Spanish Palestinian supporters burn Israeli flags ahead of Eurocup match

Protestors called Israelis ‘Zio-nazis’ and demanded that Herbalife Gran Canaria fans boycott Wednesday’s game against Hapoel Tel Aviv.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

A group of Spanish activists burned a huge Israeli flag Monday in protest of their Herbalife Gran Canaria basketball team’s upcoming Eurocup match against Hapoel Tel Aviv.

Gran Canaria is part of the Canary Islands, which are an autonomous community of Spain.

The anti-Israel protestors, members of a group called Canarias Insumisa, gathered outside the local arena where the game is set to take place Wednesday night, put the flag on the surrounding fence, and set it alight.

They demanded that fans boycott the event because such play “gives legitimacy to the murderous Zionist regime” and serves as a “whitewashing of the genocide of the Palestinian people,” local media reported.

They also said team supporters should stay away for their own safety.

“There is the danger of dozens of aggressive Nazi-Zionist hooligans attending the game who will try to provoke, create conflicts, and attack the fans of the Canary Islands team, as they have recently done in Amsterdam and Bilbao,” they said.

The reference to Amsterdam completely flips the script of what happened, as the violence that occurred there in November following a Dutch-Israeli soccer match was an antisemitic rampage by hundreds of pro-Palestinian supporters who chased, threatened, and beat up dozens of Israeli fans on the streets after the game.

The group justified the mass attack, claiming that “several organizations in the Netherlands” have filed police complaints against the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans “for the violent behavior they displayed hours before the match, which later led to…attacks on the hooligans.”

Some Dutch politicians and media had pointed to the actions of a few Israelis, who had torn down a Palestinian flag from a house and chanted “F*** the Arabs” in the city center before the match as “provoking” the subsequent hours-long Jew hunt.

In 2022, well before the Hamas-Israel war, Israeli basketball fans were attacked by Palestinian-flag waving locals in Bilbao before a FIBA Champions League tournament, but there the Hapoel Holon supporters fought back, throwing chairs and other objects at their assailants.

Canarias Insumisa warned that its members would raise their level of protest both before and after the game.

In general, Spain is one of the most anti-Israel countries in Europe, with top officials charging that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and the government recognizing the “State of Palestine” in May.

Antisemitism has skyrocketed there as it has in most of the world ever since war was sparked after the Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel last October 7 in which the terrorists massacred 1,200 and took 251 hostage, 100 of whom remain in captivity, with perhaps half of them still alive.

Hapoel Tel Aviv has so far beaten its Spanish rivals in two of their three matches this year, but only have a 6-5 won-loss record overall, while Gran Canaria is 9-2.

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