Israel issued a rare warning to its citizens in Greece last Sunday ahead of nationwide pro-Palestine protests: avoid advertising your nationality in public.

The warning was striking in a country that Israelis have long regarded as a close ally, tourist and investment destination, and even a potential relocation haven.

But Israel’s relationship with Greece is becoming increasingly complicated.

Rising rents, which many Greeks blame on Israeli property purchases, anger over Israelis jeering at pro-Palestinian demonstrations and Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ close friendship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are all fuelling anger.

“It’s an asymmetrical relationship, where one side is powerful and the other powerless,” Konstantinos Isychos, a former deputy defence minister who is opposed to the alliance, told Middle East Eye.

A 2026 Pew Research poll found that 65 percent of Greeks opposed the partnership, although many view it as a necessary evil because of what they perceive as an expansionist Turkey.

For some Greeks, opposition to the relationship is increasingly inseparable from the money Athens is spending on Israeli weapons and surveillance technology during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.