MILAN
\nSwedish activist Greta Thunberg attended a climate change and pro-Palestinian rally in Milan on Friday, days after her criticism of Israel sparked a row over protests in Germany.
\nMore than 1,000 people, many of them teenagers, joined a peaceful march in the northern Italian city organized by Fridays For Future, the climate change movement Thunberg helped found.
\nWearing a keffiyeh, a traditional scarf symbolising the Palestinian struggle against Israel, Thunberg walked near the front of the procession as other protesters waved flags, held banners and danced to music.
\n\u201cPalestinians have been living under suffocating oppression for decades by an apartheid regime, and during the last year with Israel\u2019s live broadcasted genocide, the world has once again abandoned Palestine,\u201d the 21-year-old said in a speech.
\nThe Gaza war began on October 7 last year, when Hamas militants stormed across the border and carried out the worst attack on Israel in its history.
\nThe militants took 251 people hostage in an attack that resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
\nIsrael\u2019s retaliatory military offensive in Gaza has killed more than 42,000 people, most of them civilians, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run territory\u2019s health ministry. The United Nations has acknowledged the figures to be reliable.
\nThunberg drew a link between global warming and the weapons industry.
\n\u201cThe fight for climate justice is a fight against the fossil fuel industry, just as much as it is a fight against the weapon industries, militarization and the over-extraction of natural resources,\u201d she said.
\nGerman police on Tuesday closed a pro-Palestinian protest camp that had invited Thunberg after a rally she attended in Berlin Monday \u2014 the anniversary of the Hamas attack \u2014 ended in clashes with police.
\nShe accused Germany of \u201csilencing and threatening activists.\u201d
\nThe Milan march was part of a \u201cnational strike for the climate,\u201d a series of protests organized by Fridays For Future across Italy.
\n\u201cDemonstrating is the only weapon we have against the injustice that we suffer,\u201d said protester Sofia Parisi, 17.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MILAN Swedish activist Greta Thunberg attended a climate change and pro-Palestinian rally in Milan on Friday, days after her criticism of Israel sparked a row over protests in Germany. More than 1,000 people, many of them teenagers, joined a peaceful march in the northern Italian city organized by Fridays For Future, the climate change movement […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":436769,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-436743","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n