Verbal, physical assault on two Jews in Berlin street caught on camera

BERLIN, April 18 (Xinhua) -- Two young Jews have become the victims of an anti-Semitic verbal and physical assault here, German police confirmed on Wednesday.

Video footage of the incident caught on a smartphone camera has been spread widely across online media.

According to police, a 21-year-old Israeli national and a 24-year-old German national were attacked while walking through the affluent Berlin district of Prenzlauer Berg.

Both individuals were wearing kippas, a traditional form of Jewish headwear, which led to animated three male strangers to begin hauling anti-Semitic insults at them.

Verbal abuse escalated into physical assault when the perpetrators were urged by one of their victims to refrain from the insults.

Online video footage shows how an Arab-speaking member of the group began lashing out at the 21-year-old Israeli with his belt while repeatedly calling him a "Jahudi," which is the Arab word for Jew.

The younger victim was treated for minor injuries and subsequently told public broadcasters that he and his Jewish friend had been "walking on the street as normal", minding their business, when the attack began. When he tried to follow the group of perpetrators after the assault he was threatened with a glass bottle before a female eyewitness intervened.

The State Protection Office of the German police, which is responsible for politically-motivated offenses, has launched an investigation into the case.

Levi Salomon, the spokesperson for the Jewish Forum for Democracy and against anti-Semitism, told press on Wednesday that it was "unbearable" that a young man was openly attacked on the streets of the German capital just because he had worn a symbol of his Jewish faith.

The incident showed that "Jewish people are not safe here either," Salomon added. He urged policymakers and civil society to unite in finding an adequate response to a growing number of anti-Semitic incidents, particularly pronounced in circles of young Muslim males.

Fears of growing anti-Semitism are currently the subject of heated public debate.

Speaking to the newspaper Passauer Neue Presse, Helmut Holter, president of the German standing conference of the ministers of education and cultural affairs, warned that it was not enough to merely react to incidents after the fact.

Holter emphasized that there were also increasing numbers of anti-Semitic offenses at German schools, creating a need for pedagogues to eliminate racist sentiments among youth.

Earlier, revelations that a second-grade schoolgirl was bullied at a Berlin primary education institution by older Muslim pupils because she was Jewish provoked widespread condemnation in German media and society. Enditem