Monday, December 28, 2015

Greece: American Jewish volunteers harassed and expelled from refugee camp because "Jews are all murderers"


Update: I was contacted by a woman from the group who said that the article below is "full of inaccuracies, fabricated quotes and made up story lines".

Via Israel Today (h/t CFCA):
A group of American Jewish women were unceremoniously expelled from a refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos last week after suffering anti-Semitic verbal abuse from volunteers with other aid organizations.

The camp is one of many set up by the UN to assist the flood of refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran. A number of aid organizations are active there, including the Israeli humanitarian group IsraAID.

The young Jewish women in question had traveled from the United States to volunteer with IsraAID, and were wearing the Israeli group’s shirts at the time of the incident.

It started when fellow volunteers working with other organizations began to hurl anti-Semitic and anti-Israel slurs at the Jewish women. At that point, a UN security guard arrived and, instead of quieting the antagonists, joined in the verbal assault of the Jewish women, demanding they leave the camp.

“The situation quickly deteriorated. The guard…yelled at me and said there was no place here for people like me,” said one of the women. “‘Like me?’ I asked. ‘You mean Israeli? But I’m an American Jew.’ The guard replied by insisting that we [Jews] are all the same - murderers. He then threatened to arrest us if we didn’t leave the camp.”

Coming to the aid of the American Jewish women was none other than an Israeli Arab member of IsraAID, who notified the camp administration of the incident, leading to the security guard’s dismissal.

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