Spanish Transport Minister Óscar Puente described 50 French Jewish teenagers ejected from a Vueling flight in Valencia on July 23 as “Israeli brats,” in a post on X published on Friday and later deleted.
Separately, a fresh antisemitic incident against French Jews occurred on Sunday near Milan, where a dozen-odd patrons at a gas station were filmed shouting “murderers” and “free Gaza” at a family of observant Jews, including a boy of about 8 years old.
In the post, Puente asked: “Will the patriots be with Vueling? Will the law and order lot be with air safety? Will the xenophobes be with the Spanish company? Or will they all be chummy together, backing the Israeli brats?”
The French youths, returning to Paris after summer camp, were removed from a flight leaving Valencia for what Spanish police and the airline on Thursday described as “unruly behavior.”
Vueling denied reports that the removal of the teenagers was related to the passengers’ religion, as it was reported in some Israeli media.
A Guardia Civil spokesperson said the gendarmes involved in the removal, which took place at the request of the flight captain, were not aware of the group’s religious affiliation.
In the incident involving the French-Jewish family near Milan, one of the Jews filmed the crowd of patrons apparently spontaneously begin to chant and hurl insults at the family. The video, which according to Davide Romano, director of Milan’s Jewish Brigade Museum, was taken on Sunday, did not show what happened before the chanting began.
The incident “once again highlights how antisemitism is on the rise in our country. I demand that law enforcement and the judiciary proceed swiftly to identify and punish these antisemitic racists,”
Romano wrote in a statement.
L’antisémitisme ne faiblit pas en Europe :
— Jérémy Benhaïm (@JeremBenhaim) July 28, 2025
Deux Français de confession juive, un père et son fils portant une kippa, ont été pris à partie dans une station-service en Italie, aux cris de « Free Palestine » et en se faisant traiter « d'assassins ».
J’ai envie de vomir. pic.twitter.com/3f5BKnxbQM
The Foundation Contemporary Jewish Documentation Center, or CDEC—a nonprofit research institute for the history of Jews in Italy in the Contemporary age based in Milan—registered 877 antisemitic incidents in 2024 compared to 454 in 2023.
Back in Spain, a Vueling spokesperson said the passengers were removed after the minors “repeatedly tampered with the plane’s emergency equipment and interrupted the crew’s safety demonstration.”
“A group of passengers engaged in highly disruptive behavior and adopted a very confrontational attitude, putting at risk the safe conduct of the flight,” Vueling said in a statement. “We categorically deny any suggestion that our crew’s behavior related to the religion of the passengers involved.”
Son judíos franceses. Europeos.
— Yad Vashem España (@YadVashemSpain) July 25, 2025
Sr. @Oscar_Puente_, confundir su identidad religiosa con una nacionalidad extranjera es antisemitismo.
Mientras cada año huyen de Europa miles de familias judías amenazadas, se espera de un representante público respeto y que no aliente el odio. https://t.co/bvHR0X3SYB
But Yad Vashem—The World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem clarified that the young people were not Israelis, but “French Jews. Europeans,” adding, “Mr. Oscar Puente, confusing your religious identity with a foreign nationality is antisemitism.”
Yad Vashem added that “while every year, thousands of Jewish families flee Europe under threat, a public representative is expected to show respect and not encourage hatred.”
The Jewish group that organized the summer camp said that the cabin crew intervened after they heard some of the campers singing in Hebrew, and that they referred to Israel as a “terrorist state.”
They have also said that when the Guardia Civil, Spanish police, boarded the plane, the children were asked their nationality. When they said that they were French, an officer police responded that they had heard that some were Israeli.
Spain is one of the most anti-Israel countries in Europe. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has repeatedly accused Israel of genocide in Gaza, and Madrid called in Brussels for a suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement and for an arms embargo on Israel.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot contacted the CEO of Vueling, Carolina Martinoli, to express deep concern “about the removal of a group of young French Jews from one of the company’s flights.”
It came after the lawyer for the group of teenagers said they were filing a complaint “for physical and psychological violence, as well as discrimination on the basis of religion.”
Barrot also requested more information to “determine whether these individuals had been discriminated against on the basis of their religion.”
Originally published by the European Jewish Press.
