The meaning of the 'Labbaik ya Nasrallah' cry of a hotelier who kicked out Israeli tourists

Yesterday, the city of Vigo sadly made the news due to a clear act of xenophobia at a local restaurant run by a Lebanese man.

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An act of xenophobia in a restaurant owned by a Lebanese

A Lebanese restaurateur who has been in Vigo for several years, Samir Slim, expelled several Israeli tourists from the Mimassa restaurant, repeatedly insulting them, calling them "sons of bitches" for being Israeli. The restaurateur himself filmed the scene, which has since spread on social media:

Esto ha ocurrido en un bar de Vigo.
El camarero, con acento árabe, echa a un grupo de israelíes, los llama asesinos e hijos de pvta y él se pone a gritar "Viva Palestina libre".
Asqueroso e inadmisible.pic.twitter.com/WV9h2sE76x

— Acción y Comunicación sobre Oriente Medio - ACOM (@ACOM_es) July 9, 2025

As seen in the video, the innkeeper blamed those tourists for committing a crime ("killing Palestine," he said) simply for being Israeli. Accusing citizens of a nation of committing a crime simply for having that nationality is a clear act of xenophobia, no matter how much some mayunos medios se dediquen a blanquearlo y muchos internautas incluso lo apoyen abiertamente.

What the Spanish Penal Code says about this type of acts

In its Article 510, the Penal Code punishes with imprisonment of one to four years and a fine of six to twelve months those who "publicly encourage, promote or incite directly or indirectly hatred, hostility, discrimination or violence against a group, a part of it or against a specific person due to their membership in that group, for racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Gypsy or other reasons related to ideology, religion or beliefs, family situation, the membership of its members to an ethnic group, race or nation, their national origin", among other reasons.

According to Faro de Vigo, the police are already investigating these events for a possible hate crime. Of course, what happened paints a very bad picture of the city, and the support of many thugs for this xenophobic and insulting attitude paints an alarming picture of the level of fanaticism of a considerable portion of Spanish society. Curiously, the same people who consider the mere fact of criticizing open-door immigration policies to be "xenophobia" at the same time see such a clearly xenophobic act as normal and even applaud it.

An intolerable attitude that deserves a boycott

For my part, I am very clear that I will never set foot in the Mimassa restaurant or the other two that this Lebanese hotelier has in Vigo: Fenicio and Gran Fenicio, according to Faro de Vigo. I will also advise against those places to anyone who asks me. I find it outrageous that a hotelier would behave so rudely towards customers simply because they have Israeli nationality, and that he would also record them and share their image on social media, which could lead to sanctions for breaching regulations relating to the protection of the right to privacy.

A cry used by the terrorist group Hezbollah

On the other hand, in the video, the innkeeper can be heard shouting "Labbaik ya Nasrallah" twice at the Israeli tourists. This cry is quoted in news published by Faro de Vigo, La Razón and Huffpost. These three outlets indicate that the translation is "I am at your service, Nasrallah", but they do not explain the meaning of that expression.

In September 2024, Iman Sefati noted that the chant was used at a pro-Palestine rally in Berlin, explaining: "Hasan Nasrallah is the leader of the terrorist organization Hezbollah, a militant Shia political group and party in Lebanon that is heavily funded and supported by Iran." Recall that Nasrallah was eliminated by Israel in September 2024, following a wave of Hezbollah attacks against Israeli civilians. In November 2024, Yemen's Saba news agency reported that Hezbollah used that cry in one of its attacks against Israel. In case anyone is unaware of this fact, Hezbollah is listed on the European Union's list of terrorist organizations, at number 10.

I wonder if this information will also be included in the police report on the events, because shouting praise for the leader of a terrorist group is very serious and could fall under the crime defined in Article 578 of the Penal Code, which punishes acts of glorifying terrorism with imprisonment of one to three years and a fine of twelve to eighteen months.

A fanaticism fueled by the Spanish left

Moreover, this type of attitude is not accidental. In May, the socialists of the PSOE and the separatists of the BNG approved a motion in Vigo City Council demonizing Israel and without making even the slightest reproach to Hamas, after this terrorist group perpetrated the largest massacre suffered by the Jewish people since the Holocaust, a massacre that the City Council has not condemned in any official act. They should be ashamed, if they had any.

The Spanish left is openly promoting antisemitism against the only Jewish state in the world, throwing false accusations of "genocide" against it but not against Hamas, Russia, or China. As a Spanish citizen and resident of Vigo, I can only say that I feel ashamed seeing this kind of thing. I express my full support for these Israeli tourists. Am Yisrael Chai!

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Photo: AFP. Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the terrorist group Hezbollah from 1992 to 2024.