https://amsterdam.hostmaster.org/articles/vueling_incident_was_not_antisemitism/en.html
On July 23, 2025, at Manises Airport in Valencia, Spain, approximately 50 Jewish children and teens, aged 10 to 15, were removed from a Vueling Airlines flight bound for Paris. According to immediate reports from Israeli and Jewish media outlets, the group had simply been singing Hebrew songs before takeoff when they were suddenly and unfairly ejected. Israel’s Minister of Diaspora Affairs, Amichai Chikli, quickly labeled the event a “severe antisemitic incident,” triggering a wave of outrage across Zionist-aligned platforms.
But Vueling Airlines and Spanish authorities told a different story - one not of religious discrimination, but of repeated, dangerous noncompliance with aviation safety laws. Far from being a simple misunderstanding over cultural expression, this incident reveals a disturbing pattern: the strategic weaponization of antisemitism allegations to deflect attention from misconduct, silence criticism, and reinforce a narrative of Jewish victimhood even in the face of credible allegations of racist, possibly genocidal behavior.
According to two detailed statements released by Vueling Airlines on July 24 and 25, the group engaged in what was described as “highly disruptive behavior,” including:
The airline’s crew escalated the situation to the flight deck, and under EU Regulation CAT.GEN.MPA.105(a)(4) - which grants the captain authority to remove any passenger compromising safety - the decision was made to disembark the group. The Spanish Civil Guard enforced the removal.
Crucially, the 21-year-old youth camp director accompanying the children was arrested, handcuffed, and charged with resisting authority. Notably, Spanish authorities - who routinely overlook minor misbehavior from tourists and young passengers - acted with force and initiated formal proceedings.
Vueling emphasized that religion or language played no role in the decision, and no evidence has since emerged contradicting this claim.
Unverified, but widely circulated social media posts and passenger testimonies allege that the group did not merely sing Hebrew songs - but chanted explicitly racist slogans such as “Death to Arabs” and “May their villages burn.” One passenger claimed the group spat at another traveler who expressed support for Palestine.
If even partially true, these statements constitute hate speech. And under Article III of the Genocide Convention, to which Spain is a party, direct and public incitement to commit genocide is a prosecutable offense. Spanish authorities would have been obligated to act.
Here’s the uncomfortable reality: law enforcement does not handcuff a youth group director over a noisy flight or an inflated life vest. But it does act swiftly when confronted with credible accusations of racist incitement, especially on public transportation involving international passengers. While these allegations remain unverified, their plausibility - and the proportionality of the response - suggests that Spanish police responded to more than mere misconduct.
From the beginning, Zionist-aligned media and officials pushed a single, emotionally resonant story: Jewish children were punished for singing in Hebrew. This narrative swiftly drowned out the facts, including:
Even as Vueling and Guardia Civil issued detailed, measured explanations, prominent figures insisted on framing the event as a religious hate crime. But they refused to explain why Spanish police would detain someone for singing. The story only holds if you deliberately omit the behavioral context - and that omission is not accidental. It is strategic.
The transformation of a disciplinary incident into an international antisemitism scandal is not an isolated episode - it is a method. Zionist discourse has long depended on emphasizing Jewish victimhood while omitting the political or behavioral context that may have provoked a reaction. This tactic works not by proving discrimination, but by triggering a moral panic: any challenge to Jewish actors must be rooted in antisemitism.
We saw this pattern on a vastly larger scale following the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack, where the murder of 1,200 Israelis and abduction of 250 was met with global horror - while the structural violence that preceded it was erased. The mass detentions of Palestinians, the deadliest year on record for Palestinian children in the West Bank, and the violent expansion of illegal settlements were swept aside to keep the moral spotlight fixed squarely on Israel’s suffering.
The result: narrative asymmetry. One side is portrayed as eternal victims, the other as inexplicable aggressors - even when responding to decades of occupation, dispossession, and apartheid.
It’s uncomfortable to say, but necessary: children can participate in racist and genocidal rhetoric. We have seen it in settler schools, in ultra-nationalist camps, and in Israeli military ceremonies. If the Vueling passengers truly chanted for the death of Arabs or the destruction of their villages, their age does not absolve the moral or legal gravity of that act.
Rather than shielding them with a narrative of innocence, such incidents should force reflection: What kind of ideological training leads children to chant ethnic violence on a commercial airplane? And why is that question considered offensive, but the false charge of antisemitism is not?
The Vueling Airlines incident is not a mystery - it’s a case study in how Zionist officials and media weaponize the charge of antisemitism to shield themselves from accountability. The documented safety violations, the proportionate response from crew and law enforcement, and the arrest of the group’s leader all suggest this was not a case of discrimination, but one of grave misconduct - possibly of a racist and criminal nature.
What followed was a familiar distortion: Zionist outrage decoupled from evidence, deployed to recenter Jewish victimhood and suppress scrutiny.
If truth matters, we must resist false balance. If justice matters, we must refuse to treat fact and fiction as equal. And if we care about ending real antisemitism and real racism, we must start by calling this incident what it was: an attempt to turn accountability into persecution through the power of narrative manipulation.