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Apparently, it’s open season on Israelis all over Europe. In Bruges, Belgium, an Israeli father and daughter were set upon by a pro-Hamas mob (religion not specified, but it seems clear that they were Muslims, enraged that the two had removed an anti-Israel sticker from the wall of a train station). They threw the father down on the ground, and proceeded to kick him in the head, breaking the 64-year-old father’s jaw. More on this latest display of antisemitic savagery can be found here: “Israeli Tourist Attacked by Mob in Belgium, Suffers Broken Jaw,” Algemeiner, May 17, 2024:
A 64-year-old Israel tourist was attacked by a mob in the Belgian city of Bruges and suffered a broken jaw after he and his daughter removed an anti-Israel sticker in a train station on Friday, according to the European Jewish Association and Israel’s Embassy in Belgium.
The assailants saw Amnon Ohana and his 29-year-old daughter Shira removing the sticker from a wall at a Bruges train station and proceeded to attack the father, punching and kicking him.
The Israeli tourists fled to a lower floor but were pursued by at least one of the attackers, who knocked Ohana to the ground and continued to strike him.
After the assailants left the scene, Ohana was taken to the hospital and diagnosed with a broken jaw.
According to several reports, passersby ignored the father and daughter’s pleas for help.
Was it because they shared the mob’s hatred for Israelis? Or was it simple cowardice, fear of being attacked themselves by the mob, if they tried to help Amnon Ohana and his daughter, if only by calling on their attackers to stop?
Ohana filed a complaint with local police against the assailants but reportedly said the authorities did not seem willing to prosecute them to the full extent of the law, despite the attack being filmed by his daughter and security cameras….
This lackadaisical attitude on the part of the police, who were not interested in going after those who had beaten Amnon Ohana and broken his jaw, does suggest a palpable want of sympathy for the Israeli victim. The beating had been recorded both on security cameras and by Ohana’s daughter. How hard would it have been to identify the violent malefactors, given that they had been captured on several cameras? Would the police in Bruges have behaved differently if the tourists who were attacked were not Israelis, but Americans or British or French? You bet they would. But it’s open season on Israelis, whose ongoing “genocide” in Gaza makes them fair game, all over Europe.
Rabbi Menachem Margolin, head of the European Jewish Association, condemned the assault and the rise in antisemitism, noting that the incidents have been escalating to full-scale violence against Jews and Israelis.
“It is no longer just verbal violence or spitting but real physical attacks that can end in disaster,” Margolin said, according to Israeli media reports. “Don’t wait for us to be murdered to understand that you must act more decisively against the troublemakers. Today it is against Jews and tomorrow the incited mob will attack anyone who looks Western in their eyes.”
Margolin then called on Belgium to prosecute the assailants to the fullest extent of the law.
“It cannot be that a Western country claiming to be a state of law like Belgium will not act for the immediate arrest of the antisemitic assailants and refrain from immediate enforcement to prosecute them to the full severity of the law,” he added.
But the police clearly have been dragging their feet. They should not have had to be prodded to investigate this crime, but they were. Maybe some of them are just not interested in protecting Israelis, citizens of what has become, since October 7, the most vilified country on earth. Some in the police probably think the Israeli tourists were asking for it, for hadn’t they removed an anti-Israel sticker from a wall in the rail station? What business was it of theirs to pull it off?
Israeli tourists have been attacked by a mob gathered outside an Israeli-owned hotel in Athens, where only the arrival of police saved the tourists inside from attack. There have been attacks on Israeli tourists in London and Paris and Rome. A Jewish cemetery in Vienna was vandalized. In North America, a 14-year-old Jewish girl was savagely attacked in a Canadian schoolyard by a classmate who jumped on her from behind. Classmates watched. No one came to her aid.
In Brooklyn, Orthodox Jewish children were playing on a sidewalk, when a bicyclist rode up to them, dismounted, and started to beat them. The assailant smacked one of the children on the face, kicking him to the ground. The man threw another child to the ground before repeatedly kicking him. The children fled, and the man returned to his bicycle.
This January, a couple from Israel were attacked at a restaurant in northern Berlin after an Arabic-speaking man overheard them chatting in Hebrew.
These are just a handful of the attacks Israeli tourists and Jews in Europe and North America have been enduring. No passersby have jumped in on the side of the victims. The police have been largely, though not always, indifferent. Since October 7, the stench of antisemitism has been in the air. The world seems to have forgotten who were the victims of atrocities on October 7, and who the perpetrators.