An Israeli woman and her daughter were severely beaten in Thailand by a French passport holder after he found out they were from Israel.

The 23-year-old was touring the country when her mother came for a two-week visit. The pair had driven motorbikes to a waterfall on Koh Phangan when a man with a French passport asked them where they were from. When they said they were from Israel, the 62-year-old mother said they were on vacation and wished to refrain from discussing politics.

The man left but then suddenly returned and viciously assaulted them. The daughter got hurt trying to protect her mother.

The younger woman ran out to the street to call for help, and when the man saw that they were not alone, he fled. He was arrested later in a separate violent confrontation with police, who discovered that he was also the attacker of the Israeli tourists.

Both women were taken to a hospital, where they underwent surgery for severe injuries. The daughter required surgery for her nose and the mother for her ear. She will likely need another surgery.

Speaking from her hospital bed, the mother described the incident to Ynet.

“A guy who was also on a motorcycle stopped behind us and started asking how we were,” the mother said. “We were busy buying a coconut. He asked my daughter where we were from, and she said Israel.”

“He said, ‘I don’t like what Israel is doing there,’ and I told him we were on vacation and did not want to discuss the issue or what they had done to us,” she recalled. “He said, ‘I’m against violence,’ and the conversation ended.”

After the man returned, “He started beating me viciously,” she said. “My daughter tried to protect me and was beaten too. We both fought him. I was hit in the head, and at some point I apparently lost consciousness.”

“He chased her, but she managed to call out to two French women who were there,” the mother said. “When he saw that there were other people on the road, he took his motorcycle and fled.”

“I remember lying on the road while people told me that police and an ambulance were coming,” she added. “They bandaged my head and took my daughter and me to a hospital on Koh Phangan.”

“It is truly terrible, and we never thought our trip would end this way. We only wanted to see a waterfall, and then a man came and attacked two women in the most brutal way possible,” she said.

“This happened in a place where we never dreamed it could happen,” she concluded. “We will learn not to say we are from Israel, because you can never know how someone will react.”

Israelis have been subject to harassment all over the world, and Israeli tourists have become particularly vulnerable due to their language and even their accent. In July, a group of Israeli tourists hid in their hotel rooms in Crete as a mob of Muslims armed with axes and rifles hunted them down. In another incident, tourists were harassed in Cyprus after being heard talking in Hebrew, with one of the aggressors knocked unconscious by one of the Israelis.

An Israeli tourist had ordered a meal at a Bangkok restaurant when she noticed a sign that said “No Israel [sic] tourist.” Canceling her order turned into a tense and frightening confrontation. A group of Israelis at a ski resort in Bansko, Bulgaria, was subjected to a violent antisemitic assault when a bystander heard one of them singing to himself a song in Hebrew with the words “Tel Aviv,” resulting in a violent confrontation that left one of the Israelis with a fractured skull and sinuses.

In another incident, a man filmed himself calling a group of Israelis vacationing in Montenegro “baby killers” and accusing them of genocide. Israeli tourists were attacked in Thailand after being overheard speaking Hebrew by French tourists in February. In June of last year, an Israeli tourist was violently attacked by a mob after he was heard speaking his native language. A family of Israeli tourists who were heard speaking Hebrew in Thessaloniki in July 2025 were attacked, with assailants following them to their car after they were told by staff to leave a restaurant.

The situation has worsened to the point that the Israeli National Security Council has been warning Israeli tourists not to speak Hebrew when traveling abroad. It has also advised removing all external signs of Jewishness, such as Stars of David, before going out in public, to keep mum about their military service, and to stay away from unsecured, unmonitored sites.