More than 50 Jewish Children Removed from Flight in Spain for Singing in Hebrew

Chikli was commenting on a video that shows a young woman lying face down on what appears to be a boarding bridge, as one Spanish police officer handcuffs her and another instructs the person filming to move away.

Chikli identified the woman as an instructor of the Kineret Club, a summer camp operated for Jewish families by the Matana charitable association.

The i24 News television channel reported that the members of the group of 52 youths were aged 13-15. For that age group, Kineret Club arranged a summer camp that ended on Wednesday at Sant Carlès de la Rapita, a coastal resort city situated between Valencia and Barcelona.

A mother of one of the vacationers, Karine Lamy, told i24 that the children sang in Hebrew in the airplane until the flight crew told them to stop and threatened to call the police if they persisted. The children stopped but the police arrested the instructor and told them to exit the airplane. Some of the children were still at the airport of Valencia on Wednesday evening, awaiting an alternative flight back to France, i24 reported.

Caroline Yadan, a French lawmaker who represents French voters living in Israel and several other Mediterranean countries in the French parliament, wrote on X that if the claims about how Vueling handled the flight were accurate, then the airline “should have to answer in court” for its “very serious” actions.

Vueling had not replied to a request for comment by time of publication.

Enfoque Judio, a Spanish-Jewish news site, reported that according to some accounts, the instructor was arrested after she objected to the police’s demand that the students give up their phones. 

The incident follows several cases in which Israelis were harassed, intimidated and even assaulted in Spain.

On July 8, Israeli tourists were chased out of a restaurant in the Spanish city of Vigo, and last week a different group of Israelis said they had been followed and intimidated outside their hotel near Barcelona.

A group of men had stalked the three Israeli tourists, who said they were threatened several times during their vacation until, at a certain encounter, the perpetrators, armed with sticks, chased the Israelis on the street in Lloret de Mar, the Israelis said. The tourists made it back to their hotel safely, Israel’s Channel 12 News reported. 

Earlier this month, Spain’s Observatory against Antisemitism—an entity co-founded by the country’s Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain (FCJE)—published its annual report for 2024, in which it documented 193 incidents—a record tally that constitutes a 321% increase over 2023 and an increase of 567% over 2022.

Most of these acts documented were linked to the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, the report said.