A group of 50 Jewish children returning from summer camp were forcibly removed from a Valencia-to-Paris flight Wednesday after one child sang a Hebrew song, prompting police intervention that resulted in their 21-year-old supervisor being handcuffed and detained. i24NEWS reported the incident based on testimony from parent Karine Lamy, whose child was among the affected travelers.
The woman who was arrested and beaten is the director of the Kinneret summer camp.
Fifty Jewish French children, aged 10 – 15, were singing Hebrew songs on the plane.
The @vueling airline crew said that Israel is a terrorist state and forced the children off the aircraft; they… https://t.co/V78PEHB58B pic.twitter.com/HizF6SZoaD
— עמיחי שיקלי - Amichai Chikli (@AmichaiChikli) July 23, 2025
The confrontation began when flight crew aboard the Spanish airline Vueling threatened the singing child, according to Lamy's account to i24NEWS. "If you continue, we will call the police," crew members allegedly told the young passenger who had been singing in Hebrew. Despite the child immediately stopping the song, police officers boarded the aircraft minutes later and ordered the group supervisor and all children to exit the plane before takeoff.
Many of the children were wearing religious items including tsitsit and Star of David jewelry when the incident occurred, i24NEWS noted. The group had been traveling home from their vacation program when the disruption unfolded.
Once removed from the aircraft, law enforcement officers demanded the children place their mobile phones on the ground to verify that the intervention had not been recorded, according to the mother's testimony provided to i24NEWS. The group supervisor intervened, telling officers their actions were illegal, which prompted police to physically restrain her.
Officers pushed the 21-year-old woman to the ground and handcuffed her before taking her away, leaving the children aged 13-15 with their counselors, i24NEWS reported. The remaining law enforcement personnel then instructed the young travelers to retrieve their luggage, making clear they would no longer be permitted to board the flight.
Police cited the noise created by the child's singing as justification for barring the entire group from travel, according to the account shared with i24NEWS. The children and their supervisors remained stranded at Valencia airport, searching for alternative flights to return to France.
A local organization offered to provide meals and hotel accommodations for the night as the group faced an unexpected overnight stay. "The children are extremely shocked. It feels like the 1939-45 period. This is a characterized antisemitic act against minors who did nothing wrong," Lamy denounced to i24NEWS.
The parent expressed outrage at Vueling Airlines' response to the situation. "The Vueling company they were traveling with didn't even offer them an alternative solution, they abandoned them. We are panicking for them," the emotional mother added to i24NEWS.
Lamy concluded her statement by drawing historical parallels to the treatment her child's group received. "A 21-year-old woman was handcuffed because a child sang - we have returned to the worst hours of World War II. And I'm not even talking about the moral damage caused to our children," she told i24NEWS.
According to witness accounts collected by Enfoque Judío, the crew displayed "growing hostility" toward the minors' singing. The mother of one teenager explained that events unfolded as the young people returned from their Spanish summer camp heading to Paris when one began singing.
"They board the plane. They sit down, and one of the kids starts singing a song in Hebrew, but well, simply like that, starts singing," Lamy told i24NEWS , denouncing what occurred in Valencia as an act of antisemitism.
The cabin crew's reaction, according to her conversation with her son and the group director, was immediate. "The onboard personnel approaches him, also the director, and tells them: 'We warn you from now: if you continue singing or making noise, we call the police,'" she stated. According to the mother, the children calmed down and remained silent, but "five minutes later, without the staff intervening again, the police arrived."
Some witnesses told their parents that crew members compared the teenagers to "terrorists" and called Israel a "murderous state," an extreme that could not be confirmed by Enfoque Judío with any other source.
However, what occurred afterward inside the aircraft remains unknown. The flight attendants and captain reportedly considered the group's behavior inappropriate, initially demanding they cease the chanting and, when faced with refusal or delay in complying with the order, decided to request police intervention.
One group instructor confirmed in a video released hours later, while heading to catch another flight, that the group had made noise on the outbound journey. "On the way there, they made noise. We also made noise on the way there. And then, they were lying in wait for the return flight," he could be heard telling the minors. "There, they made everyone get off the plane. One part is going to take another plane, others are going to return by bus, it's a monumental mess."
Facing this, an independent traveler unrelated to the group left this testimony on Instagram: "Hello, I'm going to give my point of view as a passenger. Indeed, I was returning from Valencia with my daughter and nobody on the plane understood what was happening, because the group boarded the plane normally, without shouting—which is rare in adolescents. I insist that they were behaving well for teenagers. During the safety instructions, they called the police because they mentioned a security problem on the plane... and finally they made the children disembark and took off with 2 and a half hours delay for nothing. I want to say that the children remained polite and left the plane calmly."
Officers proceeded with forced disembarkation of the complete group. The director, a 21-year-old woman, was arrested for making some type of "strange gesture" or "threatening to assault" the agents, according to official sources from Enfoque Judío.
One theory suggests she firmly opposed the minors' disembarkation, leading to her being subdued on the spot. In images from a viral video, she can be seen face down being arrested by an officer with her hands behind her back, while another tries to move the minors away.
Following the forced disembarkation, the group was detained in the aircraft's rear corridor. "There they ask all the children to take out their mobile phones, put them on the floor, to be able to delete all the videos they might have recorded," according to Lamy. The director opposed this and responded: "No, don't touch my kids. You have no right to take their phones. That's prohibited."
Lamy recounted that when agents requested the phones, the director began protesting and police told her "if we can't touch the phones, we arrest you." And right there they grabbed her forcefully, threw her to the ground and handcuffed her.
🚨La monitora del del campamento en el momento que es esposada por la Guardia Civil. https://t.co/u1zk91s0fX pic.twitter.com/z4wwjpH7ue
— Enfoque Judío (@enfoquejudio) July 23, 2025
Until now it remains unclear whether the children's phones were confiscated, or if they forced the monitor to sign a commitment not to disseminate images of the incident, as some sources indicated.
After being disembarked, the teenagers were progressively relocated on different flights. One group has already left Valencia bound for Paris on another airline, while a second group – about 20 thirteen-year-olds accompanied by four instructors – remains in a hotel near the airport awaiting their flight Thursday. It remains unknown whether the director is still under arrest.
