The savages also threatened to kill her. “Rabbi beating sparks fury in Germany,” by Yannick Pasquet for AFP, August 30 (thanks to David):
The brutal daylight beating of a rabbi in front of his six-year-old daughter sparked furious condemnation in Germany Thursday, with some Jewish groups saying they feared a rise in anti-Semitic behaviour.
The attack on the 53-year-old by four youths, thought to be Arabs, left him hospitalised and the Jewish community outraged, already up in arms over a court ruling in western Germany that outlaws religious circumcision.
One youth smashed the rabbi in the face several times after asking him if he was Jewish, apparently because he was wearing a traditional head covering, police said.
The assailants fled, but not before aiming death threats at the young girl, according to authorities, who have launched an investigation into the Tuesday attack.
Berlin rabbi Andreas Nachama told AFP that Germany had seen over the past few years “a rising hostility towards Jews due to the conflict in the Middle East.”
“Verbal attacks against Jews have increased,” said Gideon Joffe, head of the Jewish Community of Berlin, in an interview with local daily Tagesspiegel.
Meanwhile, the rector of the Abraham Geiger College in Berlin, an academic seminary for rabbis, warned his students against wearing the yarmulke, or traditional Jewish head covering.
“If you are no longer seen as a Jewish person, you are safer,” Walter Homolka told Friday’s edition of the Berliner Morgenpost daily.
Another Berlin-based rabbi, Walter Rothschild, told German radio: “I have been spat on in broad daylight in (the central Berlin square of) Wittenbergplatz and had slogans linked to the Middle East shouted at me.”…