The Chabad House in Kathmandu, Nepal, which hosts thousands of Israeli backpackers every year, said on Sunday it was being forced to relocate abruptly because of growing pressure from its landlord, accusing the landlord of “antisemitism.”

However, people familiar with the issue strongly rejected the charge, telling The Times of Israel that the decision was purely a financial matter. The couple that runs the Chabad, Rabbi Chezky and Chani Lifshitz, had failed to pay rent for as much as several years and owed more than $100,000 in back payments, multiple sources said.

In a Facebook post, Chani Lifshitz said that she and her husband were “told explicitly: Leave. Now,” after months of “another request from the landlord, another demand, another restriction, another decree.”

At first, she wrote, “we were asked to remove all the Hebrew signs — so it wouldn’t be seen that there was a Jewish presence here, so [the landlord] wouldn’t be suspected by Iran of being a spy.”

At the same time, said Lifshitz, the landlord raised the rent repeatedly until it reached a point that was “impossible to meet.” It was becoming clear, she said, that “they don’t want this........

© The Times of Israel