A Melbourne, Australia man wearing an IDF t-shirt said two Arabic-speaking men assaulted him on the street.
Zachary Gomo told JTA he was walking to a shop around
10 P.M. in a Jewish neighborhood on Thursday night wearing a T-shirt
from his service in the Israel Defense Forces when he claims he was set
upon by two young men.
“I noticed them when it was too late, they jumped on
me, started punching, screaming Kalb Yehud (Jewish dog), Alla hu Akbar
(Allah is the greatest) and something about Gaza in Arabic,” Gomo said.
“One of them tried to pull me to the ground, I
started fighting and punching back,” he recalled. “I grabbed one of them
by the throat and screamed at them, cursing in Arabic as well. This
shocked them, they ran off.”
Gomo said he was “covered in cuts,” and had a swollen
face. The Community Security Group accompanied him to a police station
to make a statement, he said.
“It appears from the words used by the attackers that
he was targeted only because he was clearly identifiable as a Jew,”
Nina Bassat, president of the Jewish Community Council of Victoria, said
in a statement.
“This was an act of cowardice and aggression that has
no place in our society,” she added. “From past experience it is clear
that it is no coincidence that this attack occurred as hostilities
between Israel and Gaza are escalating.”
Community members, she added, “should be free to walk
on the streets of Melbourne and to live a peaceful life in what has
until now been a model of multicultural harmonious co-existence.”
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