Attacks on Jews and synagogues continue to spread around the world. In Geneva, anti-Israel protesters copied their French counterparts by trying to force their way into the Beth Yaakov Great Synagogue. According to the Intercommunal Coordination Against Anti-Semitism and Defamation, a woman wearing a Muslim-style veil tried to enter the shul last Shabbat with a Palestinian flag and a sign reading “Every synagogue is an Israeli embassy.”
Security guards at the synagogue blocked her from entering, but she returned returned later that night with three men, and a second Muslim woman. According to the European Jewish Press, the group told police they were ‘’simply exercising their right to protest’’ and promised to return next Shabbat.
Scandinavia
To the north, Jewish communities around Scandinavia were rocked over the past week by a series of Judeophobic attacks. In Uppsala, Sweden, a woman was severely beaten by a Muslim girl for wearing a Star of David necklace. “A Muslim girl saw that I was wearing the Star of David on my neck and she started swearing at me and spat in my face,” Anna Sjögren told the World Zionist Organization Center for Countering Antisemitism. “There were at least ten witnesses to the attack. All ten of them were wearing hijabs or scarfs in the colors of the PLO. Some surrounding witnesses claim that I ‘tripped’ and fell and that no one hurt me. It’s just unbelievable.”
Uppsala is the fourth largest city in Sweden after Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö and hosts a large Muslim population, but Sjögren – who suffered injuries in her jaw, eyes and all over her body – said she could not report the attack to police because the attackers would find her “and know I was the Jew who reported it.”
Several days before the attack on Sjögren, windows were smashed at a Jewish school in Copenhagen, Denmark, and pro-Palestinian graffiti was spray-painted on its walls on Friday. According to a report in the Copenhagen Post, headmaster Jan Hansen said ”there have been parents who didn’t want to send their children to school today and there have been some children who were sad and a bit afraid who we had to send home.” In Brussels, a man hit a 75-year-old woman and pushed her to the ground after hearing her Jewish-sounding while standing in line at City Hall for municipal services.
South America In Colombia, Semana – the country’s premier weekly magazine -published an op-ed arguing that Palestinian land has been occupied, “since three thousand years ago, when Jews arrived there escaping from Egypt with Moses and Joshua, cutting heads and foreskins off of local inhabitants.”
Down Under
In Australia, a pedestrian was attacked in the heart of Melbourne’s Jewish community for wearing Hebrew writing on his t-shirt. In Western Australia, a rabbi and a Jewish school were attacked in the city of Perth, while in Sydney, a school bus with Jewish children was targeted.
