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Jewish man in Strasbourg injured by knife attacker who 'shouted Allahu Akhbar'

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by AroundTheWorld, Aug 19, 2016.

  1. AroundTheWorld

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    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/201...injured-by-knife-attacker-who-shouted-allahu/

    A Jewish man wearing a skullcap was stabbed on the street in the eastern French city of Strasbourg by an attacker who reportedly cried "Allahu Akbar" (God is Greatest) as he carried out his assault.

    The 62-year-old named Chalom Levy, regarded as a “local hero” by his community after pulling a woman out of a blazing car some years ago, had just stepped out of his home in the Jewish district to do some shopping for the Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest on Saturday.

    “A man with a knife ran up to him and shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ and then stabbed him in the stomach,” a local rabbi and friend of the victim, Mendel Samama, told the Telegraph.

    “He tried to stab him again - he clearly wanted to kill him - but Chalom somehow managed to get away,” he said.

    Mr Levy, a retired meat factory worker, ran to a nearby café and was helped by staff and customers there, who barricaded the doors and called for police and an ambulance.

    The attacker, who police said suffers from psychiatric problems and was involved in a vicious attack on a Jewish man in 2010, lingered near the café and was arrested when police arrived.

    Mr Levy was seen in his local community as a hero, Samama said, adding that his friend “knows it was a miracle that he survived the knife attack.”

    “A few years ago he saved a woman whose cars was on fire by running into the flames and pulling her out,” he said.

    His injuries were not life-threatening and Mr Levy was expected to make a full recovery, according to Strasbourg's chief rabbi Rene Gutman.

    He managed to get away from his attacker, who was in his 40s, after being stabbed and took refuge in a nearby bar where he removed the knife from his stomach himself, local media said.

    The incident comes as France is on edge after a string of Islamic extremist attacks. Jews have been specifically targeted in some past violence.

    The attacks began with the killings in Paris in January last year at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket.

    Jews were also targeted in March 2012, when Islamist gunman Mohamed Merah killed three soldiers and four Jews, three of them children.

    Police said they were not categorising the latest assault in Strasbourg as a terrorist incident.

    Rabbi Gutman said the suspect had previously attacked a member of the Strasbourg Jewish community in 2010.

    That attack was also on a man wearing a skullcap, police told AFP news agency.

    The attacker, who stabbed his victim and beat him with an iron bar, suffered from psychiatric problems and spoke to police of his belief that Jews were running the world and were to blame for all his woes.

    The rabbi condemned the latest attack but insisted that it "in no way reflects the prevailing climate in Strasbourg," which has a large Jewish community that lives mostly in harmony with the wider community.

    But he called for measures to be taken to stop such attacks happening again.

    “If this person can go out in the city and as soon as he sees someone in a skullcap attacks him with a knife, then there is a problem,” he said.

    In January a 15-year-old Turkish-Kurdish boy attacked a Jewish teacher with a machete on a street in Marseille in the third such assault in the southern city in the space of just a few months.

    The attack on the teacher prompted Zvi Ammar, a prominent leader of the Jewish community in Marseille, France’s second largest after that in Paris, to recommend that Jewish men and boys stop wearing the skullcap in public “until better days.”

    “As soon as we are identified as Jewish we can be assaulted and even risk death,” he said.

    Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve phoned the chief rabbi of Strasbourg on Friday to express his solidarity after the knife attack in the city, the rabbi said.
     
  2. AroundTheWorld

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    FranchiseBlade should investigate if the attacker was Greek or Armenian.
     

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