Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg drew criticism Tuesday after sharing a picture of an emaciated Israeli hostage in a social media post about alleged mistreatment of Palestinians in Israeli prisons and detention centers.
The post, which was made in collaboration with several pro-Palestinian activists, included graphics with statistics and pictures of Palestinians in Israeli detention, and was meant to call attention to “the suffering” of those in custody.
“The suffering of Palestinian prisoners is not a matter of opinion — it is a fact of cruelty and dehumanization. Humanity cannot be selective. Justice cannot have borders,” the post read.
However, one of the graphics featured a small picture of Evyatar David, an Israeli hostage held by Hamas in Gaza, looking emaciated in a tunnel dug by the terror group. The picture is a still from a Hamas propaganda video released several months ago, where a skeletal David describes the dire conditions of his captivity.
The fact that Thunberg, who has quickly become one of the world’s loudest pro-Palestinian critics of Israel and was deported a day earlier for taking part in a flotilla trying break the maritime blockade on Gaza, shared a photo of a Hamas hostage in a post about Palestinian prisoners was quickly mocked on social media.
The post also drew criticism from David’s sister, Yeela David, who commented: “You need to do research before you post things you don’t understand.”
“On the sixth slide, you included a photo of an ISRAELI HOSTAGE that Hamas deliberately starved! That is Evyatar David,” she wrote.
“Every minute you are not deleting this post you are becoming a bigger joke,” she wrote in a second comment. “Embarrassing.”
David was kidnapped from the Re’im-area Nova music festival during the Hamas-led terror onslaught of October 7, 2023, and has been held in captivity for the two years since.
He has been featured in two Hamas propaganda videos, the first of which was filmed during a hostage release ceremony earlier this year, which showed him and fellow hostage Guy Gilboa-Dalal being forced to watch a group of hostages being released, an act widely panned as cruel psychological torture.