11 September 2007
German politicians and Jewish leaders have condemned the stabbing of a rabbi in Frankfurt on Friday.
The rabbi was treated in a hospital shortly after the attack. His injuries were not critical. According to the police report the assailant is reported to have approached the rabbi on Friday evening, and said something unintelligible in what appeared to the victim to be Arabic. When the rabbi asked the man in German what he wanted, the man made a death threat, also in German. The assailant, who is reported to have been of Mediterranean appearance and accompanied by two women, reportedly said "I am going to kill you, Jew," before stabbing the rabbi in the abdomen. The assailant and the women with him then fled. Prosecutors are now offering a reward of € 2,000 (US$ 2,750) for information that would lead to the assailant.
"I have visited the victim in the hospital and I am shocked and angry," said Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany. "In view of the increasing number of attacks on minorities in the country, one should think about whether the discussion about 'no-go areas' should now be expanded to include other regions in Germany and not only its eastern parts."
Several racially motivated assaults in recent weeks -- the mobbing of eight Indian men by a group of 50 Germans shouting racist slogans in the town of Mügeln in the eastern state of Saxony, an attack on two men from Sudan and Ethiopia in a small town near Mainz in southwestern state of Rhineland-Palatinate and an attack on an Iraqi man in Magdeburg in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt -- have rekindled the debate about xenophobia, racism and right-wing extremism in Germany.
