A group of Israeli teenagers was attacked early Wednesday by a gang of anti-Israel assailants while vacationing on the Greek island of Rhodes, the teens and their families said.
The teens told Hebrew media they were at the island’s Hakuna Matata club, frequented by Israeli tourists, around 3 a.m., when anti-Israel demonstrators started rallying outside, sparking a confrontation, with the two sides shouting and cursing at each other.
“There was commotion and shouting, and we said we didn’t want to get involved and we should go back to the apartment we’d rented,” one of the teens, Shachar Gutman, recalled to the Ynet news site.
The teen said that as he and his friends were leaving the club, they happened upon some more of the pro-Palestinian demonstrators, “and one of them came up to us and asked if we were Israeli.”
“He called out to all his friends — some 30 to 40 people — and they started to chase us. We also started to run, and we didn’t think it was anything serious,” he recalled.
“At one point there was a curve in the road and we didn’t see them for a second — but then we heard motorcycles coming fast in our direction, and we realized there was nowhere to run.”
Friedman told Ynet the assailants were armed with knives, and added: “I jumped up over a wall that I saw and hid there, and another friend saw steps and hid there. Another one hid behind a bush and another one behind a van. They came and kicked the one who was behind the van, and he begged for his life, that they wouldn’t do anything to him. They photographed him and let him go.”
“I’ve never been so afraid in my life. We just wanted to go to a club to have fun, and suddenly people with knives were chasing us. We were afraid it would end in a really bad way,” he said.
Correspondence between Friedman and his parents in Israel, published by the news site, showed texts reading: “Urgent; answer; urgent; they’re coming for us.” The teen hid, and spoke briefly with his parents, who phoned the Foreign Ministry.
According to Channel 12, one of the teens caught in the assault was let go by the assailants after speaking some Dutch and convincing them he wasn’t Israeli.
The 3 a.m. incident in Rhodes came less than a day after an Israeli-owned cruise ship was prevented from docking at the Greek island of Syros on Tuesday and was instead rerouted to Cyprus due to a large anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian protest taking place at the port.
Greece is a popular tourist destination for Israelis, and an estimated 621,000 visited the Hellenic Republic in 2024.
The country has seen a rise in antisemitic and anti-Israel incidents since the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led onslaught in southern Israel that started the war in Gaza.
Athens in particular has seen several attacks on Israeli tourists.
The Israeli National Security Council’s current guidelines for travel to Greece put the country’s threat level at two of a possible four, meaning Israelis and Jews are advised to take “increased precautionary measures” there.