Lorena Delgado Varas – דיויד סטברו

I Served in the IDF — Come and Get Me!

A former Left Party MP wrote that 150 Swedish citizens who served in Israel’s military have participated in genocide. They, and others who support them, she continued, are “allowed to live among us”. I served in the Israel Defense Forces myself. Here is why I refuse to be ashamed of my service.

Originally published in Kvartal: Jag har tjänstgjort i IDF – kom och ta mig! – Kvartal

Article photograph — Photo: Private, Jehad Alshrafi/AP/TT. Collage: Felice Larsson/Kvartal.

It seems that the winning side in Sweden’s election has already identified the country’s real problems. Issues such as schools, healthcare and unemployment can wait, but when it comes to the enormous threat apparently posed by Israel’s relations with the EU, something must be done immediately.

Before a new government has even been formed, the Social Democrats have thrown themselves into the issue of the EU’s Association Agreement with Israel, and the new majority has agreed that Sweden should push to suspend its trade provisions.

But that is not enough for the Left Party. Its Member of the European Parliament, Hanna Gedin, has joined Nordic colleagues in writing to the EU’s foreign policy chief, demanding that member states be urged to investigate possible war crimes committed by European citizens who have served in the IDF. Gedin is worried about Israelis walking freely on Europe’s streets. She points to a precedent: “Eurojust has explicitly established that EU citizens who fought for the Islamic State can be held accountable for war crimes and genocide.” In her view, Israel’s military and ISIS deserve the same treatment.

Other parts of the Left Party are equally enthusiastic about going after Israeli soldiers. At the party’s Greater Stockholm district annual conference in 2025, one member proposed a campaign against Israeli soldiers in Sweden. According to the motion, service in the Israeli army should provoke disgust and rejection, both personally and at the societal level. Ahead of the 2026 party congress, another member proposed designating the IDF as a terrorist organization, so that its members could be prosecuted even without concrete evidence of war crimes. The proposals were not adopted, but their wording reveals that, for these activists, the problem is not what an individual Israeli has done, but that the person served in Israel’s armed forces.

Former Left Party MP Lorena Delgado Varas put it even more clearly. Following reports that 150 Swedish citizens had served in the IDF, she wrote on Facebook: “So there are 150 Swedish citizens who have participated in genocide, and many more who have probably known about it and supported it. And they are allowed to live among us as if nothing had happened”. No investigations or verdicts are needed here. Even people alleged to have known about or supported what happened are included. “We must not accept genocidaires walking free, without consequences”, she concluded, without explaining what she means by “genocidaires” or what consequences she thinks should befall them. Is that a threat?

It is probably pointless to reason with political fanatics. But for everyone else, we need to clarify a few concepts. The IDF is the armed forces of an internationally recognized state whose population has repeatedly been subjected to wars, rocket attacks and terrorism, including by fascist, Islamist and fundamentalist organizations and states. Israel, like many other countries, has compulsory military service. An Israeli eighteen-year-old who refuses to report for duty without a legal exemption can be convicted for doing so. Anyone who commits war crimes must, of course, be investigated and, where the evidence is sufficient, prosecuted. But military service is not evidence of criminality. Defending one’s country’s right to exist, serving in Gaza or taking part in a war is not, in itself, a war crime.

Would the same activists demand that Swedish citizens who served in the armed forces of the United States, Ukraine, Iraq or Somalia be catalogued as potential war criminals? The Left Party has indeed called for suspected war crimes in other countries to be investigated, but that is something quite different from casting suspicion on people solely because they served in a country’s armed forces. I have not found any comparable demands to catalogue former American, Ukrainian, Iraqi or Somali soldiers. This special treatment appears to be reserved for the Jewish state.

In the SVT documentary The World’s Most Hated?, representatives of the London-based Declassified UK are given considerable airtime. One says: “You could be living next door to a war criminal, taking the Underground or a bus with someone involved in the systematic destruction of an occupied people”. The association is hard to miss: people who have served in the Israeli army are portrayed as a potential threat in our midst. The same speaker says it does not matter whether the person has even been to Gaza; he must prove his innocence because “a soldier can be guilty simply by enlisting”.

It is somewhat unclear why SVT presents him as a journalist rather than an activist. But the film shows what happens when a group is subjected to collective suspicion. Israeli tourists are thrown out of restaurants and shops, spat at, disinvited from universities and cultural events, and threatened with legal action. Does anyone recognize the pattern? It does not matter whether the individuals have actually committed a crime. So-called pro-Palestinian demonstrators in Sweden and other countries have already adopted “Death, death to the IDF” as a popular slogan. Do they mean all IDF soldiers, past and present? Is the death threat a metaphor? Delgado Varas has the answer: the problem is not just those who have “participated in genocide,” but “many more who have known about it and supported it”.

So let me make things easy for her, for the activists, and for Social Democrats who intend to make themselves dependent on the Left Party’s support. I want to save you the cost of intelligence gathering and digging through old records. I am coming forward voluntarily. I served in the IDF. It was in the 1990s, but compromising photographs are available. Here's one. I am Israeli and a Zionist. Come and get me!

David Stavrou as an IDF soldier in the mid-1990s. Photo: Private.

I have no intention of denying my identity just because life happened to bring me to Sweden. I understand that some people would prefer their Jews to be anti-Zionist, apologetic and perpetually ashamed. Unfortunately, I cannot provide the goods. I grew up where buses were blown up, people were torn to bits in restaurants and caffes and rockets struck people’s homes. When I came of age, I performed my compulsory military service. I committed no war crimes. I murdered no children. But neither did I believe that my country, my family or my fellow human beings had any moral obligation to voluntarily allow themselves to be killed.

There are good reasons to scrutinize Israel’s conduct of war and criticize its government. Turning nationality or past military service into evidence of criminality, however, is something entirely different. When you speak of people who are “allowed to live among us,” you have already made up your mind.

'At Least Google Their Names': Sweden's Left Party Scrutinized Over Solidarity Letters to Palestinian Terrorists

Sweden's Left Party has come under intense scrutiny after two of its senior lawmakers sent letters of support to Palestinian prisoners convicted of deadly terror attacks weeks before a general election.

Published in Haaretz: 'At Least Google Their Names': Sweden's Left Party Scrutinized Over Solidarity Letters to Palestinian Terrorists – Europe

With just over a month to go before Sweden's general election, the country's Left Party has come under criticism following new revelations that senior party figures sent letters of solidarity to Palestinian prisoners convicted of terrorism or murder.

The letters were part of a solidarity initiative involving the Left Party and Palestinian prisoner advocates. In the space of a few days earlier in August, three Swedish journalists exposed several such cases.

Journalist Sofie Löwenmark wrote in daily newspaper Expressen that Left Party Member of Parliament Ilona Szatmári Waldau had written last year to Ahmad al-Moghrabi, a senior commander of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades. He is serving multiple life sentences in Israel for his role in planning deadly terrorist attacks in Jerusalem, including an attack on a bar mitzvah celebration that killed 11 people and an attack on a supermarket that killed two. In the letter she sent him, Szatmári Waldau commended his "courage and perseverance."

Szatmári Waldau later explained in a Facebook post that she had not known about al-Moghrabi's background and that the information about the prisoners had been provided by the Palestine Solidarity Association of Sweden.

"None of the prisoners were supposed to have carried out violence against civilians or have human lives on their conscience. In this case, the fact-checking was flawed, which is not acceptable. I have taken down the post. Terrorism and violence against civilians is not something I support or encourage," she wrote.

Later, the Left Party acknowledged that its fact-checking had failed. Party leader Nooshi Dadgostar described the letters as a mistake and said the campaign had been withdrawn, while defending the MPs involved, saying to the Aftonbladet daily of Szatmári Waldau: "I have complete confidence in her values."

Nathalie Rothschild, a journalist at the Swedish online current-affairs magazine Kvartal, subsequently reported that the party's parliamentary group leader, Samuel Gonzalez Westling, had written a letter of solidarity to Ibrahim Abu Mokh, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for kidnapping and murdering 19-year-old Israeli soldier Moshe Tamam in 1984.

Rothschild also reported that the party had organized a seminar in which former Palestinian prisoner Hussam Shaheen, who was sentenced to 27 years imprisonment for attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder, participated by video link. His conviction had been challenged in Israel's High Court, where his lawyer argued that he had been wrongly identified and that the investigation had suffered from serious omissions. The state acknowledged some investigative errors, although the conviction was not overturned.

"This is a party that aspires to sit in government after the election, and eight of its MPs have taken part in a solidarity campaign with prisoners without even considering that they should at least Google their names," Rothschild tells Haaretz. "It's incompetent at best, and a security risk at worst."

Following this, Expressen investigative journalist Inas Hamdan published a complete list of 24 Palestinian prisoners who were supposedly included in the campaign. Several had been convicted of murder or terrorism-related offenses. The Left Party denied all had been involved in the campaign and rather only a "handful," according to Hamdan's reporting.

"As a Swedish journalist of Palestinian background, I think it's important that politicians are clear about where they stand," Hamdan told Haaretz. "In Sweden, we have seen enormous demonstrations where there have been slogans in support of terrorism or flags representing terrorist organizations such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades. Threats against Sweden's Jewish minority are a threat to Swedish democracy. That's why it's incredibly important that we show what these threats look like."

The controversy comes at a sensitive moment for the Left Party, known in Swedish as Vänsterpartiet. The party, which has profiled itself in recent years as a socialist and feminist party, originates from Sweden's Communist Party, which split from the Social Democratic Party in 1917. Today, it sits to the left of the Social Democrats, advocating for a strong welfare state, greater economic equality, expanded public ownership and workers' rights.

Its leader, 41-year-old Nooshi Dadgostar, the daughter of Iranian immigrants who grew up in Gothenburg, has led the Party since 2020. It currently holds 22 of the 349 seats in the Swedish parliament.

The party has never participated in a Swedish national government, though it has frequently provided parliamentary support for Social Democratic governments. Ahead of this year's election, Dadgostar has made clear that the party expects formal cabinet posts if its support is required to form a center-left government.

The letters to the Palestinian prisoners are only the latest chapter in the party's engagement with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Over the past three years, Israel, Gaza and the wars in the Middle East have become an increasingly prominent part of Swedish politics. While all of the country's major political parties have taken positions on the issue, the Left Party has made it a central part of its political identity.

This was particularly clear during the 2024 European Parliament election campaign, when party leader Dadgostar described the vote as a "Palestine election," arguing that a united European Union could put pressure on Israel. "We are not finished until we have liberated Palestine," she says. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict occupied a prominent place in her campaign, and some analysts cite the party's position on Gaza as one of the factors that contributed to its strong electoral performance.

The issue has also extended beyond the party leadership. Many Left Party members and activists have participated in Sweden's pro-Palestinian protest movement that has become a regular feature of Swedish public life. Some of these demonstrations have featured slogans, symbols and political theater that have been described by Jewish community leaders as supporting terrorism or having antisemitic elements. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has consequently become not merely a foreign policy question for the party, but an issue increasingly shaping its activist base, electoral strategy and internal politics.

In 2023, Swedish public broadcaster SVT reported that aid money from the party's international organization had gone to a project linked to the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, whose armed wing took part in the October 7 massacre.

The following year, prominent Left Party figure Kristofer Lundberg was expelled from the party after openly supporting the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which is an EU-designated terrorist organization. During Lundberg's time as chairman of the party's Angered branch, a Popular Front representative also participated in the branch's annual meeting.

In Malmö, Orwa Kadoura, then vice-chairman of the local Left Party branch in what is Sweden's third-largest city, left the party following criticism over antisemitic messages. In 2025, MP Lorena Delgado Varas shared a classic antisemitic conspiracy image and was made to leave the party too. And as recently as June this year, the party removed more than 20 candidates from its municipal electoral lists after investigations found that they had praised Hamas' October 7 attack, spread Holocaust denial and promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Hamdan says the reaction to her reporting has been mixed. "On the one hand, there are threats against me as a journalist," she says, "but there's also confusion about how things came to this. Knowledge about terrorist organizations such as Hamas is very limited among Swedes, because it's not something they have had to deal with very much".

"From the party, we have been met either with silence or with attacks. This is, of course, an incredibly difficult issue for them," Hamdan says. "They have some voters who are attracted by expressions of support for terrorism, while they have other voters who oppose it. They are trying to play both sides."

Löwenmark, who first reported about Szatmári Waldau's letter, describes the reactions as "strong and widespread." She tells Haaretz, "The fact that he was a Palestinian prisoner was enough for him to be praised for his courage and his struggle. No one had even bothered to find out what he had been convicted of."

Löwenmark added that there are almost always strong reactions when investigations concern pro-Palestinian activism and the Left Party. "The pattern is predictable", she said. "Instead of discussing what has been revealed, they attack the person who revealed it. The focus shifts from the facts themselves to the journalist, the newspaper or the alleged motive behind the investigation."

Rothschild, who has also published revelations about the party, says that she too had been met with silence from party officials. "When I tried to get more information from the party, one MP wrote that she won't grant interviews about this topic, while the party's parliamentary group leader confirmed he sent the letter to Abu Mokh but didn't have time to talk when I asked if he knew about the charges against him." Rothschild says that further attempts to contact the party's lawmakers and the party's press service went unanswered.

It remains to be seen whether the controversy will affect the party's support in the polls. These revelations add to a series of controversies over the positions of individual party members that, as the party seeks a formal role in Sweden's next government, puts renewed focus on its position on Israel as a whole.

The Left Party did not respond to Haaretz's request for an interview or comment.

The Swedish Left Party’s letters reveal what amateurs they are

The first objection to Swedish MPs sending romantic letters of solidarity to people convicted of murder and terrorism is, of course, a moral one. The second concerns poor judgment. But the third is about something else: amateurism, writes Israeli journalist David Stavrou.

Published in Swedish in Kvartal: V:s brev avslöjar vilka amatörer de är – Kvartal

In the space of just a few days, journalists Sofie Löwenmark, Nathalie Rothschild and Inas Hamdan published investigations showing how members of the Swedish parliament had sent letters of solidarity to Palestinian prisoners convicted of very serious terrorism offenses and had participated in an organized campaign in which several of the recipients are serving life sentences for attacks against civilians.

In 2023, SVT revealed that aid money from the Left Party’s international organization had gone to a project with links to the DFLP, an organization that participated in the October 7 massacre. The following year, prominent Left Party figure Kristofer Lundberg was expelled after expressing support for the terrorist-designated PFLP. In Malmö, Orwa Kadoura left the party following criticism over antisemitic messages. In 2025, MP Lorena Delgado Varas shared a classic antisemitic conspiracy image, and as recently as June this year, the Left Party removed a large number of candidates who had praised Hamas’s October 7 attack, spread Holocaust denial and promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories.

All of this is, of course, serious. By now, it is clear that the Left Party has a problem with romanticizing terrorism and spreading antisemitism and conspiracy theories. This can no longer be dismissed as anecdotal. Every time you think rock bottom has been reached, another investigation appears with new revelations. But precisely for that reason, it is almost no longer interesting to discuss this as a question of values. Left Party members are free to believe whatever they want. The truly interesting issue is something else.

Politics is not merely an ideological arena. Politics is a profession. There are laws, practices, institutions and rules of the game. And then there is what in British politics is sometimes described as simply not done – things that may not actually be prohibited but that politicians nevertheless know not to do. It is like any other profession. Surgeons do not operate on gut feeling. Judges do not rule according to whom they instinctively like best. Even a passionate politician is expected to be able to control that passion long enough to do the job.

The Left Party’s explanation in the latest affair illustrates the problem. The party secretary has said that the names came from the Palestinian Association of Sweden and that the Left Party carried out no checks of its own. “There had been a mistake in the fact-checking,” MP Ilona Szatmári Waldau wrote. Nooshi Dadgostar has repeatedly resorted to variations of the same defense during the scandals of recent years. In June, she referred to the large number of Left Party representatives – more than 4,000 – and stressed that those exposed represented only a small proportion. She then said that “there are occasions when people turn up whom you haven’t kept track of.” She promised to tighten the party’s procedures, but that is clearly an almost impossible task, since many other Left Party members defend people who have expressed support for terrorist organizations.

If a blue-haired 17-year-old activist sends a love letter to an ideologically motivated murderer he saw on TikTok, perhaps he can get away with shrugging his shoulders or shouting along with Rage Against the Machine: “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me!” But members of parliament are not teenagers. They are adults, and adults are expected to evaluate their sources critically and ask questions. What does it look like when we become fixated on prisoners from a single international conflict while ignoring others? What diplomatic, trade-policy and security-policy consequences could our statements have? Which people and organizations are we legitimizing?

Is that boring? Does it involve compromise? Perhaps even moral coruption? Perhaps – if you live in a syndicalist collective, eat out of tin cans beneath posters of “freedom fighters” and say that “when the forest is felled, the chips will fly”. But the Left Party’s MPs are well-paid public officials who participate in – and enjoy all the privileges and perks that come with – professional politics.

That means it is part of the job to investigate the people and organizations you cooperate with, read court judgments, speak to embassies, diplomats, experts and lawyers, ask what is disputed and what has been established, and understand the consequences of your own symbolic politics. For example, when a professional politician becomes involved in another country’s prison system by writing a letter, they must understand how the people they are writing to are perceived by their victims, as well as understand another society’s sensitivities and collective trauma.

To a Swede, Ahmad al-Moghrabi or Ibrahim Abu Mokh may be unfamiliar names on a list of “Palestinian prisoners.” To an Israeli, those same names may signify deadly suicide attacks against civilians, murdered children or a young conscript who was kidnapped on his way home and never returned. You do not have to accept Israel’s policies in the West Bank or agree with the Israeli courts. You only need to be able to imagine the reverse situation. Imagine if foreign parliamentarians wrote to Jackie Arklöv and praised his “courage and perseverance” without checking the judgment against him. The first Swedish response wouldn't be a complex debate about Scandinavian geo-politics, it would be: Have you even bothered to find out who this person is?

This kind of disregard for the rules of politics – in which passionate conviction is allowed to cloud judgment and consequences and basic due diligence are ignored – has a name. It is called populism.

For many years, the Sweden Democrats have struggled with a similar transition – from a protest movement to a party with influence over the state. As part of that process, the party has run internal training programs under the title The Road to Power (Vägen till makten), although there is, of course, no reason to romanticize the results. SD continues to be plagued by recurring scandals. A training course cannot magically erase a political culture.

And this is where the parallel with the Left Party becomes even more uncomfortable. V has already tried the educational route. Following several antisemitism scandals, in the spring of 2025 the party invited its members to a two-hour training session on antisemitism. Every member received an invitation. Yet one year later, the party found itself with 25 candidates removed from its lists following revelations involving, among other things, precisely antisemitism. As the Swedish elections draw closer, the party is finding it increasingly difficult to convince voters that sympathy for terrorists, conspiracy theories and antisemitism among its politicians and activists is a bug. In its case, it seems much more like a feature.

The Left Party Sees All Racism — Except Its Own

In light of Ina Hamdan's widely discussed revelations about members of Sweden's Left Party (Vänsterpartiet) who have expressed support for violent organizations or spread antisemitic propaganda, there is reason to revisit an interesting publication that the Malmö branch of the Party released in 2023 under the title Anti-Racist Handbook.

Published in Kvartal: V ser all rasism – utom sin egen – Kvartal

Vänsterpartiet's Anti-Racist Handbook is a strange document to read in light of current Swedish discourse. On the one hand, it's an ambitious text about how racism and discrimination should be fought. The reader learns about structural racism and intersectionality, Islamophobia and Afrophobia, colonialism and gender power structures and there's an almost academic overview of the various manifestations of racism in Swedish society. In light of this, the book argues that the party should actively recruit "non-white comrades," and proposes a range of symbolic, political and educational measures to combat racism.

On the other hand, there is very little about Islamism and contemporary antisemitism. This is interesting because it may be the key to understanding why people who devote their lives to "anti-racist politics" sometimes end up supporting violent, genocidal and fundamentalist movements such as Hamas and Hezbollah, while spreading propaganda against Jews and their national movement.

The point is the striking difference in how much nuance, complexity and analytical sensitivity the leaders of the Swedish Left Party in Malmö are willing to apply to different social phenomena.

When it comes to racism against Black people, the handbook explains how racism has changed form and modernized. Although African Americans are no longer sold from from one cotton plantation to another and are no longer viewed as people with smaller brains, racism still exists. In Sweden, the handbook explains, there is Afrophobia, manifested through hostility and hate crimes, insults and discrimination, exclusion and structural inequalities resulting from "norms of whiteness" and ideas of white supremacy.

But when it comes to antisemitism, the analysis seems to stop in history.

In the past, Jews were portrayed as the killers of Jesus, as people who kidnapped Christian children and used their blood, or those who started revolutions. The result was pogroms, state violence and discrimination. Twentieth-century antisemitism instead revolved around ideas of Jewish control over governments, the media and financial systems. The result was the Holocaust.

Antisemitism after the Second World War is different, and it is certainly about more than merely "racism against Jews." Christer Mattsson, one of Sweden's leading scholars of antisemitism and violent extremism, describes contemporary antisemitism as an "Israelized antisemitism," in which traditional anti-Jewish stereotypes are no longer expressed directly about "Jews" but are instead projected onto "Israel" or "Zionists."

Thousands of people in the streets of Stockholm shout "No Zionists on our streets" on a weekly basis. This is just a new version of "Jews Out!". Their demonstration "street theatre" also portrays Israelis as bloodthirsty creatures who drink the blood of dead infants, or as people who secretly control governments.

Recently we've also witnessed court cases of Swedish so-called pro-Palestinians who have spread messages on social media destorting the Holocaust and presented images of snakes and hyenas adorned with Stars of David killing Palestinian children. Their defence strategy, which actually convinced the court, was that the Star of David represent the Zionist flag rather than rabbis and synagogues.

This is where the handbook's blind spot becomes visible, and the results are obvious.

At the end of the Left Party's handbook there are quotations from representatives of the Party that reveal the same pattern: extreme sensitivity toward every conceivable form of discrimination on the one hand, and total blindness to extremism and racism when it comes to Jews and Israel on the other.

For example, Amelia Bartholdson wrote in the handbook that combating racism requires "awareness, humility and self-awareness." Yet after October 7 she shared a video accusing her own party secretary of being a Zionist because he did not regard October 7 as a legitimate act of resistance (the post came from EPYU, an organization that spreads conspiracy theories and blood libels). She also shared an open letter decorated with a red triangle (known as a Hamas propaganda symbol) supporting Kristofer Lundberg, a well-known supporter of the PFLP, one of the organizations organizations behind the October 7 massacre. Truly a fine display of awareness, humility and self-awareness.

In other posts, Bartholdson compared the situation in Gaza to the Holocaust and supported boycotts and so-called "apartheid-free zones." This is an interesting point, because many of those quoted in the handbook support boycotts that are not directed at products from the West Bank or at far-right Netanyahu supporters, but essentially at anything connected to Israel. It is a bit like boycotting Bruce Springsteen or Beyoncé because of U.S. immigration policy. In an American context that would seem absurd, but when it comes to Israel everyone is lumped together. How does that fit with Sabrin Omar Högelius's statement in the handbook that people should be able to "simply exist, without having to defend their origins"?

"Anti-racism should permeate the party's politics and practice and build broad alliances with civil society," Anders Neergaard wrote in the handbook. Last week he was scheduled to lead a seminar celebrating an intifada (a term that in political contexts clearly implies violence against Israeli and Jewish targets). The other seminar leader was Orwa Kadoura, who was also quoted in the 2023 handbook condemning "racist behaviors, structures and organizations," yet in recent years he has repeatedly shared antisemitic and pro-Hamas material.

Another prominent former Left Party member quoted in the handbook is Lorena Delgado Varas. "Western anti-racism goes hand in hand with feminism and socialism," she wrote. A few years later, as is well known, there the "hand in hand" had an entirely different meaning as Delgado Varas shared an image on X showing a hand with the Israeli flag controlling a hand with the American flag, which in turn controlled soldiers carrying the flags of various other countries, accompanied by a text claiming that "Zionist Jews control the world" through threats, blackmail, the media, banks and control over the U.S. Congress, Senate and government.

These examples do not even include the individuals Inas Hamdan wrote about in Expressen, because the party's antisemitism problem extends far beyond 25, 50 or even 100 people. The most important lesson of the Anti-Racist Handbook is not what it says about racism, but what it does not say.

It's not about hating Jews. It is about a worldview that blames one people, one movement and one country for all the world's evils and fails to understand what contemporary antisemitism is. Or perhaps understands it perfectly well, but chooses to exploit it in order to win votes.

Sailing with Fanatics

As Swedish Member of Parliament Lorena Delgado Varas and activist Greta Thunberg make their way to Gaza as part of the so-called Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF), many Swedes assume that their intentions are good. However, the reality behind the movement they are actively supporting is as far as can be imagined from humanitarian, non-violent, peaceful activism.

Published in Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet:
https://www.svd.se/a/lw6anA/lorena-delgado-varas-och-greta-thunberg-seglar-i-daligt-sallskap

The images of destruction and suffering from Gaza, combined with statements published by the flotilla's organizers, have created an image of brave and kind-hearted activists, willing to pay a heavy personal price to deliver humanitarian aid and draw the world’s attention to Gaza. On its website, GSF describes itself as “a coalition of everyday people – organizers, humanitarians, doctors, artists, clergy, lawyers, and seafarers – who believe in human dignity and the power of nonviolence.” They also emphasize that their loyalty lies with “justice, freedom, and the sanctity of human life.”

But the reality behind GSF is far removed from the idealistic image presented to the public.

Less than three months ago, a meeting took place at Hamas’ headquarters in Algeria. Participants included representatives of the Global Sumud Flotilla and leaders of the movements that murdered, raped, tortured, and burned hundreds of Israeli civilians on October 7th – and many more before that. Among those present were Youssef Hamdan, Hamas' representative in Algeria, and Nader al-Qaisi, a representative of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). This was no secret meeting. Despite the continued portrayal of the flotilla by Swedish media as a peace initiative with humanitarian aims, publicly available material reveals concrete links between GSF and some of the world’s most notorious terrorist organizations. All it takes to uncover these connections is a basic knowledge of Arabic and a quick search through social media.

In one photo published by Nabil Chennoufi, a spokesperson for GSF who frequently shares extremist violent propaganda on social media, two members of the flotilla’s steering committee – Wael Nawar and Hayfa Mansouri – can be seen smiling and wearing keffiyehs with Hamas symbols, alongside leaders of the terrorist organization in Algeria. The caption says the meeting focused on the flotilla’s progress, its positive impact, and its connection to the "Palestinian resistance." In a second photo, a third steering committee member, Marouan Ben Guettaia, is seen meeting with Hamas leader Hamdan.

It’s important to stress that Greta Thunberg is not merely a regular passenger on one of the flotilla’s boats. GSF’s own website showed her as a member of the steering committee, alongside the aforementioned individuals. For some reason, her name and picture suddenly disappeared last Thursday.

Another committee member is Brazilian activist Thiago Ávila, who has openly expressed his admiration for the late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. On social media, Ávila shared how he was inspired as a young man after meeting Nasrallah and described him as “an important anti-colonial figure who defeated Zionist and imperialist armies multiple times.” Earlier this year, Ávila attended Nasrallah’s funeral in Beirut – a massive demonstration attended by tens of thousands of people chanting “Death to Israel” and “Death to America.” Ávila was impressed, writing: “Today I saw thousands of new freedom fighters.”

As a reminder, it’s worth noting that Hezbollah is a militant Shia Muslim organization allied with Iran, Russia, North Korea, and Shia militias in Iraq. It is designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union, and is responsible for numerous terror attacks and kidnappings around the world – financed by Iran’s Islamist regime and the narcotics trade.

But it seems Ávila is not loyal to only one terrorist organization. In a photo, he is seen posing next to convicted PFLP terrorist Leila Khaled, with a green heart emoji and a Palestinian flag. The caption reads: “Today I met one of the people I admire most in the entire world.” Khaled’s notoriety, it should be remembered, is not based on “human dignity and the power of nonviolent action,” but on her involvement in the hijackings of TWA Flight 840 and El Al Flight 219 in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Another member of the GSF steering committee is Muhammad Nadir Al-Nuri Kamaruzaman, head of the GSF Southeast Asia coalition. He is also the founder of the Malaysian organization MyAqsa Defenders and CEO of the NGO Cinta Gaza Malaysia. Both organizations have expressed support for Hamas and have been linked to financing Hamas-run infrastructure in Gaza. Among other things, Cinta Gaza has published an e-book glorifying Yahya Ayyash, known as Hamas’s top bombmaker and responsible for numerous mass-casualty attacks in Israel during the 1990s. MyAqsa Defenders has also hosted a livestream event with Muslim Imran, whose name has appeared on Hamas channels as an official Hamas spokesperson.

Despite this information being openly and proudly published by those involved, neither Greta Thunberg nor Lorena Delgado Varas have been publicly questioned in Sweden for their participation in what clearly appears to be a well-organized, international operation with strong ties to terrorist groups. Sure – as citizens of a democratic country, they have every right to take part in whatever Mediterranean adventures they choose. But when those journeys are part of a network led by individuals with proven links to organizations responsible for massacres of civilians, there is a responsibility to investigate, question, and report.

It seems that behind the flowery rhetoric about human rights, humanitarian aid, and nonviolence hides a movement whose leadership praises antisemitic, religiously fanatical, chauvinistic, and ultranationalist violent actors. By participating in this initiative, Thunberg and Delgado Varas help legitimize forces that threaten democracy, gender equality, freedom of expression, and the very idea of a peaceful civil society. Despite their public image as champions of justice and solidarity, the facts suggest something quite different — in reality, Thunberg and Delgado Varas are supporting right-wing extremists.