Greta Thunberg set off a firestorm on Monday when she shared an Instagram post condemning the “cruelty and dehumanization” of Palestinian prisoners, only to discover that one of the photos she used was not a Palestinian detainee at all, but a gaunt Israeli hostage held by Hamas. Within hours, after the mistake was flagged by the man’s family, the post vanished from her feed, leaving critics to accuse the climate icon of spreading propaganda and supporters to wonder how the blunder slipped through.
The image at the center of the uproar shows 24-year-old Evyatar David, an Israeli abducted from the Nova music festival, skeletal and shirtless, digging what he believed was his own grave in a Hamas tunnel. The footage first surfaced in August as part of a string of hostage videos that drew international outrage and renewed pressure on negotiators to secure releases. News outlets documented David’s condition at the time, noting he appeared severely malnourished as he marked on a wall how long it had been since he had last eaten.
Thunberg’s now-deleted post, which she shared alongside other campaigners, aimed to spotlight alleged abuse of Palestinian prisoners in Israel. Instead, it featured a still of David pulled from the Hamas video, a mismatch that critics pounced on as not just sloppy, but cruel to the hostages’ families. Yaela David, the hostage’s sister, publicly blasted the post and demanded it be removed, calling out what she described as a cynical misuse of her brother’s suffering to score political points. Thunberg removed the image and the entire carousel shortly afterward, though she has not issued a detailed public explanation of how the error happened.
‘Joke’ Greta Thunberg ripped for using emaciated Israeli hostage in post about Palestinian prisoners ‘suffering’ https://t.co/yDZqJ2Yzjz pic.twitter.com/uIaC4Qmdzm
— New York Post (@nypost) October 8, 2025
The blowback arrived from multiple directions. Israel’s Foreign Ministry highlighted the mistake on social platforms, conservative media branded Thunberg reckless, and even some sympathetic commentators said the episode showed the dangers of viral activism that moves faster than verification. Several outlets noted that Thunberg recently drew headlines for her role in the Global Sumud Flotilla, an attempt to reach Gaza by sea that ended with Israel intercepting the boats and deporting more than a hundred activists, a separate controversy that already had her squarely in the political crosshairs.
David’s case has become one of the most visible examples of Hamas’s treatment of captives, with reporting and official statements describing starvation, abuse, and psychological torture. The August videos of emaciated hostages shifted media attention, drawing fresh condemnation from Western governments and hardening Israeli public opinion just as talks over prisoner exchanges and humanitarian access lurched forward. Dropping a frame from that footage into a post about Palestinian prisoners was guaranteed to explode and it did.
For Thunberg, the incident is a reminder that her influence cuts both ways. She can focus global attention with a single social media post, but if the facts fall apart, the backlash can overwhelm the message. Her critics argue the mix-up reveals bias, her defenders counter that it was a bad error in service of a legitimate concern about detention conditions. Either way, the post has renewed calls for caution when using imagery from conflict zones, where propaganda and genuine documentation often sit side by side, and where a single misattributed frame can hijack the narrative for days.
Meanwhile, David’s family and other hostage relatives are still pleading for the world to focus on the captives themselves, not just the politics.
“climate icon.”
I mean seriously, you’ve gotta be kidding.