Greta Thunberg: “They kicked me every time the flag touched my face” -- ​Aftonbladet (Sweden)

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https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/25LgKq/greta-thunberg-they-kicked-me-every-time-the-flag-touched-my-face

Aftonbladet                                                                                                                                                                 2025-10-15 


Greta Thunberg: “They kicked me every time the flag touched my face”

– Greta Thunberg on her days in Israeli captivity

Lisa Röstlund

Beating, kicking, and threats of being gassed in cages.

Greta Thunberg and several others from the flotilla are now sharing details about their five days in Israeli captivity – and how Swedish Foreign Ministry staff left them without help.

Aftonbladet’s investigation shows how the Foreign Ministry downplayed the abuse in its communications.

Her red suitcase lies in the hall. “Whore Greta” someone has written in large black letters. Around the text: an Israeli flag and an erect penis.

The bag was confiscated by the Israeli military from the boat – and returned to her like this. She laughs.

– They’re like five-year-olds!

We meet Greta Thunberg at home in the shared accommodation where she lives with friends. Autumn sun streams in through the windows. We drink coffee. The walls are covered with posters from demonstrations around the world.

She only slept for half an hour last night. A nightmare about bombed boats woke her up.

She doesn’t want headlines about herself and the torture she says she was subjected to. That was one of the first things she said on the evening she returned home, at a press conference in Sergels Torg together with several of the other Swedes who participated in the large Global Sumud Flotilla that attempted to bring emergency aid to Gaza.

And she stands by that.

– This is not about me or the others from the flotilla. There are thousands of Palestinians, hundreds of whom are children, who are being held without trial right now, and many of them are most likely being tortured, says Greta Thunberg. 

The story, she emphasizes, is about international solidarity, about people coming together to do the work that governments are not doing.

– And above all, it's about the people who live in Gaza.

But there is a lot of public interest, and the way she was treated reflects something.

– This shows that if Israel, with the whole world watching, can treat a well-known, white person with a Swedish passport this way, just imagine what they do to Palestinians behind closed doors.

News has just come in that a Palestinian boy from the West Bank, the same age as Greta, has died in Israeli custody.

– What we have been through is only a small, small part of what Palestinians have experienced. On the walls of our prison cells, we saw bullet holes with bloodstains and messages carved into the walls by Palestinian prisoners who had been there before us.

Greta Thunberg does not want to be described as a victim. But she testifies to how she has been treated because she believes it says something about how Palestinians are treated.Foto: Magnus Wennman

I ask her to walk us through the bombing of her boat off the coast of Tunis in early September. She would have been on board at that very moment, had she not been called in to help with a press conference. American intelligence agents have testified to CBS that the attack was ordered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

She mentions the chemicals that were released over the boats, and that she will never again be able to look at a starry sky without thinking about drones.

Greta Thunberg wants to highlight the 500-strong crew of the 42 boats that made up the flotilla. Teachers, doctors, researchers, students, parliamentarians, small business owners. The youngest was 18, the oldest 78.

They were all people with different life stories.

She tells the story about Jewish participants she got to know who touched her particularly deeply.

– Several had grown up in very pro-Israel families. They left everything behind and went, risking their lives and standing up so that what is happening in Gaza would not happen in their name. But in several cases, this caused their families to break off contact with them.

FAKTA

Nine critical questions for Greta Thunberg

How could you go even though the Foreign Ministry advised against traveling to Gaza?

– First of all, there was no advisory against traveling in international waters, which is where we were detained. In this context, it should also be noted that the government recently publicly praised the Swedes who traveled to parts of Ukraine, where there is a travel advisory, to work on humanitarian issues. So it is clear that this is a matter of racism, since Ukrainians are white. And the travel advisory does not generally apply to humanitarian organizations that go into war-torn areas and the like. This was a humanitarian mission. We did this to compensate for our governments' passivity and active choice to go against virtually all human rights organizations, the UN, and break international law by not breaking their complicity in genocide.

Israel has stated that there was no food or other emergency aid on your boats?

– That is a complete lie. I personally packed emergency aid and checked all the boxes to make sure that everything that was supposed to be there was there. All the boats had humanitarian emergency aid. We checked several times during the trip to make sure that everything was as it should be. Turkey sent a ship to join us, with additional emergency aid that was transferred to us. Later in prison, I heard from the crew of one of the other boats that when they were captured, they were held down in the boat by soldiers, and then they heard someone from above deck recording videos and saying: “Look, they have weapons,” which was a complete lie. So it seems that Israel has hired influencers to record videos on the boats and spread lies.

Why did you hold a press conference on October 7, the anniversary of the Hamas massacre?

– It was Israel that decided to deport us home at that particular time, and we simply held the press conference immediately after we landed. You'll have to ask Israel what they thought about the timing.

Israel says that there are people in the leadership of the flotilla who are linked to Hamas?

– That is absolutely not true. Israel continues to reuse the same arguments and smear campaigns. Just saying the word “Hamas” justifies all kinds of violence. They built up smear campaigns to be able to capture us and treat us like terrorists. Terrorism is defined as the calculated use of violence to instill fear in a civilian population for political control. That was not what we were doing by sailing peacefully in international waters to deliver food and medicine to the civilian population in Gaza. It is Israel's behavior that fits the description of terrorism.

Israel offered to let you leave the emergency aid with them so that they could pass it on to Gaza—why did you refuse?

– Ever since 2008, when the flotillas began sailing to Gaza, Israel has constantly tried to offer to take over the delivery of emergency aid, and it has been a conscious decision over the years to say no to that. Because we know that Israel is telling lies: saying that their blockade is legal, that we are terrorists and Hamas supporters. And we have seen that Israel does not allow emergency aid to enter Gaza. The limited emergency aid that does come in does not benefit the people. Those who queue up to receive it get shot at. And it is not just food that needs to come in. The famine is not only caused by the lack of emergency aid – it is caused by Israel deliberately and systematically, with the help of the whole world, depriving the Palestinians of the opportunity to support themselves by bombing bakeries and other basic social infrastructure, destroying land so that it cannot be cultivated, prohibiting people from fishing – they shoot and arrest people who fish in their own territorial waters. So it's not just about getting emergency aid in – it's also a political statement to challenge this illegal blockade.

Isn't this just a publicity stunt – ”selfie boats” that risk doing more harm than good by taking the focus away from Gaza and putting it on yourselves?

– No one is risking their life for a selfie opportunity. Personally, I am open about the fact that I will, of course, use my platform, my white skin, my Swedish passport to take advantage of the privileges I have to reach out to people and put the spotlight on Gaza. So, of course, we use the media attention we get to talk about the blockade in Gaza. This has been our deliberate strategy since the beginning in 2008—publicity and attention are among the few tools we have left when all our international institutions have failed to ensure even basic human rights. How dehumanized are Palestinians when it is white media personalities from the Western world who decide what constitutes a symbolic act? It is a symbolic act to bring emergency aid, but also to show that the world stands with Gaza.

Where does the money come from — who’s funding you, Greta?

– I wish there were someone! It’s CSN and student loans. If I get invited to speak at a conference, I try to get them to cover the train fare to get there. All the money I’ve received from awards or royalties from books and films I’ve participated in, I’ve donated to “charitable causes,” or whatever you call it. And the flotilla was funded by money raised through campaigns, and there were volunteers who dropped everything and devoted all their time to this without getting paid.

Are you antisemitic?

– Saying that all people should live in peace, justice, and equality, and that we shouldn’t commit genocide — I don’t consider that antisemitic.

What does this have to do with the climate — you’re a climate activist?

– Everything. For one thing, there are the simple links — there’s almost nothing as damaging to the climate as war and ecocide (destroying or killing ecosystems, editor’s note). Ecocide is a form of warfare aimed at destroying people’s ability to live on the land where they reside. But it should be simpler than that: I’m a climate activist because I care about people and the well-being of the planet. I don’t think I’ve changed focus. I’m still an activist according to the same principles that got me started: following principles of justice, equality, freedom, and sustainability. It’s the same for me. And even if one is so terribly selfish that one does nothing or feels nothing when seeing people bombed to pieces or starved to death — how can you expect a world that allows this to happen to take any steps back and focus on sustainability, or to stand up for you when you need help?

Greta Thunberg needs to eat something and heats up a pot of beans from the fridge. On the kitchen counter are beets and other vegetables from a recent dumpster diving trip: discarded food from grocery store containers, salvaged and brought here.

We jump forward to the night when the boat was boarded by the Israeli military. Men with covered faces and large automatic weapons board the boat—it was broadcast live through the flotilla’s own channels and seen by people all over the world. Several witnesses interviewed by Aftonbladet describe how the weapons were pointed at their faces. They are taken to the lower deck where they are made to sit in a circle without moving while the boat is taken ashore.

– It was extremely hot down there. We just sat there. Those who weren't guarding us walked around the boat, tearing things apart and throwing everything around.

She doesn't know what happened to the food, medicine, diapers, and infant formula – the aid for Gaza.

After about 20 hours, they arrived in Ashdod, Israel's largest industrial port, 40 kilometers south of Tel Aviv. A soldier pointed at Greta Thunberg and said, “You first, come on!” she recounts.

She was not allowed to wear her T-shirt with “Free Palestine” on it and was ordered to change, she explains. She put on an orange one with the text “Decolonize” instead.

– And then I put on my frog hat. When I’m about to get off the boat, there are a bunch of police officers waiting for me. They grab me, pull me to the ground, and throw an Israeli flag over me.

Here, everything goes “from zero to a hundred,” several witnesses describe – the violence escalates.

Greta Thunberg describes how she is dragged to a paved area fenced in with iron fences. This is a protracted scene that lasts for over six hours, according to Greta, and is confirmed by several participants in the flotilla that Aftonbladet talks to.

– It was kind of dystopian. I saw maybe 50 people sitting in a row on their knees with handcuffs and their foreheads against the ground.

Greta gets up from the sofa and lies down, showing the position on the striped living room rug.

Many who participated in the flotilla lost their jobs and had their families break off contact with them. They sacrificed a lot to participate – no one did it for a selfie, according to Greta. Foto: Magnus Wennman

– They dragged me to the opposite side from where the others were sitting, and I had the flag around me the whole time. They hit and kicked me.

Greta laughs.

– Then they ripped off my frog hat, threw it on the ground, stomped and kicked it, and kind of threw a tantrum.

– They moved me very brutally to a corner that I was turned towards. ‘A special place for a special lady’, they said. And then they had learned ‘Lilla hora’ (Little whore) and ‘Hora Greta’ (Whore Greta) in Swedish, which they repeated all the time. 

Every time someone looked up from the ground, they were knocked back down to the ground, Greta and the other Swedes recount. In the corner where Greta was sitting, the police placed a flag.

– The flag was placed so that it would touch me. When it fluttered and touched me, they shouted ‘Don’t touch the flag’ and kicked me in the side. After a while, my hands were tied with cable ties, very tightly. A bunch of guards lined up to take selfies with me while I was sitting like that.

When Greta got back the bag that had been confiscated by the Israeli police, someone had written “Whore Greta” on it and drawn a penis and an Israeli flag over it. Foto: Magnus Wennman

– They took my bag and threw away everything they interpreted as being related to Palestine. They took every item and stared into my eyes while slowly cutting them up with a knife, while ten people took selfies. 

Suddenly, the far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir entered the area and stood in front of everyone, Greta recounts.

– He shouted, ’You are terrorists. You want to kill Jewish babies.’ Those who shouted back were taken aside and beaten. They were thrown to the ground and beaten. But I could only see it out of the corner of my eye, because every time I lifted my head from the ground, I was kicked by the guard standing next to me.

One scene was very moving, she describes.

– I needed to go to the bathroom and asked to do so. Then I had to be led through where people were sitting and they saw me.

A female member of the Swedish delegation said, “We are with you, Greta.”

– Then she was taken aside and assaulted, says Greta Thunberg.

– When I continue through the rows of people sitting there, they say ‘Slay!’.

(Slay originally means “to kill violently.” But as internet slang, it means to do something extremely well. Greta Thunberg says it all the time).

– They say ‘Slay’ because they know it’s my word. And those who say slay get beaten by the guards. I continue forward and then someone shouts ‘Slaaaay’. And then more and more people join in and shout ‘Slay’, and when everyone is shouting it, they can’t assault everyone. It was...

She falls silent and smiles.

Greta was then taken into a building to be searched and undressed.

– The guards have no empathy or humanity, and they keep taking selfies with me. There’s a lot I don’t remember. So much is happening at once. You’re in shock. You’re in pain, but you go into a state of trying to stay calm.

Suddenly, she is dragged into a cleaning closet where she is forced to her knees.

– Then Ben-Gvir and his media team come in and stand there filming, and he says, ’I will personally make sure that you are treated like a terrorist and that you rot in prison. You are Hamas. You are a terrorist. You want to kill Jewish babies.’ While he is shouting, I sit as calmly as I can and quote UN conventions and say that Israel is not immune and must respect international law. I thought this was being recorded and would be spread to the public, but I still haven't seen it spread.

– Maybe you answered too well, says one of Greta's friends.

Ben-Gvir himself later told the media about his visit to the prison – and boasted about how harshly they were treated. He described it as a policy that he himself had ordered.

– I am proud that we treat flotilla activists as supporters of terrorism, he told the daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. They should experience the conditions in Ketziot prison and think twice before returning to Israel. That’s how it works.

The far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir visited the prison and said afterwards that he had given orders for the flotilla members to be treated in such a way that they would never want to return. Foto: Menahem Kahana / AP

After the ministerial meeting in the scrub room, Greta describes endless meetings with officials who wanted her to sign papers stating, among other things, that she had entered Israel illegally, which she refused to do. Her hands were then tied together again with cable ties, she was blindfolded and placed in a small cell inside a car where she spent a cold night with other prisoners.

– It was freezing cold. We were wearing T-shirts.

She was driven on to the prison. Outside, she was forced to take off her clothes again, she says.

– It was mockery, rough handling, and everything was filmed. Everything they do is extremely violent. People's medications were thrown into the trash can in front of their eyes. Heart medication, cancer medication, insulin.

Inside the prison, there is a large picture covering one wall, showing a bombed-out Gaza and people fleeing, with text in Arabic: “The new Gaza” next to a large Israeli flag, she says.

In prison, she is held in different cells. Sometimes a cell of around 15 square meters with 13 other prisoners. There are many days—four? Time blurs together, there were no clocks. They receive hardly any food and no clean water during their entire captivity, but are forced to drink from the tap in the toilet sink, where something brown flows. Several became ill.

– You felt that you couldn’t ‘afford’ to cry because you were so dehydrated.

– It was so hot, like 40 degrees. We begged the whole time: Can we have water? Can we have water? In the end, we screamed. The guards walked in front of the bars the whole time, laughing and holding up their water bottles. They threw the bottles with water in them into the trash cans in front of us. 

At one point, around 60 people were put in a small cage outdoors, in the middle of the sun, according to several participants of the flotilla. Most of them did not have enough room to sit down.

– When people fainted, we banged on the cages and asked for a doctor. Then the guards came and said, ‘We’re going to gas you.’ It was standard for them to say that. They held up a gas cylinder and threatened to press it against us.

During the nights, guards regularly came by and shook the bars, shining flashlights, and several times a night they came in and forced everyone to stand up.

Greta Thunberg recounts how she was placed in an isolation cell full of insects. Hour after hour, she does not know for how long. She sang a song, as if to calm herself.

– But I had to rest after a while because singing that song was so physically demanding.

Greta was taken to private meetings with various officials, diplomats, politicians, including a meeting with representatives from the government.

– They said, ‘We offered Hamas to exchange you for hostages,’ and stared at me silently. When I asked after a while, ‘What is this about?’, they said, 'We were joking. Others repeated: 'This is not genocide. Trust us, if we wanted to carry out genocide, we could do it.

For five minutes at the port, the Swedes were allowed to meet with a lawyer, after which there was no legal assistance. It was not until Friday that three people from the Swedish embassy in Tel Aviv came to meet the Swedes in a cage, outdoors.

– We were together and told them about the treatment we received. About the lack of food, water, about the abuse. The torture. We showed them the physical injuries we had – bruises and scratches. We gave them all our contact details – I gave them my father's number and the number of our contact in the organization. We were clear: everything we say now must be released to the media.

Greta Thunberg and several other participants in the flotilla held a press conference at Sergels Torg a few hours after landing on Swedish soil. Foto: Joel Lindhe / Stella

According to Greta Thunberg, the response was that their job was to listen to them.

– They didn’t do anything, they just said: ’Our job is to listen to you. We are here and you are entitled to consular support.’

– We said over and over again: we need water. And they saw that the guards had water bottles. The embassy staff said: ’We’ll make a note of that.’ One of us, Vincent, said: ’Next time we meet you, you must bring water.’

Then it took two days before the embassy staff showed up again.

– They didn't bring any water, except for a small bottle of their own that was half empty. Vincent, who was in the worst shape, got to drink it. We kept asking the guards, “Can we have some water?” but they just walked around with their water bottles and didn't answer.

Finally, the Swedish group decided, in the presence of the embassy staff, to refuse to return to their cells until they were given water, according to several witnesses that Aftonbladet has spoken to. But then the embassy staff wanted to leave the prison, they claim.

– I said, “Are you going to leave us like this? If you leave now, they will beat us up.” But they just kept walking.

Millions participated in protests around the world after Israeli forces captured Greta and the other participants in the flotilla. Here, one of the demonstrations in Rome on October 5. Foto: Alessandra Tarantino / AP

Several participants reported that a female activist became enraged and kicked the trash can where the guards had thrown their water bottles. Bottles spilled onto the floor, and Greta and the others threw themselves on the floor and hurried to open the bottles and drink the water left behind by the guards.

“The embassy staff see this but continue walking anyway.” 

On the same day that the participants are released from prison after five days in captivity, Swedish prime minister Ulf Kristersson says in Swedish media that it was “very stupid” to travel to Gaza despite the warnings.

When Aftonbladet compares emails sent by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to relatives with what the captives describe telling embassy staff, it becomes clear that the seriousness of the situation has been downplayed.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs describes the scene at the port, where Greta Thunberg was beaten for hours, as follows: “She told us about harsh treatment and that she had been sitting on a hard surface for a long time.”

On Saturday, several media outlets published testimonies that Greta had been subjected to torture.

”There has been over 15 hours since the world’s biggest news agency reported, with several independent sources, that my daughter is submitted to severe abuse and torture. And we haven’t had a word from you”. Email from Greta Thunberg's father, Svante Thunberg, to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on October 5 at 11:27 a.m.

In an email seen by Aftonbladet, her father Svante Thunberg reported this to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

– When what they emailed me does not correspond with what she told them, I feel that the whole response and contact is a betrayal and pure provocation. It was as if I were a pawn in a culture war, while at the same time I read that the Israeli minister responsible openly admits that they were subjected to outright torture, according to applicable laws, says her father, Svante Thunberg.

Aftonbladet has spoken to three other members of the flotilla who largely confirm what Greta Thunberg says and who have all experienced various types of abuse and humiliation. We have also spoken to relatives. Everyone is highly critical of how the Swedish embassy staff acted.

One of them is Marita Rodriguez, whose husband Tomas was waiting at home with their son Malik.

– We asked them to share all the information we gave them and to notify our relatives. Why did they withhold the most important things we said?

Marita has dual citizenship, both Swedish and Chilean.

– We saw a consul from Chile. When he was not allowed to come in to see us, he tried to get past the guards. It was such a contrast to the Swedish Foreign Ministry staff, who didn’t seem to protest at all. Here was someone trying to defy the guards, saying, ’Hi, I’m your consul from Chile. I just want to hear: How are you?’

Rebecca Karlsson is highly critical of the Foreign Ministry’s actions during the time her partner Vincent Storm was imprisoned in Israel. Foto: Andreas Bardell

Another prisoner was Vincent Storm, who describes abuse and humiliation.

– They did nothing. I am so disappointed. We noticed that delegations from other countries, such as France, sent their ambassadors, and they were able to drink water and eat cookies at their meetings. The Swedish embassy did nothing, he says. 

Aftonbladet has access to email correspondence between Vincent’s partner Rebecca Karlsson and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In one of the emails, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs writes, among other things, that Vincent was given water: “During the visit, he was able to drink a bottle of water that the embassy had brought with them.”

– But it was a half-empty small bottle that the embassy staff had brought for themselves – and no one else was given water. They embellished reality, says Rebecca Karlsson.

All of the flotilla participants and relatives that Aftonbladet spoke with describe in the same way that the testimonies from the detainees about their experiences were softened by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in their communication with relatives. Several relatives received no testimony at all from their family members who were detained.

“We will report the Ministry for Foreign Affairs to the Parliamentary Ombudsman for their failure to stand up for the rights of Swedish citizens”, says Rebecca Karlsson, who works as a manager in municipal operations.

Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard writes in an email to Aftonbladet that Greta and the other participants in the flotilla have exposed themselves to great risk. Foto: Lotte Fernvall

Aftonbladet has contacted Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson (M), whose press secretary refers to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. No one at the Swedish Embassy in Tel Aviv is willing to give an interview.

In an email to Aftonbladet, Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard (M) writes:

“The Swedish citizens have exposed themselves to great risk. The Global Sumud Flotilla sailed to Gaza again with the same result as last time; no emergency aid reached the civilian population in Gaza with its ships.”

Aftonbladet has been in contact with several experts who are critical of the government's actions. One of them is lawyer Linus Gardell, who points out that the attack on the aid shipments constituted a crime under both Swedish and international law.

– The government’s silence is astonishing, he says.

– It’s hard to understand, says Said Mahmoudi, professor emeritus of international law at Stockholm University.