A group of 47 Jewish children and teenagers from France was forcibly removed from the flight of the budget airline "Buelin" 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 of Spanish Valencia, where a group of children aged 10 to 15 years were returning from a Jewish summer camp to France. According to eyewitnesses, teenagers already on the plane began to sing songs in Hebrew, waiting for the plane to take off. The crew asked them to stop, but the situation quickly escalated when the police were called to the scene.
On the video that appeared in On the Internet, the moment is captured 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 ignored 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 taken 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 clothes — 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 "Buelin" denied these allegations in its statement, noting that a group of young people continued to behave "aggressively" at the airport.
The Spanish authorities called the reason for the expulsion of the group "violation of public order", without providing details. The children and their guardians were stuck at Valencia airport, where a local Jewish organization provided them with food and accommodation. Israeli Diaspora Affairs Minister Amihai Chikli called the incident "one of the most disturbing manifestations of anti-Semitism in recent years."
According to the media, the young people who were thrown out of the plane came from several districts and suburbs of Paris, where the middle class mainly lives.