Six people face charges of alleged incitement to violence with a racist motive, membership of a criminal organisation and other offenses over a self-styled “anti-Zionist patrol” by far-left activists in Thessaloniki this summer.
Greece has seen a string of protests targeting groups of Israeli visitors on cruise ships, and even harassment or violence against individual Israelis, following the war in Gaza. This spurred the Tourism Ministry to insist last week that Israelis are safe in Greece.
A police statement said five men and one woman, all Greeks aged 21-46, were identified by the northern port city’s special squad against racist and extremist violence, following an investigation ordered by prosecutors.
It said the suspects, on the night of June 27, “carried out a racially-motivated march through the city center and later posted a text, photographs and video about it on various social media.”
The statement did not provide further detail on the incident.
On June 27, the anarchist Rouvikonas (Rubicon) group posted on social media pictures of activists in uniform black outfits blazoned with a Palestinian flag apparently marching through central Thessaloniki. No violence was reported during the march.
Rouvikonas condemned Israel’s war in Gaza and said it staged the “patrol” in a part of the city “where Israeli capital has parasitically intruded.” It added that Israeli and other funds “are massively buying up beaches, neighborhoods and villages, turning their residents into migrants in their own land.”
The incident drew an angry reaction from a leading Jewish community group, and government condemnation. The Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece, known by the Greek acronym KIS, accused Rouvikonas of antisemitism and likened the incident to attacks by Nazi stormtroopers.
Thessaloniki’s once-thriving Jewish community was rounded up by German occupation troops during World War II and sent to Nazi death camps in Poland and elsewhere, where the majority was murdered.
A Thessaloniki prosecutor had ordered an investigation into whether the group can be held liable for incitement to committing crimes of violence or hatred, and threatening to commit crimes.
