Half of Israel is in Mykonos - and the Greek island has noticed

There is a particular sound that follows you around Mykonos this time of year, and it isn’t the bouzouki coming out of a taverna. It’s Hebrew. It’s everywhere – between the thumps of house music at the popular Scorpios beachfront restaurant and club, when queued up for a Freddo espresso, or doing a cash negotiation and Google review for a host’s sunbed.

I came to Mykonos hoping to write a story about magical summer nights, but only one thing I expected was true – half of Israel, it seems, really is in Mykonos.

I admit I arrived without an angle. I had a hunch – Israelis are flocking to Mykonos, and someone should write about it. There are new seasonal daily, direct flights to Mykonos leaving Tel Aviv, with Bluebird Airways and Arkia each running nonstop flights that are less than two hours in the air. El Al is now layering in a couple more routes a week on top of that.

So it’s never been easier to get to Mykonos, which may explain why so many Israelis are jumping at the opportunity to go there. Or, as one Israeli tourist put it, some rich Israelis simply need a place to empty their wallets. Mykonos, with its €150 beach beds and €240 for a whole fish (yes, you read that right!), is a place that can help you do that.

A round-trip ticket currently averages around NIS 1,270-NIS 1,800 in peak months, with July and August the priciest stretch of the year, dropping noticeably once September hits. The whole island becomes desolate during the winter, taxi drivers told me.

In addition to the profusion of Israelis, I met Italians, Bosnians, Albanians, Swedes, and a fair number of British tourists. Americans were at the bottom of the list, with one Yankee Doodle saying he was surprised that he only met a few Americans on the island.

But there was one through-line that did not discriminate: the silicon, filler, fillers, and more filler. I have never seen so much visible plastic surgery in one concentrated square kilometer. Lips, cheekbones, breasts, bottoms – and if attention was the goal of these procedures, consumers were rewarded for it in Mykonos.

I HAD BEEN hoping to meet some friendly Israelis for my article, and on Cavo Psarou Mykonos (my favorite, low-key, reasonably priced beach club), I found Ilanit and her crew sprawled on the sand, sun-drunk and unbothered.

With my new Greek bikini on, I dropped into the semi-circle and asked my questions. The middle-aged women from Holon were on a classic girls’ weekend: beach clubs, sun, shopping, then repeat. But when I pushed them on whether hearing Hebrew everywhere defeated the point of leaving Israel, I heard something different than what I expected: There’s a sense of comfort in it.

Effie, on her first trip to the island, was enthusiastic: “It’s the perfect place,” she said. “I’d live here if I could.”

Her favorite spot so far had been the restaurant extraordinaire Scorpios. She also was simply enjoying the water and the Greek sun. When asked about the food, the mood shifted. Everything’s expensive, she said, and half the time there wasn’t time to eat because of all the constant partying.

Someone in Effie’s group cut into the interview urgently to share something – the women were on a trip with their fitness trainer, who gave the group of 10 a list of foods that were off the table. “Strong is the new skinny,” said the culprit, Yael Buchacho.

I returned to the same beach club two days later to find another group of Israeli women enjoying the water. I jumped in and struck up a conversation. One of them commented on my Star of David necklace.

“Do you feel antisemitism here?” I asked.

“No. If anything, it’s the opposite. The locals know that Israelis spend. I think they appreciate the business,” said a woman from Eilat.

I would beg to differ. I got my own preview of the local mood at, of all places, the Longchamp store. I was mid-transaction, filling out the paperwork for my VAT tax refund, when the saleswoman decided she had some things to get off her chest.

Israelis’ behavior used to be much worse, she told me, totally unprompted. They’ve improved in the last few years, she said. But she still doesn’t like them, and really doesn’t like that they’re “buying up half the real estate on the island.”

She rang up my bag without missing a beat, pleasant as ever, like she hadn’t just told an Israeli journalist working on a Mykonos story that she merely tolerates us.

ELLA, 24, had just hung up a loud phone call in Hebrew as we both walked out of a boutique in Mykonos town, and I asked if I could join her as she headed to her next stop. She said that she has been coming to Mykonos with her friends for the last several summers. When I asked why Mykonos specifically, she didn’t overthink it.

“It’s nonstop; it’s just pure fun. We don’t sleep. We only go out,” she said. “We don’t come here for the shopping. I go to Europe for that.”

Some famous Israeli faces, accompanied by their security detail, were spotted throughout the streets of Mykonos during the evening hours. It seemed like half of Israel really was in Mykonos this summer – even those in the political sphere.

Scorpios is, as advertised, a crucial stop. I just wish we’d gotten there earlier than dinner hour, because there’s so much to do in this one, sprawling venue. Entering Scorpios is a journey, and you’ll likely wait in line before being guided to your seat. The waiters were enthusiastic, and the food was excellent.

While we dined, people were already partying down below on the beachside dance floor. Trendy and inspired DJs lit the area up with energy. There was enough space for partygoers to surround the DJ booth. This party closes at an early 12 a.m., which is totally opposite from the rest of the island’s party culture, which only just begins at 1 a.m.

Roka, the new sister restaurant to the Zuma Japanese eatery, might be the single most beautiful outdoor space I ate in all summer, with a view worth a million euros.

Mykonos’s town itself, meanwhile, buzzes at nightfall, with pubs and venues on every block. It felt young and reckless. I noticed undercover security in the alleys – probably there to break up any potential drunken fights, which I did not see even once. Shops are open until 3 a.m. to cater to nightlife shoppers.

MY TRIP UP the mountain, which I was glad I made on foot, wasn’t to a restaurant or a beach club – it was to the Chabad of Mykonos.

I swapped overpriced margaritas at the beach club with my non-Jewish friends for a place to exhale and remember my reality and identity. I thought of myself as a Maccabee, praying amid Greek culture. Shacharit on Shabbat begins at 10:30 a.m. (I assume that is to give some party people a few hours of shut-eye), and concludes by midday.

Lunch was plentiful and traditional: Moroccan fish, an assortment of salads, cholent, and schnitzel.

The highlight of my trip was seeing my best friend since age five. We spent her birthday together at the Grotto restaurant, eating €240 fish and getting splashed by the sea. We laughed, couldn’t finish the large, overpriced fish, and sat with our espresso martinis, passing the time until we headed for Club Paradiso at 1 a.m. to see English DJ and TV personality Joel Corry. We arrived at 12:30 a.m. and waited until 2:45 a.m. to see this headliner come on.

Upon my return to Tel Aviv, a city that has plenty of partying itself, two things happened: I spent an entire week catching up on sleep, and digesting a Foreign Ministry travel alert. Israelis in Greece were advised to lie low ahead of a pro-Palestinian “day of rage,” with protests planned at dozens of sites across the country, and a recommendation to keep Israeli and Jewish identifying symbols discreet.

The warning, which covered all of Greece, felt surreal after a weekend of fun and a sense of summertime belonging. For a few days, you can trade sirens (or ghost sirens) and impending war headlines for DJs, Greek olives, and expensive fish. It turned out that Athens’s Syntagma Square, ground zero for the pro-Palestinian protests on the mainland, drew what organizers might generously call “a few hundred people.”

Mykonos didn’t rage. It just kept the music going, and kept people like Ella and Ilanit busy from morning till morning, dancing and taking in the sun. I wonder if they were still in Mykonos and if they had gotten the memo about being discreet.■