It was 4:36 a.m. when Orit Gutman’s cellphone pinged in Israel with the type of textual content message no mom desires to obtain.
“Choose up. It’s pressing. They’re chasing us,” her son, Shahar, 17, wrote final month on the household WhatsApp group from the Greek island of Rhodes. A minute later, an replace: “I’m hiding. I don’t know the place the others are. I jumped over some wall.”
Shahar, who was on trip with 5 different teenagers, had ended up in certainly one of a sequence of hostile encounters between Palestinian supporters and Israelis touring in Europe this summer time towards the backdrop of the Gaza struggle.
Sympathy for Israel ran excessive within the preliminary aftermath of the Hamas-led assault of Oct. 7, 2023, by which about 1,200 individuals had been killed and one other 250 had been taken hostage, in keeping with the Israeli authorities, making it the deadliest single day for Jews for the reason that Holocaust.
However the good will quickly dissipated as Israel prosecuted its fierce counteroffensive in Gaza, now approaching the two-year mark and with greater than 60,000 Palestinians killed, in keeping with Gaza well being officers, whose tally doesn’t distinguish between combatants and civilians. Journey for Israelis has turn into more and more uncomfortable within the charged environment fanned by photographs from Gaza of devastation and starvation following an Israeli blockade, and amid a diplomatic backlash from a few of Israel’s closest European allies.
Three distinguished classical musicians had been kicked out of a pizzeria in Vienna for talking Hebrew. A celeb Israeli D.J. often known as Skazi was barred from showing at Tomorrowland, a significant digital dance music competition in Belgium, after two Israeli festivalgoers had been flagged by a pro-Palestinian activist group as potential struggle criminals and had been questioned by the Belgian police. An air visitors controller radioed “Free Palestine” to the cockpit of a passenger airplane of El Al, Israel’s nationwide provider, shortly after it took off from Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris earlier this month. And Israel’s nationwide soccer workforce coach was just lately shoved by a passerby shouting, “Free Palestine!” in Athens, Greece, in keeping with his spokesman.
The harassment of Israelis in close by Greece has come as a impolite shock. Israelis flock to Greece annually, and plenty of contemplate it a type of house away from house. About 40 flights had been scheduled to fly from Tel Aviv to varied Greek locations throughout the span of 24 hours one weekday this month, in keeping with Ben Gurion Airport’s departures board.
In a recent survey by the Israel Democracy Institute, an unbiased analysis group, greater than half the respondents mentioned the stories of rising antisemitism and harassment of Israelis overseas had been affecting their journey plans, from their selection of vacation spot to the choice to journey in any respect.
In Greece, pro-Palestinian activists held a day of motion on Aug. 10. 1000’s rallied peacefully in Athens, and smaller protests befell in different metropolis squares and on the islands. Banners learn “Not in our identify,” and “Cease the Genocide.”
Native unions had already organized pro-Palestinian protests on the docks of common islands to discourage Israeli cruise ship passengers from disembarking. A kind of protests pressured an Israeli cruise ship, the Crown Iris, carrying a whole bunch of passengers, to show again from the island of Syros with out touchdown. When the identical boat arrived in Crete, protesters on the marina facet clashed with riot cops who used tear fuel.
Israel’s ambassador to Greece, Noam Katz, argued publicly with the mayor of Athens, accusing him of not doing sufficient to make Israelis really feel protected and failing to clear town of anti-Israeli graffiti. Mr. Katz described slogans like “Kill Zionists, Save Lives” as antisemitic and an “incitement to motion.”
The mayor, Haris Doukas, responded in a pointy social media post that town authority doesn’t “settle for classes in democracy from those that kill civilians and youngsters” in Gaza and that it “totally respects its guests and helps the proper to free expression of its residents.” He added that town does take away such graffiti.
Nonetheless, many Israeli vacationers have loved peaceable and uneventful holidays, and plenty of Greek officers and businesspeople have gone out of their technique to supply hospitality.
Pavlos Marinakis, the spokesman for the Greek authorities, referred to as the occasions in Syros “outrageous,” including that “antisemitism and some other type of fascism and racism won’t be tolerated.”
When the Crown Iris reached Rhodes, merchants got here to the port to welcome the passengers. The police stored a small protest at a distance, scuffled with a number of of the activists and made eight arrests.
“We welcome our associates, the Israelis, who’ve been visiting and supporting our island for years,” mentioned Michalis Zisimatos, the spokesman for the native affiliation of restaurateurs and associated companies. “We love them they usually love us,” he added.
However for Shahar Gutman and his associates, an in any other case enjoyable trip led to concern when, on their final night time in Rhodes they went to a membership common with Israelis, Ms. Gutman, his mom, mentioned in an interview.
One other group of Israelis on the membership had gotten into an argument with a dozen or so males, in keeping with Ms. Gutman. The altercation began with the Israelis chanting pro-Israeli slogans and the opposite group of patrons responding with pro-Palestinian chants, the Greek police mentioned.
Ms. Gutman insisted that Shahar and his associates performed no half within the slanging match, a declare that might not be independently verified. However once they left the membership, she mentioned, the pro-Palestinians, who appeared to talk a language aside from Greek, pursued them and, she mentioned, beat a few of them.
Later, the police got here to the teenagers’ condominium and questioned them, in keeping with Ms. Gutman. A police spokeswoman, Constantina Dimoglidou, mentioned the police investigation pointed to a verbal change and mentioned there have been no accidents. She mentioned the nationality of the pro-Palestinians remained unclear. The following day, Shahar and his associates received on their scheduled flight again to Israel.
Israelis, and particularly troopers, who’re touring overseas have been suggested by their authorities to keep away from conspicuous indicators of “Israeliness” and to not submit their whereabouts in actual time on social media. Passengers from the Crown Iris described on Israeli tv how they’d turned their T-shirts inside out to cover Israeli logos and mentioned they might determine, if requested, as Spanish or Italian.
Some defiantly patriotic Israeli vacationers have wrapped themselves in Israeli flags. The festivalgoers questioned in Belgium had been apparently noticed as a result of they had been carrying the banner of their military unit, in keeping with stories and pictures on social media.
However simply talking Hebrew could be sufficient to elicit an aggressive response.
Shlomo Barzel, the spokesman for Israel’s nationwide soccer workforce, mentioned the chief coach, Ran Ben Shimon, and his assistant, Gal Cohen, had been chatting in Hebrew in central Athens this month when a passerby started shouting at them, then shoved Mr. Ben Shimon.
“There was nothing else overtly Israeli about them,” Mr. Barzel mentioned, including that the passerby was unlikely to have acknowledged them.
In Vienna in late July, the cellist Amit Peled, the violinist Hagai Shaham and the pianist Julia Gurvitch popped right into a pizzeria for a chunk earlier than their live performance. Mr. Peled says he ordered their meals in German, however the waiter needed to know what language they’d been talking between them. When Mr. Peled replied that it was Hebrew, the waiter mentioned he wouldn’t serve them and expelled them.
“The preliminary shock and humiliation had been profound,” Mr. Peled wrote in an Instagram post a day after the occasions. “However what struck us much more deeply was what got here subsequent — or slightly, what didn’t. The individuals round us had been clearly startled, some provided sympathetic glances, after which, quietly, they went again to their dinners, their conversations, their wine — as if nothing had occurred.”
Much more galling, Mr. Peled mentioned in a cellphone interview, was that two of them got here to the live performance after their meal.
Mr. Peled, a professor at Johns Hopkins College in Baltimore, mentioned that he not wears his Star of David necklace on campus, the place the environment is loaded, however retains it in his cello case. Since October 2023, he has proven solidarity with the victims of the Hamas assault onstage with musical tributes and dedications, usually drawing ire.
“Right here,” he mentioned, “I used to be simply ordering pizza.”
The three musicians recounted the occasions in equivalent phrases. However chatting with native Austrian information media, the proprietor of the pizzeria mentioned he had been on the restaurant all that day and denied that it had occurred.
Mr. Shaham, the violinist and a professor at Tel Aviv College, mentioned he was accosted within the Dutch metropolis of Amsterdam final 12 months by a person in a swimsuit who informed him to not dare to talk Hebrew there, calling it “that disgusting language.” In Berlin, he mentioned, Uber drivers would cancel his rides once they noticed his identify.
“As a human,” he mentioned, “I feel now we have to behave humanely.”
Presenting himself as a cultural consultant who doesn’t take a political stance, Mr. Shaham added, “Classical music is the language of Europe.”
Myra Noveck contributed reporting from Jerusalem.
