Hapoel Jerusalem Basketball at the Israel semi-final game, 16 February 2009. Ilan Costica/Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Israeli fans were attacked with fireworks, rocks and bricks during a basketball game in Athens, Greece on April 12.
The Times of Israel reported that the game featured Hapoel Jerusalem against AEK Athens as part the Basketball Champions League’s (FIBA) quarterfinal series. Tal Hakim, one of the attendees, told the Kan public broadcaster, “A quarter of an hour after the game started, they began to throw bricks and rocks at us, and even injured some fans. We were confined to a small area to not get hurt. A quarter of an hour after that, they began to launch fireworks at us and burned the clothes of one of the fans.” He also said that various Palestinian flags and Hezbollah flags were flown during the game and that people kept trying “to enter our stand and set the Israeli flag on fire.”
The Jerusalem team referred to the incident as an act of terror in a statement that read in part, per Ynet News: “At half time we considered removing our players and fans but were unable to because the Greek fans had surrounded the stadium and the danger was real. We also considered stopping the game but were warned by our security detail that such a move would release even more violence and put lives at risk.” The team will be filing a complaint to the league over the matter.
Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli wrote in a letter to the Greek Ambassador in Israel that he was very concerned about “the antisemitic and anti-Israel behavior of many AEK fans” during the game. “During the match, some of AEK’s fans burned the Israeli flag, waved Palestinian and Hezbollah flags, threw firecrackers and violently attacked the over 500 Israeli fans of Hapoel Jerusalem,” Chikli said. “It should be noted that a similar event happened in December 2019 in another basketball match between the same teams in Athens, when in addition to burning the Israeli flag, AEK fans put up pictures of Marwan Barghouti, a Palestinian terrorist responsible for deadly terror activity which killed dozens of innocent Israeli civilians.”
Chikli added that due to the “sharp increase in the number of antisemitic incidents” occurring worldwide, “it is of the utmost importance for me to reach out to you personally about this problematic incident. Moreover, since this specific case has repeated itself, we demand a governmental condemnation of the criminal and antisemitic acts, open up an investigation and ensure justice prevails against the perpetrators, to ensure similar instances will not happen in the future.”
Letter from Minister @AmichaiChikli to the Greek Ambassador in Israel (@GreeceInTelAviv), following the horrific, violent and antisemitic scenes against Israeli basketball team in Athens! cc. @FIBA @aekbcgr https://t.co/qp5beKpJ6P pic.twitter.com/i4TGLcSlcx
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) April 12, 2023
AEK ultimately won the game, 94-78.
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