SHARE
COPY LINK

ISRAEL

Swedish Gaza evacuation postponed

Swedish citizens trapped in Gaza will not be evacuated on Wednesday as originally planned, the foreign ministry has confirmed.

“This is due to an escalation of the fighting. The International Committee of the Red Cross is of the view that their safety cannot be guaranteed,” said ministry spokesman André Mkandawire.

According to Mkandawire, the Swedish consulate in Jerusalem spent much of Tuesday evening trying to get in touch with the 34 Swedes hoping to leave Gaza.

“We’re now back to square one more or less and have no information as to when they can make the journey home,” he said.

More and more people have been getting in touch with the consulate in Jerusalem as Israel continues its ground offensive.

If travel permits are issued and the Swedes are allowed to leave Gaza, they will travel by bus with a diplomatic escort through the border crossing at Erez.

ISRAEL

Former Israeli soldier attacked on Berlin street

A former Israeli soldier was attacked in the German capital Berlin, police said Saturday, with one or several unknown assailants spraying him with an irritant and throwing him to the ground.

Former Israeli soldier attacked on Berlin street
Israeli soldiers on operation near the Gaza Strip. Photo: dpa | Ilia Yefimovich

The 29-year-old was wearing a top with the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) logo when the attackers started harassing him on Friday about his religion, the police added, calling it “an anti-Semitic attack”.

Officers are seeking the assailants, who fled immediately after the attack, on suspicion of a politically-motivated crime.

Saturday is the second anniversary of an attack by a far-right gunman on a synagogue in the eastern German city of Halle, who killed two in a rampage when he failed to break into the house of worship.

It was one of a string of incidents that led authorities to declare the far right and neo-Nazis Germany’s top security threat.

Also this week, a musician claimed he was turned away from a hotel in eastern city Leipzig for wearing a Star-of-David pendant.

While the allegations prompted a fierce response from a Jewish community unsettled by increasing anti-Semitic crimes, several investigations have been mounted into contradictory accounts of the incident.

In 2019, police recorded 2,032 anti-Semitic crimes, an increase of 13 percent year-on-year.

“The threat is complex and comes from different directions” from jihadists to the far right, the federal government’s commissioner for the fight against anti-Semitism Felix Klein said recently.

SHOW COMMENTS