I voted for this government because I believed it would defend legality, public order and Greece’s Western seriousness. That expectation was not fanciful. Kyriakos Mitsotakis campaigned hard on public safety, argued in 2019 that academic sanctuary had become an “asylum for lawlessness,” and made order one of New Democracy’s defining promises. That is precisely why the government’s hesitant response to recent anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish intimidation feels so jarring.
The most defensible criticism is not that the government has done literally nothing. It is that its response has remained procedural and reactive when the moment required visible political leadership. What is immediately visible after the recent incidents is a prosecutor’s inquiry, a police investigation and a statement by government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis that those involved “should be brought to justice.” What is missing is a clear, early, prime-ministerial line that Greece will not tolerate organized attempts to intimidate Jews, Israelis, tourists or business owners in its streets.
The pattern in Athens and Thessaloniki
The pattern did not begin in Thessaloniki. In Athens, after a July 11, 2025 march by Rouvikonas members in identical black shirts bearing the Palestinian flag, the Athens prosecutor ordered a preliminary inquiry into the offense of threatening to commit crimes. Greek police said the pre-investigation material had been submitted to the prosecutor, that a leading figure had been brought in to provide explanations, and that the case was being handled by the department dealing with racist and extremist violence. Coverage of the incident linked it specifically to patrol-style movement through Plaka, Thisio and Monastiraki, accompanied by rhetoric that Athens’ streets belonged to pro-Palestinian activists rather than to Israeli visitors.
Then came Thessaloniki. After the June 27, 2026 “anti-Zionist patrol,” a Thessaloniki prosecutor ordered a preliminary investigation into whether Rouvikonas could be liable for incitement to violence or hatred and for threatening to commit crimes; Kathimerini also reported that police would examine whether the action amounted to incitement to hatred and violence and whether the organizers could be treated as a criminal organization. The Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece (KIS) condemned the march as a new formation of “assault battalions,” saying black-shirted groups had threatened and intimidated Jews, Zionists, Israelis, tourists and shopkeepers. That language matters in any city; in Thessaloniki it matters even more, because the city was once one of Europe’s great centers of Jewish life and is still haunted by the memory of the 1931 Campbell pogrom and, later, the destruction of approximately 96% of its Jewish population in the Holocaust. These were not literal pogroms. But they were, unmistakably, pogrom-style street intimidation, and in Thessaloniki the historical echo is grave.
Political caution in a combustible Gaza climate
The first explanation for the government’s hesitation is political caution. Greece has faced sustained anti-Israel mobilization since the Gaza war intensified. Protests against the Israeli cruise ship Crown Iris in Syros, Rhodes, Crete and Piraeus in 2025 drew hundreds of demonstrators; in some cases riot police had to block access to the vessel or separate protesters from passengers. AP reported that the Gaza war had triggered hundreds of anti-Israel protests in Athens and other Greek cities, while Kathimerini reported that Prorata polling found only 20% of Greeks saying they felt closer to Israel, down from 34% shortly after October 7. A Guardian analysis of the same political climate quoted an Athens-based expert saying Greeks are especially sensitive to Gaza because of geography and “traditional ties with the Arab world.”
Seen from the point of view of the Prime Minister’s Office, the temptation is obvious: do not turn fringe street activism into a larger national confrontation. Do not hand Rouvikonas the glamour of martyrdom. Do not inflame a domestic argument at a time when much of the public is concerned by events in Gaza. That instinct is politically intelligible. But it becomes dangerous when the state stops distinguishing between protest against a war and intimidation directed at identifiable people in Greek public space. Once organized patrols start telling Israelis, “Zionists” or Jewish-linked businesses that they are unwelcome in Plaka or Thessaloniki, caution stops being prudence and starts looking like indulgence.
The old weakness of the Greek state before organized street coercion
The second explanation is more structural and more disturbing: Greece has a long habit of tolerating organized street coercion until it becomes too visible to ignore. Rouvikonas is not a conventional civil-society actor engaging in ordinary protest. Reuters and Kathimerini have described a long record of attacks involving paint, flyers, vandalism, embassy incidents, invasions of offices and other theatrical acts of pressure. Kathimerini wrote as early as 2018 that the group had carried out dozens of attacks on politicians’ offices, embassies and state agencies, while another report noted that police case files against the group had actually fallen over time before rising again.
That history matters because it shows why the current response feels so meagre to many centre-right voters. This government built part of its legitimacy on the claim that it would reverse the Greek culture of permissiveness toward low-level political violence. Mitsotakis sold himself as the politician who would confront lawlessness where earlier governments rationalized it. And the state has shown, in other domains, that it can act quickly and visibly when it chooses: Reuters documented hard-line migration measures announced directly by the prime minister in July 2025; anti-terror police arrested suspects in 2023 and 2024 over plots and arson attacks targeting Israeli or Jewish sites in Athens; and when firebomb attacks struck New Democracy-linked homes in Thessaloniki, Mitsotakis travelled there, denounced “blind violence in public life,” and declared that such extremism would no longer be tolerated.
That contrast is hard to ignore. When the threat is coded as terrorism, migration pressure or an attack on the governing party itself, the government finds language, urgency and operational clarity. When the threat sits in the murkier zone between activism and intimidation, especially under the banner of Palestine solidarity, it seems to revert to the old Greek habit of waiting, watching and hoping procedure will substitute for politics. That is precisely the reactive posture New Democracy was elected to overcome.
Strategic partnership abroad, strategic ambiguity at home
The third explanation is strategic ambiguity. Greece plainly wants Israel as an ally. The prime minister’s office said after Mitsotakis’ March 2025 Jerusalem meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu that the two leaders “reaffirmed the strategic relationship” and discussed deeper defense cooperation. Greece’s armed forces signed a 2026 military cooperation program with Israel and Cyprus. Reuters has reported both the parliamentary approval of Israeli-made PULS rocket systems for Greece and continuing talks over a multibillion-euro missile-defense project. The bilateral agenda also includes the Great Sea Interconnector energy project, while tourism is substantial: the Guardian, citing official data, reported that more than 600,000 Israelis visited Greece in 2024.
But strategic partnership abroad imposes obligations at home. A state cannot publicly describe Israel as a strategic partner, buy Israeli defense systems, deepen trilateral military planning in the eastern Mediterranean and welcome hundreds of thousands of Israeli visitors, yet fall reluctant when people are targeted in Greek streets for being Israeli, Jewish, “Zionist,” or merely linked to Israeli business. The contradiction is not foreign-policy inconsistency; it is political cowardice. The state wants the geopolitical and economic benefits of the alliance, but appears wary of paying the domestic political cost of defending Jews and Israelis openly when Gaza has made that defense unpopular in some milieus. That is why the response to the patrols has looked spokesman-level and prosecutorial, not prime-ministerial and moral.
Why patrols are not legitimate protest
This distinction must be stated clearly. Protest against the Gaza can be regarded as lawful, legitimate and morally protected in a democracy. Greece has seen many such demonstrations: AP described anti-war protesters on Greek islands and at Piraeus demanding an end to the war and carrying Palestinian flags while police cordons kept protesters away from the Crown Iris and its passengers. None of that, in itself, is the problem.
The problem begins when protest ceases to address a state or a policy and instead targets persons and presence. In Athens, rhetoric around the “Palestinian walks” was explicitly framed around reclaiming streets from Israelis who had come to “relax.” In Thessaloniki, the patrol was advertised around neighborhoods supposedly contaminated by “Israeli capital,” while KIS said the result was intimidation directed at Jews, Zionists, Israelis, tourists and shopkeepers. Greece adopted the IHRA working definition of antisemitism in 2019, and its own foreign ministry created a special envoy role to combat antisemitism, a role that Greece still maintains in international envoys’ networks. The IHRA definition, as cited when Greece adopted it, expressly covers manifestations directed not only at Jews but also at non-Jewish individuals and their property, as well as at Jewish community institutions and religious facilities. In other words, the Greek state already possesses the conceptual tools to distinguish criticism of Israeli policy from coercive hostility aimed at people because they are Jewish, Israeli, or publicly associated with Israel.
What a serious government should now do
A serious government should begin with clarity. The prime minister should say, in his own name, that Greece will protect lawful protest over the Middle East conflict but will not tolerate organized patrols, black-shirt intimidation, threats to business owners, or rhetoric that seeks to make Jews and Israelis afraid to walk in Athens or Thessaloniki. Where there is evidence of incitement, threats or organised coercion, criminal investigations should continue swiftly and visibly. Where there are vulnerable sites, police protection should be made unmistakable; Greek authorities have shown before that they can tighten security around Israeli and Jewish targets when they decide the threat is real. And the government should engage directly with the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece and with Israeli diplomatic authorities, not as a concession to foreign pressure, but as a duty of sovereign democratic order.
That would not be an opposition line. It would be a centre-right line worthy of a government elected on order, legality and national seriousness. Greece does not need panic, sloganizing or careless talk of literal pogroms. It does need the confidence to say that pogrom-like intimidation has no place in its streets, least of all in Thessaloniki, and that anti-Zionism ceases to be politics the moment it becomes organized harassment of human beings in public space. If New Democracy cannot say that clearly, then it is not merely disappointing its critics. It is disappointing its own voters.
Yaakov Chaliotis is the founder of Group of Verified Intelligence (GVI), a London-based research, due diligence, and verification firm combining AI, data science, quantitative analytics, and algorithmic tools with expert human judgment. GVI works across geopolitics, corporate strategy, and social media and marketing intelligence, producing evidence-led analysis for complex decision-making. More about his work can be found at gvi.uk.com.
Originally from Cyprus, with roots in Kefalonia, Greece, Yaakov has lived and worked in London for fifteen years. His career spans senior roles in digital communications, strategy, and analytics, supporting CEOs, leadership teams, and UK government ministers with data-driven insight and strategic decision-making.
He previously served as Digital Strategy Manager at the UK National Lottery during the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, worked at the UK Department for Education during the pandemic, and later became Global Brand Analytics Lead at Shell.
Beyond his professional work, Yaakov is an active member of the World Jewish Congress Jewish Diplomatic Corps, focused especially on combating antisemitism and anti-Zionism.