Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

ISRAEL

Mankell’s bag returned – with women’s clothes

Swedish novelist Henning Mankell has had his bag returned to him by Israeli authorities after it was seized when troops raided the Ship to Gaza convoy on which he was travelling. But most of his possessions are missing from the bag, and have been replaced with women’s clothes.

Published: 30 July 2010 09:53 CEST
Mankell's bag returned - with women's clothes
Mankell addresses news conference at Volksbühne theatre in Berlin, June 3rd

Mankell was informed by Turkish Airlines on Thursday that his bag was ready to be collected from Gothenburg Landvetter Airport. When he opened it, in the presence of witnesses, it was filled with women’s clothes.

The only possessions of Mankell’s that remained were a hat and a wallet containing money and his driving licence. His mobile phone, stereo, notebook and his script for a television series about his father-in-law, Ingmar Bergman, were missing.

Mankell says he plans to write a letter to Israel’s ambassador to Sweden about the incident:

“I want to know where the rest of my belongings are and why they have sent me women’s clothes,” he told Svenska Dagbladet.

The Ship to Gaza convoy, a self-proclaimed humanitarian aid project that attempted to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza, was raided by Israeli soldiers in early June. Up to 16 people were killed in the action, with many others being imprisoned by the Israelis.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

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.

Published: 10 October 2021 09:26 CEST
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