An anti-Zionist TikToker apologized for ripping down Greek flags at a restaurant, having mistaken them for Israeli flags.
The TikTok user “Ambamelia” posted a video of her tearing down strings of small Greek flags at Efi’s Gyro in New Jersey while denouncing Israel and Zionism. According to Efi Mihalis, the owner of the restaurant, speaking with the New York Post, the incident occurred on March 11 but was first posted on TikTok in recent days.
Ambamelia posted the video with the caption: “The time I mistakenly thought the flag for Greek was for Israel and took the restaurant’s flag down OMG.”
In it, she can be seen suddenly ripping down lines of Greek flags hanging on the restaurant, as confused staffers stand by.
ain’t no way she tore down Greek flags at a restaurant because she thought it was the Isreal flag
pic.twitter.com/azyJqMf8UW
— juju
(@ayeejuju) October 16, 2024
“Free Palestine, b****!” she yelled.
“What you looking at?” she asked a puzzled staffer. “You know damn well there’s a genocide, you know there’s a genocide.”
“I’m taking this b**** down,” Ambamelia added.
The video cut to her taking down strings of flags hanging outside the restaurant, confident in a lack of repercussions.
“What’re they gonna do? They can’t do nothin,” Ambamelia said.
“There’s genocide. I don’t stand for Zionism in Montclair!” she said when confronted by a staffer outside.
Ambamelia told a staffer who came outside to speak with her that being Jewish was ok but that she didn’t support “genocide.” After a moment of confusion, the man said that the flags were actually Greek.
“Oh I thought it was Israel,” Ambamelia responded. “My bad.”
She then spoke with staff at length, seemingly doubtful.
“Are you sure? Let me look this up,” she concluded, with the video ending.
The video garnered millions of views across TikTok and X, with commentators baffled as to why she had posted the encounter.
“Wait until she visits Honduras!” one user said, given its flag is even more similar to Israel’s.
Others called for her to be arrested for vandalism.
The Greek and Israeli flags are both blue and white, but the similarities end there. The Greek flag features a cross while the Israeli flag features a Jewish Star of David. The Israeli flag contains only three wide stripes, while the Greek flag features nine stripes in the style of the U.S. flag.
The encounter was extraordinary enough that some accused the restaurant of staging the encounter, something Mihalis was quick to shoot down.
“It was not a skit as some people believe,” she told the outlet. “This was not planned nor was it calculated in any way,” adding that everyone had been “taken aback” when it happened.
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“The young woman destroyed my property,” Mihalis said.
Greece and Israel have grown fairly close in recent years, with the former looking to play a balancing role in the current conflicts.