REYKJAVÍK - I came to Iceland in love with Iceland.
I leave heartbroken by it.
For nearly two weeks my family and I traveled through what is unquestionably one of God’s great masterpieces. We drove beneath mountains disappearing into clouds, stood before thundering waterfalls, crossed black volcanic landscapes, watched glaciers descend toward the sea and experienced the surreal beauty of an island perched between Europe and America.
Iceland is magnificent.
But there was another Iceland that emerged during our visit - an Iceland I could never have imagined when I arrived. Again and again, I was recognized as “Rabbi Shmuley," the celebrity Jew and rabbi who is an outspoken supporter of Israel and confronted with hostility.
I was cursed. I was continuously and repeatedly called “baby killer."
“Free Palestine" was hurled at me incessantly - not as a political slogan at a demonstration, but directly at me, a Jewish man walking down a street with his Jewish family and IDF hero children who had come to get away from the war for Israel’s survival for just a few days.
I was told, in various formulations, that Zionists were not wanted in Iceland.
I heard nonstop “F--- Israel."
I was followed everywhere I went in the larger cities and verbally abused.
I was confronted by strangers who seemed to regard the mere presence of a proud Jew and lover of Israel as a provocation.
I was physically assaulted. Then I was assaulted a second time.
And during one approximately 30-minute walk through Reykjavík, I counted seven separate hostile confrontations.
Seven.
Thirty minutes.
I have documented this extraordinary experience across my Instagram and Facebook accounts so that people don’t have to take my word for it. The videos are there and have been watched my tens of millions of people worldwide. They went viral especially in Iceland. The faces are there. The confrontations are there.
One of my posts documented what I described as my second assault in Iceland. Another recorded a verbal confrontation. Another showed an Icelandic couple confronting me on the street, with “F--- Israel" at the center of the exchange. Yet another captured a longer discussion with an Icelander over the supposedly convenient distinction between hating Israel and hating Jews.
This wasn’t one unpleasant encounter. It became a pattern. And after enough encounters, a tourist ceases asking, “What is wrong with that individual?" and begins asking, “What is happening in this country?"
Seven hostile confrontations in one 30-minute walk through Reykjavík. At what point do isolated incidents become an atmosphere?
One of the most disturbing incidents came in a bar.
I wanted to buy a beer. That’s it.
Not deliver a lecture about Gaza.
Not debate Icelandic foreign policy.
Not ask why in ten days we had only seen five black people in a country that dares preach to Israel about tolerance.
Not lead a pro-Israel demonstration.
I wanted a beer. I was recognized, another confrontation ensued, and I was physically assaulted.
Imagine traveling thousands of miles with your family to one of the world’s most celebrated tourist destinations and discovering that even buying a drink can become dangerous because someone recognizes you as a prominent Jewish defender of Israel.
Afterward there was the predictable chorus: perhaps I provoke people by responding. Perhaps I should ignore them. Perhaps a public Jew should learn to walk away.
Forgive me. Since when did the victim of harassment acquire the responsibility to disappear?
A Jew should not have to remove his yarmulke, hide his Magen David, conceal his identity or remain silent in the face of abuse in order to purchase a beer safely in a European capital.
And after repeated confrontations, I experienced something far more consequential than anger.
Fear.
There were moments during this trip when I genuinely feared for my physical safety and even for my life and the safety of my family.
I have confronted antisemites throughout the world. I have been threatened before. I have been attacked before. I know that political disagreement can become heated without becoming dangerous.
This was different because it was so incessant, so pervasive, so universal. And then the street hatred met the online hatred.
Unhinged antisemite Candace Owens’ relentless obsession with Israel and attacks on me need little introduction. One of the posts I sent out during the trip described an attempt by Owens to publicize my family’s presence and inflame hostility while we were already being confronted in Iceland. Candace Owens jumped into the fray from the United States and demanded that “Viking Power" evict us from Iceland.
You begin looking over your shoulder. You notice who is watching you. Your family notices.
A pleasant walk stops being a pleasant walk because you wonder whether the next person who recognizes you will say hello, scream “baby killer," or put his hands on you.
That is no way for any tourist to experience Iceland.
And it is certainly no way for a Jew to experience Europe in 2026.
I should not have to hide my yarmulke, conceal my Magen David, or surrender my voice in order to buy a beer safely in a European capital.
My social-media pages became a running diary of this ugliness. Eye on Palestine, with 14 million followers. Openly called repeatedly for my assassination on Instagram.
This is the frightening ecology of modern antisemitism.
Someone recognizes a Jew. The confrontation is filmed. The video goes viral.
Thousands cheer the person confronting the Jew. Influencers amplify the hostility.
And the next person who sees the Jew in the street believes he too has permission to confront him.
The digital mob becomes the physical mob.
All the while we are told: This isn’t antisemitism. It is only anti-Zionism.
Really?
Then explain something to me. Why was the target an American rabbi?
I am not a member of Israel’s government.
I do not command the IDF.
I do not determine Israeli military policy.
I was walking through Iceland with my family.
Yet strangers felt entitled to make me answer personally for Gaza because I am publicly Jewish and publicly, now and forever, stand with Israel.
When people scream “Zionist" at a visibly Orthodox Jew as an epithet, “Zionist" is no longer functioning as a political description.
It has become a socially acceptable substitute for another word.
Jew.
Of course, not every critic of Israel is an antisemite. Criticism of Israel is no more inherently antisemitic than criticism of France is anti-French. But there comes a point where intellectual dishonesty becomes absurd.
If you see an Orthodox Jewish tourist and begin shouting at him about Israel; if you call him a “baby killer"; if you tell him Zionists are unwelcome; if you curse the Jewish state in his face and scream “F--k Israel" at the top of your lungs - and then insist that none of this has anything to do with Jews, you cannot seriously expect the Jewish victim to applaud the sophistication of your distinction.
“When ‘Zionist’ becomes the epithet screamed at the Jew standing in front of you, it is fair to ask whether ‘Zionist’ has simply become Europe’s respectable substitute for ‘Jew.’"
And what makes Iceland’s descent so painful is how different the country appeared only recently. From 2003 to 2016, Iceland’s First Lady was Dorrit Moussaieff, an Israeli-born Jew from Jerusalem, wife of President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson. She became an Icelandic citizen and one of the country’s best-known public personalities. Contemporary Icelandic reporting described her unmistakably as Iceland’s First Lady.
Think about that extraordinary contrast.
Just over a decade ago, an Israeli-born Jewish woman from Jerusalem occupied Iceland’s most prominent ceremonial role alongside its president.
Now an American Orthodox rabbi walks through Reykjavík and is repeatedly denounced over Israel.
What happened? There were warning signs.
In 2018, members of Iceland’s parliament seriously considered legislation prohibiting the non-medical circumcision of boys.
For most Icelanders, circumcision may appear an obscure ritual. For Jews, brit milah is the covenant of Abraham, practiced for thousands of years and foundational to Jewish religious identity.
The proposed legislation was real enough that Iceland’s own parliamentary records contain extensive submissions both supporting and opposing it. The Council of Jewish Communities of Latvia warned Alþingi that banning circumcision would effectively prohibit Jewish existence in Iceland.
The proposed punishment was extraordinary: reports at the time said anyone performing such a circumcision could face up to six years in prison.
The bill ultimately died. Thank God.
But Jews noticed that in a European democracy in the twenty-first century it became seriously conceivable that a rabbi performing Abraham’s covenant could face years behind bars.
Europe repeatedly tells Jews: We love Judaism. Then come the qualifications.
We love Judaism without circumcision.
We love Judaism without Israel.
We love Jews provided their Jewishness never inconveniences the prevailing ideology.
That is not tolerance. That is conditional acceptance.
Icelanders will respond that their country has demonstrated genuine compassion toward Palestinians.
That’s garbage.
In 2008, Iceland accepted - get ready- 29 (!) Palestinian Arab refugee women and children who had been stranded in a desert camp on the Iraq-Syria border. UNHCR reported that the group consisted of eight families headed by women, several of whom had lost husbands in the Iraq conflict
Saving refugees is noble. But 29? Seriously? In a country of only 350,000 people that is ninety percent empty?
No. This was never about Palestinian Arab rights or Iceland would have tie in at least 10,000 refugees from Gaza, that was destroyed because of Hamas, the way countries take in refugees. This is all about hatred of Israel, in other words, antisemitism.
Why should compassion for Palestinians require hostility toward Jews? Why must sympathy for one people become contempt for another?
During our travels, my family and I were struck by how racially homogeneous much of Iceland appeared to us. We commented repeatedly on how few Black people we personally encountered during nearly two weeks traveling around the country. That is, of course, an anecdotal observation rather than a demographic study, and I would not pretend otherwise.
Nor would it be accurate to claim Iceland accepts “no one." It has accepted refugees and has significant immigration.
But precisely because Iceland wishes to present itself to the world as enlightened, humanitarian and tolerant, its moral test is not merely which distant populations it champions.
The test is also how human beings standing on an Icelandic street are treated.
Humanitarianism is cheap when its beneficiaries are abstractions. It becomes real when a person you disagree with is three feet in front of you.
You cannot proclaim Palestinian Arab dignity while denying Jewish dignity.
You cannot campaign against racism while intimidating Jews.
And you cannot chant about human rights while making a Jewish tourist fear for his physical safety.
There was something else I encountered in Iceland: a startling strain of anti-Americanism. Not disagreement with American policy. Something more visceral. Much of Europe despises Donald Trump.
Icelanders may criticize President Trump every waking hour if they wish. Americans ourselves fight fiercely over our presidents. But Trump hatred does not justify hatred of Americans.
Some of the hostility I experienced seemed part of a broader ideological package in which America is regarded as imperialist, Israel as colonialist, and an outspoken American Jew who supports Israel becomes a convenient symbol of both.
That worldview is as simplistic as it is poisonous.
America has been central to Europe’s security for generations. Iceland itself is a NATO ally. Political disagreement between democracies is healthy.
Contempt for entire peoples is not.
Then there is a practical reality Iceland ignores at its peril. Tourism is not some marginal Icelandic industry. It is fundamental to the country’s prosperity.
According to Statistics Iceland, tourism directly accounted for 8.8% of Iceland’s GDP in 2025, up from 8.2% the year before.
Nearly one dollar in every eleven generated in Iceland’s economy is therefore directly connected to tourism. Iceland’s entire global brand is based on a promise.
Come here. See something extraordinary. Experience one of the safest, friendliest, most beautiful places on earth.
But safety and hospitality are part of the product.
Americans have choices.
Jews have choices.
Israelis have choices.
Families deciding where to spend thousands of dollars on a vacation have choices. And nobody wants to travel across an ocean to be told that people like them are unwelcome.
Iceland’s waterfalls are magnificent. Its glaciers are breathtaking. But no waterfall is beautiful enough to compensate for fearing that the next stranger who recognizes you may threaten or assault you.
I do not want Jews to boycott Iceland.
I want Iceland to change.
That distinction is important.
I have seen too much beauty here to wish this country ill. And I have visited probably five or six times and lectured to the Jewish community, tiny as it is, on every occasion.
I met good Icelanders. Many were gracious and welcoming.
It would be morally wrong for me to condemn an entire nation because of people who abused me, just as it is morally wrong for them to condemn every Jew because they despise Israel’s government.
But neither will I sanitize what happened. Too often Jews are told not to make a fuss.
Don’t call it antisemitism.
Don’t embarrass anyone.
Don’t exaggerate.
Don’t answer back.
Don’t make people uncomfortable.
For two thousand years Jews have been advised to survive hostility by becoming less visible.
I reject that advice.
I am a Jew.
I am a rabbi.
I am a lover of Israel.
And none of these things deprives me of my right to walk safely down a street in Reykjavík.
I increasingly worry that Iceland is following the path of Ireland, where hostility toward Israel has become so culturally pervasive that the Jewish state is often discussed not as an imperfect democracy capable of terrible mistakes, but as something uniquely sinister and illegitimate.
I am not going to manufacture a statistical claim that Iceland and Ireland are literally the two “most antisemitic" nations in Europe when reliable comparative evidence does not establish that ranking.
I don’t need to. My firsthand experience is damning enough. On this trip I was cursed.I was verbally harassed repeatedly. I was called a baby killer. I was told Zionists were not wanted. I was physically assaulted. I experienced seven hostile confrontations in approximately 30 minutes in Reykjavík. My social-media accounts became a daily chronicle of abuse.
And as I prepared to depart, I recorded my sadness that a country of such extraordinary grandeur and majesty could have become, in my experience, so consumed by hostility toward Israel and Jews who defend it. That departure reflection too is publicly documented.
This happened in Iceland.
In 2026.
And that should trouble every decent Icelander far more than anything I have written in this column.
I refuse to condemn an entire nation because some Icelanders hated me. But I also refuse to pretend that what happened to me did not happen.
Iceland, what happened to you?
How did the country that embraced a Jerusalem-born Jewish First Lady become a place where I experienced this degree of hostility as a Jewish visitor?
How did legitimate concern for the plight of Palestinian Arabs at the hands of Hamas terrorists become, for some, permission to hate and intimidate Jews?
How did one of Europe’s most famously peaceful societies produce moments in which a rabbi visiting with his family feared for his safety?
I do not ask these questions because I hate Iceland. I ask because I love it. And because beneath all the anger I remain convinced that the haters do not have to define this magnificent country.
So my appeal is to the Icelanders who know that this is wrong. Take your country back from hatred.
Criticize Netanyahu.
Criticize Trump.
Criticize me.
Tell me every political opinion I hold is mistaken.
That is freedom.
But when you see a Jew being harassed, defend him. When “Zionist" is used as an epithet for a Jewish stranger, challenge it. When someone screams “baby killer" at a rabbi, do not pretend you are witnessing human-rights activism. When a visitor is assaulted, do not cheer because you dislike his politics.
A nation is measured not by how loudly it proclaims its tolerance, but by how it treats the people it most profoundly disagrees with.
Palestinians deserve human dignity and freedom from the brutality of Hamas.
Israelis deserve human dignity.
Muslims deserve human dignity.
Christians deserve human dignity.
Americans deserve human dignity.
And Jews deserve human dignity.
No exceptions. No ideological tests. No requirement that we renounce Israel first.
I came to Iceland once again believing it was one of the most beautiful countries on earth.
I still believe that.
But mountains and glaciers are geography. Tolerance is a choice.
And Iceland must now decide what kind of country it wishes the world to see.
Because beauty gets tourists onto airplanes. Human decency determines whether they ever come back.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is the international bestselling author of thirty-eight books, translated into more than twenty languages. He has been hailed as “the most famous rabbi in America" (The Washington Post, Newsweek). A fearless public intellectual and one of Israel and Jewry’s most eloquent defenders, Rabbi Boteach has appeared on virtually every major television network and media platform across the globe. For eleven years, he served as Rabbi at Oxford University, where he founded the L’Chaim Society and built it into one of the largest student organizations in the university’s history. Rabbi Boteach is the only rabbi ever to receive the London Times Preacher of the Year Award, and remains the competition’s record-holder. He lives in New Jersey with his Australian wife, Debbie, and together they have, thank God, nine children and twelve grandchildren.Follow him on Instagram and X @RabbiShmuley