A group of 47 Jewish children and teenagers from France were forcibly removed from a flight of budget airline Vueling in Valencia after they started singing songs in Hebrew. The incident caused international outrage and accusations of anti-Semitism.
The incident occurred at the airport in Valencia, Spain, where a group of children between the ages of 10 and 15 were returning from a Jewish summer camp in France. According to eyewitnesses, the teenagers had already started singing songs in Hebrew on the plane, waiting for the plane to take off. The crew asked them to stop, but the situation quickly escalated when police were called to the scene.
The video, which appeared on the Internet, captures the moment when the officers board the plane and order the group to leave it. According to police, the pilot of the plane requested assistance at the airport because he believed that the safety of passengers was at risk. The Civil Guard told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper that the minors were playing with emergency rescue equipment and ignoring the crew’s safety instructions.
The 21-year-old counselor was generally detained by the police after she tried to intervene when the police demanded that the children turn off their phones, presumably to prevent them from recording what was happening. She was handcuffed and escorted off the plane, and then released after signing a confidentiality agreement.
Parents and representatives of the Jewish community expressed outrage, calling the incident “a blatant act of anti-Semitic discrimination.”
“The children are traumatized. It’s like a scene from another era! They were attacked simply for expressing their culture,” said Karin Lamy, the mother of one of the camp participants.
The children were dressed in traditional Jewish clothing — tzitzit and necklaces with a star of David. According to some reports, the crew members also made offensive statements, including calling Israel a “terrorist state.” However, the airline Vueling denied these allegations in a statement, noting that a group of young people continued to behave “aggressively” at the airport.
The Spanish authorities cited a “violation of public order” as the reason for the group’s expulsion, without providing details. The children and their guardians were stuck at the Valencia airport, where a local Jewish organization provided them with food and shelter. Israel’s Minister of Diaspora Affairs, Amihai Chikli, called the incident “one of the most disturbing manifestations of anti-Semitism in recent years.”
According to media reports, the young people who were thrown off the plane came from several districts and suburbs of Paris, where the middle class mainly lives.
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