Former Israeli soldier attacked on Berlin street
A former Israeli soldier was attacked in the German capital Berlin, police said Saturday, with one or several unknown assailants spraying him with an irritant and throwing him to the ground.
The 29-year-old was wearing a top with the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) logo when the attackers started harassing him on Friday about his religion, the police added, calling it "an anti-Semitic attack".
Officers are seeking the assailants, who fled immediately after the attack, on suspicion of a politically-motivated crime.
Saturday is the second anniversary of an attack by a far-right gunman on a synagogue in the eastern German city of Halle, who killed two in a rampage when he failed to break into the house of worship.
It was one of a string of incidents that led authorities to declare the far right and neo-Nazis Germany's top security threat.
Also this week, a musician claimed he was turned away from a hotel in eastern city Leipzig for wearing a Star-of-David pendant.
While the allegations prompted a fierce response from a Jewish community unsettled by increasing anti-Semitic crimes, several investigations have been mounted into contradictory accounts of the incident.
In 2019, police recorded 2,032 anti-Semitic crimes, an increase of 13 percent year-on-year.
"The threat is complex and comes from different directions" from jihadists to the far right, the federal government's commissioner for the fight against anti-Semitism Felix Klein said recently.
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The 29-year-old was wearing a top with the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) logo when the attackers started harassing him on Friday about his religion, the police added, calling it "an anti-Semitic attack".
Officers are seeking the assailants, who fled immediately after the attack, on suspicion of a politically-motivated crime.
Saturday is the second anniversary of an attack by a far-right gunman on a synagogue in the eastern German city of Halle, who killed two in a rampage when he failed to break into the house of worship.
It was one of a string of incidents that led authorities to declare the far right and neo-Nazis Germany's top security threat.
Also this week, a musician claimed he was turned away from a hotel in eastern city Leipzig for wearing a Star-of-David pendant.
While the allegations prompted a fierce response from a Jewish community unsettled by increasing anti-Semitic crimes, several investigations have been mounted into contradictory accounts of the incident.
In 2019, police recorded 2,032 anti-Semitic crimes, an increase of 13 percent year-on-year.
"The threat is complex and comes from different directions" from jihadists to the far right, the federal government's commissioner for the fight against anti-Semitism Felix Klein said recently.
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