A rabbi was violently assaulted in Jaffa on Sunday in an apparent hate crime while trying to buy an apartment to house his house.
Two men in their thirties were arrested for defeating Rabbi Eliyahu Mali, who runs Shirat Moshe Hesder Yeshiva in the mixed Jewish-Arab city adjacent to Tel Aviv.
Channel 12 reported that Mali and his colleague were going to a building in Jaffa to view the property. The two are surrounded by Arab residents of the area, who start yelling at them and ordering them to leave. When they refused and started filming the incident, the suspects started beating Mali and his colleague.
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Mali did not need hospitalization due to his injuries.
Photos posted online showed the rabbi being kicked to the ground in his sixties.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the “violent attack” and urged law enforcement to bring the attackers to justice quickly.
Law-abiding lawmakers also strongly condemned the attack, calling it anti-Semitic.
“The state of Israel is not a shtetl in which Jews can cause harm, ”tweeted Yamina party leader Naftali Bennett, referring to the Jewish hamlets of Eastern Europe. “The serious and open violence against Rabbi Eliyahu Mali, the head of the hesder Yesha in Jaffa, is a … national disgrace. ‘
“We are witnessing a series of attacks by Arab attackers on Jews who hold Torah, which is deliberate and anti-Semitic,” he said.
Jerusalem Affairs Minister Rafi Peretz described the incident as a “cold” and urged police to bring the attackers to justice.
Police said they are investigating the matter.
The incident took place days after a Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem was arrested on suspicion of slapping two ultra-Orthodox boys on a train in the capital and then posting footage of the unsolved assault on TikTok .
