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ISRAEL

Israel to post top envoy to Norway

Israel is sending one of its top diplomats to Norway, hoping that he will be able to repair the country's image after Druze poet Naim Araidi was removed from the post, accused of sexual harassment.

Israel to post top envoy to Norway
Raphael Schutz. Photo: Andorra foreign ministry
According to Norway's VG newspaper, Israel is likely to Raphael Schutz, a former ambassador to Spain, to the role. 
 
Schutz, who currently heads the Europe section of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, was described as "one of the best" by the newspaper's sources. 
 
"This is a sensational appointment. People at this level are usually ambassadors in one of the G8 countries, and not a small country like Norway" the source said. 
 
Naim Araidi resigned in February after several Norwegian female employees at the embassy accused him of sexually harassing them. 
 
A rare non-Jew in the Israeli diplomatic service, the respected Druze poet was intended to impress on Norwegians the diversity of the country and the fact that Arab and Druze Israelis enjoy a high level of rights. 

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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.

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