JTA — When dozens of US Jewish girls emerged from a storm drain in Nyack, New York, on Wednesday after becoming lost on a school trip, local officials described the episode as a fortunate ending to a potentially dangerous situation.

On social media, however, the incident quickly drew a slew of antisemitic comments.

“They can’t help it. Roaches and rats love the sewers,” wrote one Facebook user on a post by the Rockland Daily.

“Those tunnels were promised to them 3,000 years ago,” another user wrote, referencing the common online antisemitic phrase ridiculing the Jewish connection to Israel.

Many of the comments also referenced the 2024 incident at the Chabad-Lubavitch movement’s world headquarters in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in which a group from the movement attempted to dig an unauthorized tunnel beneath the building.

“From the tunnels in Brooklyn to the tunnels in nyack! The black coats never disappoint,” one user wrote. “There [sic] drawn to tunnels. Natural instinct,” another wrote.

The girls, students from the Toras Emachu school in Monsey, New York, had been visiting Nyack Memorial Park on a school trip when they entered a large drainage culvert located in the park, according to the Orangetown Police Department.

While walking through the tunnel system, the students got lost but were heard by individuals in the town who alerted police, according to Nyack Mayor Joseph Rand.

“First responders immediately came to the scene and located all the girls at various points in Nyack,” Rand wrote in a post on Facebook. “Technically, none of the girls were ‘rescued,’ because they all came out under their own power, but everyone’s lucky that the authorities responded and........

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