Anthropogenic climate change and "Israel's" genocidal war on Palestinians might seem like two separate issues, but there have been recent examples which show that saving the planet and freeing Palestine are far from being disparate causes. In fact, one unintended consequence of the wholesale carnage visited upon Palestinians in "Israel's" quest to expand Jewish Lebensraum has been the intersecting of climate action and Palestinian liberation in the West.

Nothing embodies this better than Western nation states' implementation of draconian legal frameworks in order to silence both movements, whether it is Section 11 of the UK's novel Public Order Act or the infamous Section 129 of Germany's Criminal code used to persecute the recently banned organisation Samidoun, or climate action group Letzte Generation.

In the sphere of celebrity activism, the convergence of climate justice and Palestinian liberation has manifested itself in the persona of Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg who posted multiple group photos of herself on social media expressing solidarity with Gaza whilst advocating for climate action.

Nowhere was outrage at Thunberg's positioning against a barbaric war more swift than in Germany, an "Israel"-adoring outlier even among the most pro-Zionist of Western nations because of its genocidal anti-Jewish history. One for which it continues to make wrong amends by going above and beyond in defending the deplorable actions of the self-proclaimed "Jewish state," even when the latter is in the midst of orchestrating a genocide of its own.

Being the morally flexible turncoats that they are, the German ruling class and its minions in the mainstream media quickly turned their backs on their revered icon: the same people who were once Thunberg's biggest fan became her shrillest critics, not wasting time in cancel-culturing her and trying to character assassinate the respected activist with the blunt sword of weaponised antisemitism.

While Thunberg's pro-Palestine stance was the most prominent, it was not the only one made by an environmental rights defender in the context of "Israel's" war on Gaza, in which the apartheid entity has extinguished the lives of over 15,000 Palestinians in not even two months: Fridays For Future's spokesperson Elisa Baş saw herself faced with accusations of antisemitism for sharing a third-party critique of Josef Schuster, the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, a pro-"Israel" lobby group, on her Instagram. Schuster had penned an op-ed in the populist right-wing Springer press about Palestinian protesters in Germany, published under the dehumanizing title "The barbarians are among us."

The 22-year-old Baş has not shied away from using terms like "colonialism" and "genocide" to describe "Israel's" nature and actions, therefore becoming the prime target of those who propagate the fiction of "Islamic antisemitism." She is the living example of what intersectionality of oppression in the West means: not only is she a woman, she is a woman of colour. Not only is she a woman of colour, she is a Muslim woman of colour. Not only is she a Muslim woman of colour, she is a hijab-wearing Muslim woman of colour.

Related News

Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem could succeed Pope Francis, bring deeper Vatican involvement in the region

The hero who overthrows tyranny: The path of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam

And to top it all off: she advocates for Palestinian liberation, that exceptional litmus test of Western humanity which the latter repeatedly fails to get a a passing grade in. Is it at all surprising then that Baş's multi-layered identity has managed to offend the racist, Islamophobic and misogynist sensibilities of the white supremacist German patriarchy and its privileged white feminists alike?

This is not the first time a Western climate justice group has found itself in the crosshairs of those playing fast and loose with the term antisemitism: in 2019, Extinction Rebellion's (XR) co-founder Roger Hallam faced a backlash for allegedly downplaying the severity of the Jewish Holocaust when telling the pro-Zionist German newspaper DIE ZEIT that genocides were a "regular event" of history, citing Belgian colonial rule in the Congo during which millions of Africans were killed.

Germans in particular found Hallam's factually sound comments to be too close for comfort: XR Germany distanced itself from Hallam, while publishing house Ullstein even stopped the publication of his book on climate change.

White German fragility's racist indignation at any effort to remind the Western world of Palestinian humanity has intensified in 2023, yet "Israel's" implementation of what has all the hallmarks of a Final Solution to the question of Palestine has nonetheless led the two disparate social movements of climate justice and Palestinian liberation to intersect.

This provides a singular opportunity for much-needed collaboration, particularly in Germany which is swiftly returning to its Nazi ways of blanket authoritarianism: it is paramount to seize that synergetic momentum and further mainstream the demand for an immediate stop to "Israel's" war on Gaza and the West Bank and keep pushing for the long-term goal of a Palestine liberated from Euro-Western settler colonial occupation.

On their own, disruptive acts by climate justice activists and regular pro-Palestine mass demonstrations are already bringing failed states like Britain and Germany to their wits' end, the desperation of the ruling classes betrayed by unprecedented anti-democratic backsliding.

Imagine what the climate justice and Free Palestine movements could achieve if they joined forces and began coordinating and organizing together: they'd make the morally bankrupt pro-"Israel" West tremble in fear of the full extent of their change-making people power.