Police in London are searching for five attackers who assaulted a 22-year-old Israeli man speaking Hebrew in the Golders Green neighborhood, treating the incident — which left the victim with cuts and bruises to his face and body — as an antisemitic hate crime.
The man, who lives in London, left an apartment in the Jewish neighborhood at 2 a.m. Monday to speak on the phone without disturbing his roommates. Five masked men speaking Arabic were nearby, heard him speaking and suddenly began chasing him. They caught the man, dragged him across the street and beat him brutally until he nearly lost consciousness.
The attackers also tore the Israeli man’s clothes, threw away his shoes and shouted insults at him in Arabic, according to reports. A neighbor heard the commotion and called police. The five attackers managed to flee before police arrived.
“I had this feeling, like I thought I was going to die," the victim told the British-Jewish newspaper The Jewish Chronicle. "They caught me completely off guard. I wasn’t ready. I saw them approaching me, and I had a suspicious feeling about them, but in one second suddenly one of them ran toward me and jumped on me.”
He said that after being dragged across the street, several of the attackers formed a circle around him and repeatedly kicked him while he tried to protect himself with his eyes closed.
“They were shouting at me in Arabic,” the man said. Although he lost track of time, he estimated the attack lasted “about five minutes.” Before fleeing, the attackers also stole one of his shoes.
'A violent and shocking attack'
A spokesman for the Community Security Trust (CST), a Jewish security organization, called it "a violent and shocking attack in the heart of Golders Green. The incident is being treated by the Metropolitan Police as an antisemitic hate crime, and we thank them for their swift response. CST is providing support to the victim and his family. We urge anyone who witnessed what happened to contact the police and CST immediately. At a time of rising antisemitism, incidents like this highlight the very real dangers facing Jewish communities.”
The Metropolitan Police urged anyone who witnessed the incident to contact police immediately. "At a time of rising antisemitism, incidents like this highlight the real dangers facing Jewish communities,” the police said in a statement.
London has seen several incidents recently classified as antisemitic hate crimes. Over the weekend, police searched for a pro-Palestinian man who threatened to “behead Jews” during a confrontation outside a mosque in east London. Last month, two Jews were seriously wounded in a stabbing attack in Golders Green. A month earlier, masked men set fire to ambulances belonging to a Jewish rescue organization outside a synagogue in the neighborhood.