Patrick Lawrence: Against Chutzpah

The Israeli prison guards who tormented Greta Thunberg and her colleagues on the Global Sumud Flotilla knew the world was watching and wanted the world to watch.

By Patrick Lawrence 
ScheerPost

I have been reading a lot these past days about how the Israelis treated those they detained when they illegally boarded the vessels that comprised the now-famous aid flotilla that never made it to Gaza’s shores.

The Irish — naturally, given their bitter familiarity with imperial aggressions — gave fulsome accounts of the gratuitous brutality they endured while in Ktzi’ot Prison. Barry Heneghan, a member of the Dáil, the lower house of the Irish legislature, reported afterward that he was “treated like an animal.” Liam Cunningham and Tadhg Hickey, actors and activists, described how they were kicked, spat upon, slapped, zip-tied and left in the beating Negev Desert sun.

And then there is the account of her detention Greta Thunberg gave on Oct. 15 to Lisa Röstlund, a reporter for Aftonbladet, a Stockholm daily. This comes to me via Caitlin Johnstone, that Australian force of nature, who published machine-translated extracts in her newsletter the same day Röstlund’s interview with the courageous Swedish activist came out. I had already read of the dehydration, the purposely foul prison food, the bedbugs, the refusal of medical care. Now Thunberg gives the world a long list of “monstrous abuses” —  Johnstone’s summarizing phrase — that is beyond infra dig.

Dragged by her hair, incessantly punched and kicked, stripped naked, wrapped in an Israeli flag, sexually humiliated in her own language (lilla hora, “little whore;” hora Greta, “Greta whore”), threatened with gassing (revealing detail, this), uniformed guards all the while taking “selfie” photographs as they stand next to her laughing and jeering: What is this about, what the purpose here?

“They’re like 4-year-olds!” Thunberg exclaimed to Röstlund as she recounted all this. No, that’s not it, Greta. They’re like Zionists.

Public Display 

As I read Thunberg’s account of her surely criminal mistreatment, my mind went to what may seem the unlikeliest places. I thought of that racist rampage Zionist spectators set themselves upon when they were in Amsterdam a year ago next month to cheer on Maccabi Tel Aviv, an Israeli soccer club, as it faced off with Ajax. (The famous Dutch side trounced Maccabi, 5–0.) And then I thought of Bibi Netanyahu, who has the habit of boasting that he can control the United States and, lately and more specifically, Donald Trump.

Al Jazeera reported on this 15 years ago. Max Blumenthal has more recently published various analyses to this effect in The Grayzone. And then I thought of all the terror Israeli soldiers and pilots have inflicted in plain view on the Palestinians of Gaza.

I described the treatment of Greta Thunberg and the other aid flotilla sailors detained at Ktzi’ot as “gratuitous brutality.” I take this back. There was nothing gratuitous in the conduct of Israeli prison guards in that case. Neither was there anything gratuitous about the frenzied riot of Israeli spectators in Amsterdam last Nov. 8 and in days following. Nor in the Israeli prime minister’s more or less public boasts of the power he exerts over the White House. Nor, for that matter, in the stomach-turning spectacle of Israeli soldiers taking delight in their crimes against Gazans.

No, there is a public-display dimension to all of these cases of overreach and barbarism. The conduct of Zionists is meant to be seen — the more unacceptable it may be to civilized sensibilities the more this seems to be so. Those who tormented Greta Thunberg and her colleagues knew the world was watching and wanted the world to watch. When Maccabi spectators ran amok through Amsterdam’s streets shouting “Kill the Arabs,” “Fuck you, Palestine,” “There are no schools in Gaza because there are no children left,” “Let the IDF fuck the Arabs” and other such niceties, they wanted the world to hear them.

So far as I understand the term, these are examples — extreme cases, surely, but cases nonetheless — of what was known in ancient Hebrew as khátaf, later coming out in Yiddish as khutspe and then entered English (apparently in the late 19^th century, just as the Zionist movement gained momentum) as chutzpah. This term describes a certain kind of conduct toward others and has lots of different definitions. Those possessed of chutzpah are variously impudent, brazen, audacious, abusive or, as the saying goes, have a lot of gall. Arrogance and the presumption of superiority are implicit in the term.

Noa Avishag Schnall — @noavi on IG — a photojournalist who reported from the Conscience for @DropSiteNews, has been released from Israeli detention.

Here she is just before her illegal abduction in international waters, and here she is after she was treated viciously in… pic.twitter.com/9PrH4et7eb

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) October 13, 2025

“I was hung from the metal shackles on my wrists and ankles and beaten on my stomach, back, face, ear, and skull by a group of men and women guards, one of whom sat on my neck and face, blocking my airways.”

Noa Avishag Schnall, a Jewish photojournalist who reported from the… pic.twitter.com/nfH05Zs0CQ

— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) October 13, 2025

I will add another connotation for the sake of my point, although I think it holds up well beyond my point. To display one’s chutzpah is to display one’s impunity. By this I mean the person of chutzpah is indifferent to norms. And, just as there is no point to chutzpah if no one can see it — of what use would that be? — the implication here is that one’s impunity must be perfectly evident to all others and the person of chutzpah must be indifferent to what all others may think.

In history chutzpah has been variously cast as an admirable trait in the mode of “gotta be me,” and alternatively as an odious disregard for others. I have always been of the latter persuasion. I find chutzpah in any manifestation — whether it is a case of table manners, the conduct of public discourse, or any other small thing — repellent. It is one thing to liberate oneself from deadening orthodoxies. It is altogether another to hold oneself, garishly and abusively, above others.

There are many ways to think about what the Zionist regime has done these past two years, or about what prison guards did to Greta Thunberg, or how Israeli soccer fans behaved in Amsterdam or how Bibi shows off his power over the United States. There is history, there is politics, there is geopolitics, there is the inherent insecurity of a small nation in a region hostile to it since the violence associated with its founding. There is no dismissing any of this.

Flaunting Impunity

But I have been convinced these past two years that something larger is at issue. Israel proposes to live and act in the community of nations, I mean to say, not according to law or what we know as morality or common forms of decency but according to what amounts to a biblically authorized project of subjugation and domination in the name of a righteous presumption of superiority. And with Zionist-nationalist fanatics now in control of the country’s direction, Israel has chosen this moment to insist that the world beyond its borders swallow this project as legitimate in the 21^st century.

This is the ultimate in chutzpah, in my interpretation, and as a psychological and characterological question we ought to understand it as such. This phenomenon cannot be understood as distinct from Israel’s idea of itself as exceptional and as the earthly expression of a chosen people. What we know as chutzpah reflects both.

In this connection, the events in Amsterdam a year ago confirmed for me what had been until then an inchoate judgment. As I wrote at the time (in the above-linked piece) of the Israeli soccer hooligans and the vigorous local demonstrations against them:

“They were effectively an attempt to transport the extreme to which Israel has taken a premodern, even primitive ideology into a modern milieu and tell the world it must accept it.

This is what makes the mess in Amsterdam significant. And it is why it is important that it turned out to be, indeed, a mess.”

To bring the thought up to date, I view all the massive protests against Israel’s barbarous behavior, mostly but not only in Europe, as of like importance. May there be many more of them.

Ditto the recent decision of Prabowo Subianto, Indonesia’s president, to refuse visas to Israeli gymnasts who had planned to compete in a championship event in Jakarta Oct. 19–25. Ditto again the announcement Thursday that Israeli spectators will be barred from attending a match on Nov. 6 between Maacabi Tel Aviv and Aston Villa, another English soccer club.

These are acts of refusal, acts of rejection in response to Israel’s genocide, yes. They are also replies to Israel’s utter indifference to law and the norms of humanity in the name of ancient barbarities — to chutzpah on a national scale, the ultimate in chutzpah.

Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, lecturer and author, most recently of Journalists and Their Shadows, available from Clarity Press or via Amazon.  Other books include Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. His Twitter account, @thefloutist, has been permanently censored.

TO MY READERS. Independent publications and those who write for them reach a moment that is difficult and full of promise all at once. On one hand, we assume ever greater responsibilities in the face of mainstream media’s mounting derelictions. On the other, we have found no sustaining revenue model and so must turn directly to our readers for support. I am committed to independent journalism for the duration: I see no other future for American media. But the path grows steeper, and as it does I need your help. This grows urgent now. In recognition of the commitment to independent journalism, please subscribe to The Floutist, or via my Patreon account.

This article is from ScheerPost.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.