A group of men attacked a 19-year-old Israeli tourist in Berlin on Saturday evening, in what authorities are investigating as a possible antisemitic hate crime.
The Israeli teen was taking a stroll in the capital’s Kreuzberg district with his 18-year-old girlfriend while speaking on the phone in Hebrew.
A car pulled up alongside the couple and three men exited the vehicle. One of them tried to converse with the Israelis in German, which police said they did not understand.
The men subsequently punched the male victim to the ground. The group proceeded to hit and kick the Israeli while he was down before fleeing the scene.
The tourist was taken to a nearby hospital, where he was treated for minor injuries to his arm and face. His girlfriend reportedly escaped unharmed.
Local officials said that an investigation had been opened for assault with a possible anti-Jewish motive. The unidentified suspects were men between 20 and 23 years old, police announced.
Israeli Ambassador to Germany Ron Prosor condemned the attack.
“Another Israeli is brutally attacked in the German capital. This is unacceptable!,” the envoy wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
“Israelis and Jews should not feel unsafe walking the streets of Berlin or any other German city. The German authorities must take every measure to stop these attacks and incitement against Israel and Jews before it is too late,” said Prosor.
A recent report on antisemitism in Germany showed a slight decrease in overall incidents, though at the same time highlighting nine instances of “extreme violence”—the most since the country’s record-keeping began in 2017.
The Kreuzberg district, which has a large immigrant Muslim population, has seen several violent attacks on Jews in recent years.
“We have a problem,” Jewish-German journalist Philipp Peyman Engel wrote on Sunday. “To put it cynically: As a Jewish newspaper, we [Jüdische Allgemeine] could open a column under the rubric ‘Jews Attacked.’ We would never run out of content. It’s shameful and sad.”
Produced in association with Jewish News Syndicate
(Additional reporting provided by JNS Reporter)
