuation warnings and delivering aid, despite it being hindered by the United Nations. 

Rather, Israel is responding to an enemy that wishes to wipe Israel and the Jewish people off the face of the Earth. The war against Hamas is brutal, yes, as all wars tend to be. But it is entirely necessary that Israel fights for its own existence right now. 

This absurd, repugnant ordeal just about sums up the sentiment of the Western pro-Palestine set. The likes of Greta Thunberg know virtually nothing about Israel and Palestine, but still shout the loudest. They engage in ridiculous, empty stunts not to actually deliver any meaningful help to Gazans, but to pose for social-media posts and boast about their “symbolic” aid. When confronted with the awful truth about October 7th, they turn away. 

Greta and her Freedom Flotilla may have failed to do anything worthwhile for the people in Gaza. But she has at least exposed this movement for the vapid, virtue-signalling theatre it truly is.