A group of young men threw a firecracker at an Israeli reporter over the weekend as she was on camera in Berlin.
The reporter, Antonia Yamin from the public broadcasting network Kan, can be seen speaking in Hebrew about Brexit when the four men walk by the camera; one of them sticks his hand in front of the camera.
Yamin then stops and angrily asks them to leave, but then she and her cameraman suddenly run away as a firecracker is thrown at them.
“As you can see on the video you can’t report in Hebrew in Neukölln, Berlin without being disturbed and without people throwing Firecrackers at you,” Yamin tweeted on Sunday.
In subsequent tweets on Monday, Yamin explained that the police asked for a statement and she said that while she is not one to assume anti-Semitism, she thinks the group attacked her because she was speaking Hebrew:
2/ I would like to praise my colleagues here in Germany who reported about the incident in a very serious way in all the major newspapers in the country. For those who do not read German I will repeat what I told them – I do not shout headlines like "anti-Semitism" because
— Antonia Yamin אנטוניה ימין (@antonia_yamin) November 26, 2018
3/ I take the subject very seriously. I do not know for certain why the young men threw the firecracker. I can only talk about facts and they are: I spoke Hebrew while reporting on the street, my microphone has the name of my channel written on it in big Hebrew letters
— Antonia Yamin אנטוניה ימין (@antonia_yamin) November 26, 2018
4/ and they asked me "where does it go." I emphasize that in my opinion it is less important whether the men knew that I was Jewish/Israeli or that they just wanted to harass a woman in the street. I just know that there are areas in Berlin where young people allow themselves to
— Antonia Yamin אנטוניה ימין (@antonia_yamin) November 26, 2018
5/ behave as if the street is theirs and this is not okay! I (even though half German) know that I am a "guest" in this country and that is why I often set myself higher standards of behavior – because that's what guests in a country are supposed to do.
— Antonia Yamin אנטוניה ימין (@antonia_yamin) November 26, 2018
Yamin also told Vice, “I only go to Neukölln when I need to for work. I feel uncomfortable in those neighborhoods when I’m speaking Hebrew and holding a microphone with Hebrew script on it.”
Neukölln has a large immigrant population; the German Bild paper is reporting that the four male youths were immigrants.
Anti-Semitic incidents increased by 55 percent in 2017.
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