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Israeli Assaulted in Germany While Speaking Hebrew

[additional-authors]
September 9, 2019
Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

An Israeli tourist was assaulted in Berlin on Sept. 9 as he was speaking to three other men in Hebrew, the Jerusalem Post reports.

The tourist was conversing with the three men outside of a nightclub when the assailant punched the tourist in the face and then fled. The tourist told police that the assailant was “Arab-looking,” according to the Post. The Post also noted that the police report on the matter described the assault as having an “anti-Semitic background.”

Israeli diplomat Dan Poraz tweeted out a link to the story, writing that “its 2019 not 1939.” He added in a follow-up tweet, “To almost every trip abroad, to almost any destination – Jews will usually be cautious/uncomfortable about speaking Hebrew. In fact, there’s only one place in the world in which Jews speak Hebrew freely.”

A German intelligence agency released a report in June stating that there was a 71.4 percent increase in anti-Semitic violence from 2017 to 2018 and 20 percent in anti-Semitic hate crimes overall in the same timeframe. In May, German Commissioner Felix Klein warned Jews against publicly wearing kippahs in the country, a statement he later backed down from after facing criticism over it.

“Germany’s domestic intelligence agency notes #antiSemitism is a core element of both right & left-wing extremism, and also essential to Islamist extremist ideology,” Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt tweeted in June. “We must tackle this rise in anti-Semitism and extremism, no matter the source.”

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