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Pro-Palestinian Flags Seen At Climate Protests

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November 9, 2021
Protestors attend the Fridays For Future COP26 Scotland March on November 5, 2021 in Glasgow, Scotland. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

Pro-Palestinian flags and signs were spotted at various protests for action against climate change on November 6.

The protests were held in response to the COP26Summit, which global leaders have been attending since October 31 in Glasgow, Scotland to discuss climate change. In London, various protesters held Palestinian flags while chanting “Free Palestine” and “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free.”

Writer Emily Schrader tweeted out a video of various protesters holding Palestinian flags at the protest in Glasgow and wrote: “Once again, Palestinian protesters hijack a cause that has absolutely nothing to do with them and [make] it about themselves.”

One video showed a man confronting a handful of women at one of the protests on why they were holding Palestinian flags. One woman who was holding a megaphone replied that Israel is a “climate issue” because “imperialism is a climate issue” and accused Israel of “destroying the environment.” When the man countered that Israel is at the forefront of planting more trees, the women started talking over him; the woman with a megaphone started chanting “F— your Zionist narrative” and another claimed that the trees had nothing to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Fiona Ben Chekroun, European Coordinator for the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) National Committee, attended the Glasgow protest and told the Peoples Dispatch that Israel is engaging “greenwashing.” “They are using Palestinian natural resources, destroying Palestinian land, violating rights of indigenous Palestinian people, they are extracting gas and natural resources from Palestine, and all of this with the complicity of European governments and the European Union,” she alleged.

Various pro-Israel Twitter accounts responded to the pro-Palestinian protesters.

“Guess the quota of global CO2 emissions Israel is responsible for? 0.18%,” Scottish journalist and pro-Israel activist Eve Barlow tweeted. “I just looked it up. One thing has nothing to do with the other. These people are antisemites.”

[/speaker-mute] Writer and activist Yoni Michanie tweeted, “Other than tearing down dozens of greenhouses and celebrating the incendiary kites and balloons that have damaged farmlands and nature reserves, as well as burning tires for days on end, what have Palestinian leaders contributed to the fight against climate change?”

The New Zionist Congress tweeted, “Pay attention to how many doors are closing. We can’t be ‘Zionist’ and LGBT, we can’t be ‘Zionist’ and support DC Statehood, we can’t be ‘Zionist’ and combat climate change, we can’t be ‘Zionist’ and support racial justice. Jews must speak out against this familiar evil.”

StandWithUs Israel Executive Director Michael Dickson also tweeted, “The only thing these ‘activists’ want to rid the climate of, is Jews.”

Human rights lawyer Arsen Ostrovsky, who heads the International Legal Forum, tweeted, “And how much hot air produced by these antisemites? 100 per cent.”

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