Wednesday, July 30, 2025
Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.
Imagine you’re a 14-year-old girl, still floating from the final night of Jewish sleepaway camp. You barely slept—you were too busy singing camp songs, exchanging weepy hugs, and saying heartfelt goodbyes. Still, you managed to pack your duffel bag, lug it through security, and board the flight home from Valencia to Paris with your fellow campers.
You’re tired, but your
heart is full. Someone calls out “Lilmod!”—the beginning of a silly chant your
bunk invented—and without even thinking, you shout back: “Mashiach!”
And that’s when everything
changes.
Because two Hebrew words
were spoken, airline staff suddenly see you and your friends not as teenagers
but as Jews and as it turns out, they really, really hate Jews. Things get
ugly. Flight attendants are yelling. Spanish police are called. And you and
your friends are forced off the plane, grabbed by the arms, manhandled. Your
phone is confiscated. All your camp videos—all your selfies—deleted.” Your camp director, a young woman trying to
protect her campers, is beaten, handcuffed, and bloodied in front of your eyes.
All because two Hebrew
words were spoken aloud on a plane.
“She still had bloody
marks, red, bright red, on her wrists, because of the handcuffs. It was
horrible… It’s the worst experience of my whole life.”
— one of the campers, in a viral video explaining the incident.
Jewish Childhood Interrupted
The 44 children from Camp
Kineret, ages 10 to 15, had done nothing wrong. Vueling Airlines claimed they
were “disruptive” and tampered with emergency equipment—but provided no proof.
Meanwhile, a passenger on the flight who had no connection to the camp said the
kids were “calm.” The real crime? Hebrew words. Kippahs. A visible Jewish
identity.
In the aftermath,
Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli reported that airline staff
shouted, “Israel is a terrorist state!” Spain’s Transport Minister referred to
the children as “Israeli brats.”
They were not Israeli.
They were French. And they were Children.
"Hide Who You Are"
Another video—less viral
but just as haunting—shows a young male counselor on a bus speaking to Jewish
campers before they reach the airport. He speaks with authority, but you can
tell he’s scared too: “Take off your kippahs. Hide your tzitzit. Pack away your
Stars of David and anything else Jewish.”
“Don’t give these
antisemites a reason to kick us off the plane,” he pleads.
One small voice responds:
“I have a kippah in my bag… What do I do?”
That shouldn’t sit right with anyone. But it
did—and it will again. Because it always does.
What Does Antisemitism Do to a Child?
We know what antisemitism
looks like: smashed windows, spray-painted swastikas, or the battered
body of a handcuffed Jewish camp director left bleeding on the enclosed walkway
leading from the plane to the terminal.
But what about the damage you can’t see?
According to a 2024 Stanford University study, nearly half of Jewish teens in the U.S. reported high stress or fear linked to antisemitism in the wake of October 7. Many said they’d stopped wearing Jewish symbols in public. Some avoided speaking Hebrew. A few even considered changing their last names—just to feel safe.In the UK, a national survey found that 23% of Jewish schoolchildren had experienced antisemitism either at school or on their commute. These weren’t one-off slurs—they included physical threats, vandalism, and group harassment.
In Australia, researchers interviewed Jewish children who said they’d been called “dirty Jews,” been excluded from class projects, or watched teachers ignore antisemitic jokes. Nearly every single child interviewed had a story.
The research is clear: antisemitism doesn’t just affect Jewish children emotionally—it shapes how they see themselves, how safely they move through the world, and how much of their identity they’re willing to show.
It’s Not Only France
The French campers aren’t alone.
In Staten Island, a seventh-grade Jewish boy walked into school just two weeks after the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. A group of students surrounded him. They pushed him to the ground, kicked him in the leg and the face, and shouted, “F*** Israel.” No teachers intervened. No one asked what happened. He never went back to that school.In London, a bus full of Jewish schoolchildren from the Jewish Free School was ambushed by a gang of ten teens. The attackers hurled large rocks at the vehicle while screaming “F*** Israel.” The younger kids screamed in terror. No one came to help. No arrests were made.
In Rome, an eight-year-old Jewish boy wearing a yarmulke went shopping with his mother. An Egyptian asylum seeker spotted his kippah and attacked him. When the shopkeeper tried to intervene, the man stabbed him in the face with a shard of broken glass. The boy survived. The storekeeper was left disfigured.
In Milan, a six-year-old French Jewish boy, his twelve-year-old brother, and their father were surrounded at a rest stop by twenty men. The mob targeted them for wearing kippahs. They stomped on the father, kicked him in the stomach and legs, and screamed “Free Palestine.” When police finally arrived, they didn’t arrest the attackers. Instead, they told the injured father to “tell Netanyahu to stop bombing Gaza.”
Physically assaulting Jews in Italy!
— Hamas Atrocities (@HamasAtrocities) July 28, 2025
A father and his six year old son, both wearing yarmulkes, were shouted at "free Palestine" and "murderers, go home!" in a restaurant in the Milan area. pic.twitter.com/dQ1hJY2HCj
No child walks away from
such moments unchanged.
A Soul Marked Forever
These are not isolated
events. This is a wave. A sickness. A shadow falling on Jewish childhood.
One moment, you’re proud
of who you are—your Hebrew, your songs, your symbols. The next, an adult tells
you to hide that Jewish star necklace under your shirt, to tuck away your tzitzit,
and pray no one sees you.
And the worst part?
They do notice.
You’re a child. But to
them, the religion you were born into is reason enough to hate you.
Because They Were Jewish
This was no misunderstanding. It was not a noisy group of children on a plane. It wasn’t even a schoolyard squabble.It was plain old antisemitism—ugly, familiar, and completely unbothered by the fact that it was aimed at children.
But the kids will remember. They’ll remember the bruises, the shouting, the violence—
and the silence of the bystanders who watched it happen.
And they’ll remember that the reason no one seemed to care…
was because they were Jewish.
The Children Remember
One of the French campers ended her now-famous video by saying it was “the worst experience of my whole life.”
But she’s wrong.
The worst part will come later—when she realizes that even after being humiliated, even after her director bled on the airport floor, even after she hid her identity and was still thrown off the plane…
The world looked away. Because once you see Jews as less than human—and more like vermin, as Hitler did—their age doesn’t matter. Even a baby cockroach, after all, is still a cockroach. And cockroaches grow up.
And if that’s how you see them—what difference does it make if they’re six, or sixteen, or sixty?
They can’t see Jewish children as children. Only as the next wave of Jews.
And once you see them that way, you don’t have to feel bad when they bleed.
So they’ll remember.
And they’ll grow up knowing what it means to be hated for simply being Jewish.
But they’ll also grow up knowing what it means to belong—to one another, to something older than hate, and stronger.
Not all of them will hold on to it. Many will walk away.
But some won’t.
And that will be enough to keep us going.
|
"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022) |
 |
Buy
