About a thousand Israeli holidaymakers were briefly prevented from disembarking at a port on the Greek island of Crete on Tuesday due to pro-Palestinian protests, in the second such incident within 24 hours.
Yossi Manor, one of the passengers on the Mano Maritime cruise ship Crown Iris, told Ynet that when passengers tried to leave Sounda Port around noon on Tuesday, there were some 10 pro-Palestinian activists standing with signs and shouting “Free Palestine,” blocking their exit.
“The Crete police are helpless. They blocked the gates and the police are not letting us out,” the Israeli vacationer told the Hebrew-language site.
Another passenger, Chava Schwartz, slammed the incident as an “unprecedented scandal” in an interview with Israel’s Channel 12 News.
“Instead of dispersing the demonstrators who were waiting for us, as was done at all the other ports we visited, they closed the port gates on us and put us under a kind of ‘lockdown,’” she told the channel, adding: “There is great anger here that this is not being addressed at the highest diplomatic levels.”
A spokesperson for Mano Maritime told Channel 12 News following the incident that “there was no violence toward passengers; all organized excursions departed as planned. All passengers are safe.”
Mano “is a private company and expects Israel’s government and Greek authorities to handle this,” the statement said. “Similar incidents have occurred in the past involving Israelis abroad, including during flights. This situation requires professional handling by security authorities.”
On Monday, a similar incident occurred when dozens of pro-Palestinian activists greeted passengers of another Mano Maritime ship at the Greek island port of Argostoli with signs reading, “Zionist murderers.”
The ship docked under Greek police protection, and despite shouting and protests, the Israeli passengers disembarked and continued their tour of Kefalonia without any further antisemitic incidents reported.
Greece is an enormously popular tourist destination for Israelis, to the point where many shopkeepers even speak some Hebrew, but similar incidents with Mano ships occurred on July 22, July 28 and Aug. 29.
Martakis Notis, a Greek marketing and tourism consultant helping Ermoupolis, the capital of Syros, manage the fallout of the July 22 incident, told JNS that the protesters don’t represent the island.
“Everybody in Syros is sad because the image broadcast by the demonstrators didn’t represent the island, which is civilized and welcoming to people from all over the world,” Notis said on July 30.
Local leaders roundly condemned the activists. In a statement released on July 22, the day of the incident, the island’s deputy mayor of tourism, Ioannis Voutsinos, said: “Today’s events do not reflect the true character of Syros ... nor do they represent the majority of its residents.”
