From a hotel in Kyoto to a sandwich joint in Edinburgh, the world is becoming hostile toward Israelis who are learning that a vacation won’t shield them from the Gaza war.
During the nine months of war the Israeli tourist experience abroad has been marked by fears of antisemitism and efforts to avoid pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
According to reports by Israeli media and posts online, some of those worries have recently turned real for a number of Israeli tourists.Anecdotal incidents at touristic locations around the world are making it clear that even though there is no official policy of excluding Israelis, that is sometimes the situation on the ground.
An especially bumpy week began on June 17 at the Material Hotel in Kyoto, Japan, when an Israeli named Alex was informed that his reservation had been canceled due to the allegations of Israeli war crimes in Gaza. The Material told Alex that it was “not able to accept reservations from persons we believe might have ties to the Israeli army,” as reported by Israeli website Ynet.
The story made the rounds on social media, produced a stern protest letter from Israel’s ambassador in Tokyo, and led to a rebuke by the Kyoto municipality that the hotel had breached Japanese business law and must ensure that such a transgression won’t happen again.
A point of critique to your critique. There are ethnic jews, cultural jews and religious jews. Most ethnic/cultural jews are not religious jews. See more in my other comment
Just because someone is born in a country doesn’t automatically make them “of that nation” identity-wise first and foremost. Take the romani peoples as another example, they often identify first and foremost as romani, rather than by the country of their birth.
That’s a good clarification, but I do not feel it changes much. A non-Isreal nationality now is still a thing they possess. No one chooses where they are born either way. Their ethnic identity is still there, but I do not think it gives them ground for land after they were dispersed originally. But regardless of that, they got Israel. It’s there now, and removing it also not an option.
It’s rather ironic, Jews are now killing off another ethnicity from the very same lands they themselves were driven out of. Sounds like a revenge story, but it’s just a cruel inversion of the same antisemitism that Jews have suffered at least twice now with their initial dispersion and during the second World War.