A survivor of the horrific Hamas massacre at the Supernova music festival on October 7 told the Jerusalem Post on Tuesday that U.K. Border Force officers harassed and abused him and his brother, a fellow survivor, when they flew into the Manchester airport on Sunday.
Neria and Daniel Sharabi, 22 and 23 years old, respectively, were among the 3,000 young attendees at the open-air Supernova music festival in southern Israel on October 7 when Hamas attacked, turning the holiday event into a bloody massacre. One of the survivors compared the scene to a gruesome horror movie that went on for four hours.
The Sharabi brothers were credited with saving dozens of lives during the attack by scrounging weapons from a tank, heroically holding the Hamas death squad at bay, and administering emergency medical aid to the wounded.
Neria used his phone to record video evidence of the attack, while Daniel used his to obtain guidance from his former commander in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Several of their friends were abducted or killed during the assault.
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Neria and Daniel flew into Manchester on Sunday to give a speech to the local Jewish community about their experiences during the Supernova attack and to raise awareness for the nonprofit group they founded, the Association for Survivors and Wounded. Daniel said the group would help survivors of the massacre and remember the dead.
He explained in February:
There are many organizations to help disabled soldiers and soldiers with PTSD. Everyone also knows the victims of kibbutzim like Kfar Aza and Be’eri – because they’re all from the same place, but no one knows who these thousands of people are from all over the country that survived the massacre, after 364 died and 50 were kidnapped.
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The Sherabis said the Border Forces officers at the Manchester airport grew hostile after they saw the Israeli passports that the brothers presented.
“Their faces immediately changed. I saw the antisemitism in their eyes, from the moment they started interrogating us,” Neria told the Jerusalem Post on Monday.
Neria said the officers detained the brothers for two hours to “make sure that you are not going to do what you are doing in Gaza over here,” a reference to the Israeli self-defense operation against Hamas.
Daniel captured the angry response of the Border Force officers to accusations of anti-Semitism on video, including one of them growling, “Nobody has said that once, so knock the attitude off.”
“I’ve made the decision, and you’re coming in,” the officer said. “Let us do the checks that we need to do and keep quiet … We’re the bosses, not you.”
The Sharabi brothers said that after they were taken to detention, officers sternly interrogated them on the subject of their planned speech to the Jewish community and their service in the IDF. They were eventually released and able to give their speech, but Neria said they were made to feel unsafe throughout the encounter. He expressed reluctance to return to the United Kingdom, even if the mission of his non-profit requires it.
The Manchester Jewish community quickly lodged complaints with the airport, which claimed the officers were not its employees so the complaint would be bumped to the Home Office.
“We are investigating this,” Home Secretary James Cleverly confirmed Monday night. “We do not tolerate antisemitism or any form of discrimination. This incident will be handled in line with our disciplinary procedures.”
The Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester and Region denounced the “unnecessary and demeaning tone” that the Border Force officers adopted, while a group called North West Friends of Israel (NWFOI) suggested the police should investigate their behavior as a hate crime.
NWFOI Co-Chair Raphi Bloom said:
This is another shocking incident where UK government employees target Jews and discriminate against them because they oppose Israel’s actions in defending itself in Gaza. In this case it was a border control officer and last week it was nurses at one of Manchester’s largest hospitals.
Bloom was referring to an incident in which nurses allegedly mistreated a nine-year-old British-born boy with Israeli relatives at the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital. The boy said the uniforms of the nurses were festooned with pro-Palestinian propaganda, making him so nervous that he removed his yarmulke. The nurses allegedly denied care to the boy, who requires regular blood transfusions.
Bloom told the Jerusalem Post
Jews are increasingly scared to identify themselves in public places. The UK government has promised to act on extremism and Jew hate but so far these are empty words. These civil servants need to be sacked and the police investigate them for antisemitism immediately.
Bestselling author and columnist Douglas Murray pronounced the Manchester airport incident “utterly disgraceful” on Tuesday and vowed to take legal action if the Border Force officials are not identified and punished.
“How dare UK border guards treat victims of terror worse than they treat Hamas operatives and sympathizers who come through their gates every day,” Murray wrote.
The senior Jewish Conservative Member of Parliament, former Attorney General Sir Michael Ellis, denounced the treatment of the Sharabi brothers as a “manifestation” of the “widespread anti-Semitism” that the October 7 atrocity unleashed.
“These are people in uniform acting for this country as Border Force officers. It is a disgrace beyond all proportion. Their detention for several hours was clearly unlawful,” Ellis said in Parliament on Tuesday.
The Sharabi brothers visited New York City in February to give a presentation like the one they gave in Manchester. They were confronted by a deranged Hamas supporter who was in the process of tearing down posters of Israeli hostages when he noticed the brothers holding signs about the October 7 massacre.
“Why don’t you go blow up another hospital? Why don’t you kill 10,000 more kids?” the man hissed as New York City police took him into custody.
After the encounter, Neria said he had heard stories of Hamas supporters tearing down pictures of Jewish hostages, but he had never before seen the vandalism in person.
“You see it in videos, but when it happens in reality, I get pissed off. People deny our experience, but you can’t deny reality. We’re proof it happened,” he said.
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“I have video of our friends being raped, kidnapped to Gaza. We’re here to face them and tell them that they’re liars. If they think this never happened, they’re just brainwashed,” he said.