Muslim attacker to Jew in Germany: 'Berlin is our city now'

Brandenburg Gate, Berlin (Wikimedia Commons)

Declaring Berlin "is our city now," a group of Arab men attacked an Israeli teen and two of his friends in the German capital after becoming enraged by hearing a Hebrew song on the Israeli's cellphone.

The German-language Bild newspaper, citing an Israeli newspaper, said the 17-year-old, identified only as Yonatan, and his friends were waiting for a train at the Zoologischer Garten Station when he played a song called "Tel Aviv" by an Israeli singer.

According to Yonatan, the Arab men shouted at him: "Hebrew music? For 70 years you are murdering children. Berlin is our city now and here we don't listen to f------ Jewish music."

Yonatan said he walked away, telling the men they are free to play Arabic music just as he is free to play Israeli music.

But he and his friends were followed, he said, and one of the Arab men began to threaten him.

"If I had a knife, I would kill you ... if I meet you again you are finished," the man said, according to Yonatan.

Yonatan said that when his two friends tried to intervene, the group attacked. One person was hit in the face and another was injured with a broken bottle, requiring hospital treatment, the Israeli newspaper Hayom reported.

The paper said the incident was recorded on the train station's security cameras.

Yonatan told the Israeli paper, however, the police initially didn't take the incident seriously, allowing eyewitnesses to leave without giving testimony.

Merkel: 'We now have another phenomenon'

In April, as WND reported, German Chancellor Angela Merkel admitted the massive influx of Muslim refugees is behind the recent wave of anti-Semitic attacks in Germany.

"We now have another phenomenon, as we have refugees or people of Arab origin who bring another form of anti-Semitism into the country," Merkel told Israel's Channel 10 network.

Last year, after her party took a pounding in elections, Merkel ordered the EU to intercept the vessels of refugee smugglers and escort them back to North Africa, noted Jihad Watch blogger Christine Douglass-Williams.

But just three months later, she urged Europe to take in even more refugees and said Islam is "not the source of terror."

In the interview, Merkel observed that in Germany, no Jewish nursery, school or synagogue can be left without police protection.

"This dismays us," she said.

Earlier in April, a 19-year-old Syrian asylum seeker turned himself in to police after being caught on video attacking a man in Berlin wearing a Jewish kippa.

The victim, not a Jew, was 21-year-old Israeli Arab Adam Armoush, who told the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle he donned a traditional Jewish skullcap as an experiment after a friend told him that wearing one in public in Germany was unsafe.

Armoush didn't believe it and sought to prove his friend wrong.

The video shows the Syrian man whipping Armoush with a belt while shouting "Yehudi!" or Jew, in Arabic, reported the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz.

Armoush told the Israeli broadcaster Kan TV the attackers "kept cursing us, and my friend asked them to stop cursing."

"They started to get angry and one of them ran to me and I knew it was important to film it because there would be no way to catch him by the time police arrived."

Noting the rise in anti-Semitism in Europe, Haartez said Jewish students have reported anti-Semitic bullying in schools in recent months and Israeli flags were burned during a recent protest in Berlin.

In April, Germany's most important music prize was given to a rap band that includes the line "my body more defined than Auschwitz inmates," drawing outrage from government officials.

Across Europe, especially among youth, "Jew-hate is the new cool," said Abigail R. Esman, who writes from the Netherlands and New York for the Investigative Project on Terror.

In January, she wrote, an alleged arson attack took place at a suburban Paris kosher supermarket on the third anniversary of the terror attack at the kosher Hyper-Cacher market outside of Paris in which a Muslim terrorist killed four people after a standoff.

Among the attacks in France in 2017, a Jewish woman was killed by a Muslim neighbor who pushed her out a window, and a Jewish family was robbed and held hostage.

"You're Jews, so where is the money," the assailants allegedly said.

Sweden also has seen a disproportionate number of anti-Semitic attacks recently, Esman said. In December, Muslims hurled Molotov cocktails at Jewish teens at a synagogue party in Gothenburg, and firebombs were planted at a Jewish cemetery in Malmo.

At a Stockholm protest against President Trump's call to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, the New York Times reported, a speaker called Jews "apes and pigs," a common anti-Jewish epithet.

And in Malmo, according to the Times, children at a Jewish kindergarten played behind bulletproof glass.