Greta’s Shameful Libel

In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky’s classic novel of good and evil, we meet Father Ferapont—an old ascetic monk at the same monastery where Alyosha Dostoevsky is a novice.

Ferapont is a “great faster and keeper of silence” who is “brief, curt, strange, and almost always rude.”

Rather than associating with the other monks, he prefers solitude. And while throngs of pious townspeople come daily to seek wisdom and blessings from the monastery’s resident elder, Father Ferapont keeps a careful distance.

This is because he sees things that the other monks cannot.

For instance, as he tells a visitor, on a recent visit to the superior, he saw a devil sitting on a monk’s chest, “hiding under his cassock, with only his little horns sticking out.”

Another monk had a devil “peeking out of his pocket, looking shifty-eyed.”

Yet another monk had a devil “living inside him, in his unclean belly” and there was a fourth monk with a devil “hanging on his neck, clinging to him, and he was carrying him around without even seeing him.”

Where others saw holy men in their robes, Father Ferapont saw corruption and wickedness in the form of grubby, writhing demons. No wonder people thought of him as a killjoy and a crank.

To be Jewish these days is to find oneself in the unfortunate position of Father Ferapont—a witness to evils that those around us cannot—or will not—see.

The rest of the world looks at Swedish activist Greta Thunberg and sees a plucky, youthful heroine—someone utterly dedicated to being “on the right side of history” and fearless in her pursuit of a better world.

Jews see something different.

Shortly before being intercepted by Israel’s navy as she attempted to breach a military blockade with aid for Gazans, Thunberg recorded an appeal to the world:

“If you see this video, we have been intercepted and kidnapped in international waters by the Israeli occupational forces.”

The photos of the confrontation that ensued told a different story. Rather than being kidnapped, the activists aboard the “Freedom Flotilla” were given food and water before being towed to Ashdod and given comped flights back to Europe, excepting those who refused to consent to deportation, who will remain in Israeli custody for few more days.

As for the meager aid they had brought for the people of Gaza, they were assured that it would be transferred to a recognized aid distribution center.

This isn’t what a kidnapping looks like, and anyone who is confused about this is welcome to see for themselves—Hamas was considerate enough to hit “record” on their phones when they massacred their way through southern Israel in October of 2023, dragging hundreds of individuals—men, women, and children—back to Gaza with them.

Some of those individuals, like Hersh Goldberg-Polin, will never return because he was executed by his captors when they discovered that the IDF was drawing near. Others, like Shiri Bibas’ two young children Ariel and Kfir, were killed “by hand” by their captors for reasons that we’ll never know, and would never understand even if we did.

Among those that have survived this kidnapping, some have been returned to Israel, while others still languish in captivity—their fates uncertain.

Greta’s fate was easier to predict—a safe trip home and a hero’s welcome.

And while she continues to claim that she was kidnapped, her mother need not count off the days with numbers scrawled in sharpie on scraps of masking tape. Her father need not take to the streets with a sign beseeching the world to bring her home.

The activists who remain in Israel are calling on the world to demand their release, as if they aren’t the ones who have refused to consent to their own release. This is absurd, but it’s working.

For a lie about Israel to take hold, it need not be convincing. It simply needs to be said. And now that Greta has claimed to be a victim of kidnapping, this libel is going viral on social media—gobbled up and repeated by credulous Israel haters.

The Jewish world has been through quite a lot in the past two years. By all accounts, I ought to be desensitized by now, but Greta’s choice of words struck me, shocked me, filled me with rage, and very nearly pushed me to tears.

I wasn’t alone. Pro-Israel influencer Elica Lebon was also knocked off-center by Greta’s statement. “I have said that nothing surprises me anymore,” she said on Instagram, “but sometimes I stand corrected.”

Perhaps the reason we’re shocked is the fact that this act of cruelty and callousness—playacting “kidnapped” while Israeli hostages still sit in dank Hamas tunnels—was uttered by someone who much of the world regards as a saintly paragon of moral leadership.

If I were not Jewish, I would likely think of her this way as well. As a gay liberal from New England, I would associate her with the fight against climate change and I would regard her work with the Freedom Flotilla in a positive light. If I heard that she had been kidnapped by the Israelis, I would have no reason to disbelieve her.

And it’s not just Greta.

The rest of the world hears the term Red Cross and thinks of virtuous nurses providing care in wartime. Jews, on the other hand, have been forced to confront the shameful antisemitic history of the Red Cross—a legacy which continues to this day. It wasn’t long ago that they shamed hostage families for being inadequately focused on the wellbeing of Palestinians in their activism to rescue their kidnapped loved ones.

The rest of the world hears of UNRWA and imagines an aid organization, educating and feeding the beleaguered Palestinians of Gaza. Jews, on the other hand, know that UNRWA staffers have been systematically involved in Hamas’ crimes against humanity at every level, including participation in the October 7th invasion and holding Israeli hostages in their homes.

The rest of the world thinks of the UN as the great safeguard of postwar cooperation and peace. Jews see something different—a corrupt organization that has been captured by bad actors and repurposed as a tool of diplomatic and legal warfare against the world’s only Jewish state.

To sound the alarm on evils that no one around you can see—or that no one around you is interested in seeing—is a demoralizing enterprise. Greta’s bitter libel will spread while columns like this one will likely be read only by my fellow Jews. No wonder Father Ferapont kept to himself. No wonder he was perpetually in a foul mood.

But it is not the Jewish way to sit around and obsess over demons. Our path is not one of asceticism or retreat from the world, but rather to engage with the world and bless it.

On days like these, this feels like a difficult ask. It is. But while it is not on us to master this work, neither are we free to desist from it.

Matthew Schultz is a Jewish Journal columnist and rabbinical student at Hebrew College. He is the author of the essay collection “What Came Before” (Tupelo, 2020) and lives in Boston and Jerusalem.