Greta K. Berlin (born April 6, 1941) is an American
Anti-Zionist
Anti-Zionism is opposition to Zionism. Although anti-Zionism is a heterogeneous phenomenon, all its proponents agree that the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, and the movement to create a sovereign Jewish state in the Palestine (region) ...
activist. She has been a spokesperson for the
Free Gaza Movement
The Free Gaza Movement (FGM) is a coalition of human rights activists and pro-Palestinian groups formed to break Egypt and Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip and publicise the situation of the Palestinians there. FGM has challenged the Blockad ...
(FGM), which she co-founded in 2006.
Biography
Berlin was born Greta Anne Hughes on April 6, 1941, in
Detroit
Detroit ( , ) is the List of municipalities in Michigan, most populous city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is situated on the bank of the Detroit River across from Windsor, Ontario. It had a population of 639,111 at the 2020 United State ...
,
Michigan
Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...
, the oldest of four children of Arthur George Hughes and Barbara Esther Whan Hughes. She graduated from
Culver Military Academy
Culver Academies is a college preparatory boarding school in Culver, Indiana, which is composed of three entities: Culver Military Academy (CMA) for boys, Culver Girls Academy (CGA), and the Culver Summer Schools and Camps (CSSC). Culver Milita ...
in Culver, Indiana, one of the first two girls to do so.
Upon entering graduate school at the
University of Illinois
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, U of I, Illinois, or University of Illinois) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, Illinois, United ...
in 1963, Greta met her first husband, Ribhi, who is a
Palestinian refugee
Palestinian refugees are citizens of Mandatory Palestine, and their descendants, who fled or were expelled from their country, village or house over the course of the 1948 Palestine war and during the 1967 Six-Day War. Most Palestinian refug ...
from
Safed
Safed (), also known as Tzfat (), is a city in the Northern District (Israel), Northern District of Israel. Located at an elevation of up to , Safed is the highest city in the Galilee and in Israel.
Safed has been identified with (), a fortif ...
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs
The ''Washington Report on Middle East Affairs'' (also known as ''The Washington Report'' and WRMEA) is an American foreign policy magazine that focuses on the Middle East and U.S. policy in the region. She now volunteer teaches English around the world.
Six-Day War
The Six-Day War, also known as the June War, 1967 Arab–Israeli War or Third Arab–Israeli War, was fought between Israel and a coalition of Arab world, Arab states, primarily United Arab Republic, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan from 5 to 10June ...
. She believed that "Israel was driving the Palestinians off their land for the second time in 19 years" and vowed to increase American awareness of the issue. Berlin and her husband started a non-profit charitable organization, Pal Aid International to send medicine and aid to the Palestinians. Berlin told an interviewer that the
Internal Revenue Service
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the revenue service for the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government, which is responsible for collecting Taxation in the United States, U.S. federal taxes and administerin ...
began auditing her husband's company and that the
FBI
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and Federal law enforcement in the United States, its principal federal law enforcement ag ...
began questioning them. She alleged that the
Jewish Defense League
The Jewish Defense League (JDL) is a far-right political organization in the United States and Canada. Its stated goal is to "protect Jews from antisemitism by whatever means necessary"; it has been classified as "right-wing terrorist group" ...
phoned her and she described the caller as saying that "if any passengers were murdered in the airline hijackings that were going on at the time, my children would be killed." She withdrew from her activism for 15 years for the sake of her children.
In 2003, after the death of
Rachel Corrie
Rachel Aliene Corrie (April 10, 1979 – March 16, 2003) was an American nonviolence activist and diarist. She was a member of the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and was active throughout the Israeli-occupied terr ...
Palestinian Territories
The occupied Palestinian territories, also referred to as the Palestinian territories, consist of the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip—two regions of the former Mandate for Palestine, British Mandate for Palestine ...
, working in Bil’in, Jenin, Ramallah, including in the ISM media office. she returned to the occupied West Bank in 2005 to attend the International women in Black conference in Jerusalem
and remain to work in Bil'in for two months She also returned in 2007 to work with the ISM in occupied Hebron.
Free Gaza voyages
In 2006 she co-founded the Free Gaza Movement. and was the major spokesperson for the flotilla involved in the
Gaza flotilla raid
Ships of Gaza flotilla raid, Six civilian ships of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla were raided by Israel on 31 May 2010 in international waters in the Mediterranean Sea. Nine of the flotilla passengers were killed during the raid, with thirty woun ...
on May 31, 2010.
She was one of the primary spokespersons for Freedom Flotilla 1, a coalition of initiatives put together by Free Gaza to sail a flotilla of boats into Gaza after the ''Dignity'' and the ''Spirit of Humanity'' had been stopped by Israeli naval vessels.
She continues to criticize Israel's blockade of Gaza, and claims it is unlawful, that it has persisted for decades and that one of the reasons Israel is illegally blockading Gaza is because it's busy "stealing the natural gas of Gaza."
Greta Berlin calls Israel an "illegal entity" and "a country founded on terrorism" and believes that Congress is "occupied by the Israeli lobby."
''Freedom Sailors''
Berlin is the co-author and co-editor of the 2012 book, ''Freedom Sailors, The Maiden Voyage of the Free Gaza movement and How We Succeeded in Spite of Ourselves''. After her retirement in 2017, Berlin began volunteer teaching English as a second language in Iraq, Morocco and Spain and continues to teach there.
Controversy
In 2012, Berlin was accused of
antisemitism
Antisemitism or Jew-hatred is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who harbours it is called an antisemite. Whether antisemitism is considered a form of racism depends on the school of thought. Antisemi ...
following a tweet, originating from her Facebook account, and published under the Twitter account of the Free Gaza Movement. The tweet, written by someone else, was titled, "Zionists operated the concentration camps and helped murder millions of innocent Jews" and contained a link to a video of that name, a speech by
conspiracy theorist
A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that asserts the existence of a conspiracy (generally by powerful sinister groups, often political in motivation), when other explanations are more probable.Additional sources:
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Eustace Mullins
Eustace Clarence Mullins Jr. (March 9, 1923 – February 2, 2010) was an American white supremacist, antisemitic conspiracy theorist, propagandist, Holocaust denier, and writer. A disciple of the poet Ezra Pound,
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asserting that Zionists collaborated with the Nazis. The Free Gaza Movement later deleted the tweet. Berlin apologized once the post became known to a wider audience. She declared that she had "shared it without watching it."
She said she merely intended to post the video and comment in a private Facebook group where she had been participating in a discussion of similar propaganda.
Larry Derfner
Larry is a masculine given name in English, derived from Lawrence or Laurence. It can be a shortened form of those names.
Larry may refer to the following:
People Arts and entertainment
* Larry D. Alexander, American artist/writer
* Larry Bo ...
published a statement by sixteen people stating that "ours is a small and secret Facebook group, 37 members strong" and that one of the topics the group had been discussing was "the role of the Zionist movement during the Holocaust" when Berlin posted her remarks. The statement explained that in this context Berlin's post was aimed at highlighting that "anti-Semitic remarks have exaggerated and distorted" the arguments of historians on this topic.