Oct. 7 survivors who were interrogated at UK border say they feel unsafe in England

The two survivors of the Supernova music festival massacre who faced alleged harassment while entering the United Kingdom on Sunday told The Daily Mail they felt safer in Israel than England after the way they were treated.

In an interview with the British publication, brothers Daniel and Neria Sharabi said they were demanding an apology from the UK government after they were interrogated for hours at border control in Manchester.

“I have no doubt at all that we were detained because we were Israeli,” Daniel told The Daily Mail. “We kept asking the officials why they had stopped us – was it because we are Israeli or because we are Jewish?”

He added that the officers never admitted they had detained the brothers because they were Israeli or Jewish, but they said it was obvious to them that they were being discriminated against for that reason.

“We were shocked at the way we were treated. When someone comes to your country from overseas, you expect to be welcomed and treated in a friendly way, not like this,” Daniel said, adding that he was glad Home Secretary James Cleverly had launched an investigation.

“After we were finally allowed through the airport, neither of us slept much because of the way we were treated.”

The two survivors are my friends- this is the level of aggression they faced after producing Israeli passports. @JamesCleverly @UKBorder @manairport @JewishChron @JewishMCR https://t.co/wR5THYDbaZ pic.twitter.com/F5diItYVxV

— Daniel Berke (@DanielBerke1) March 25, 2024

Neriya told the publication that the officers’ behavior toward him and Daniel changed the moment they told them they were survivors of Hamas’s massacre at the Supernova music festival on October 7, where more than 350 partygoers were slaughtered and many others wounded.

He said he believed the Border Police officer initially thought the brothers were Muslims, but that when they admitted to being Jewish, “everything changed and I could see it in his face.”

“They just started asking us a lot of weird questions, if we’re still with the army, how long we served, what we do,” Neriya said. “In the end, they didn’t find anything, and the cops started to get angry and mad because they got nowhere.”

He added that people in the UK had asked the brothers to stay longer to keep telling their story, but that they did not feel safe enough and were flying home on Tuesday.

“This is my first time in the country and my last time in the country. I don’t want to feel what I felt again,” he said.

Neriya and Daniel were at the Supernova music festival on October 7 when Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel’s south, murdering close to 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping 253 to Gaza, where more than half are still being held.

At some point, the two brothers found themselves hiding behind a damaged tank with a group of people and fought off the terrorists with the help of Daniel’s reserves commander on the phone.

At the same time, they also treated and saved dozens of wounded people.

The two men flew to the UK on Sunday to share their story abroad. A brief video from the airport showed a border control officer telling the brothers to “knock the attitude off” because they had made the decision to detain them.

“Keep quiet,” the officer said. “We’re the bosses, not you.”

In a complaint to the Manchester Airport Group, the Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester & Region added that when the brothers were eventually released, a Border Police officer told them that “they had to make sure that [Neria and Daniel] are not going to do what [Israel is] doing in Gaza over here.”

Following reports of the incident and the complaint, Cleverly announced that he was opening an investigation into the treatment of the brothers.

“We do not tolerate antisemitism or any form of discrimination,” he wrote on Twitter on Monday. “This incident will be handled in line with our disciplinary procedures.”