By AFP | Rabat
Sunday, 13 July 2014
A young man beat up a Moroccan rabbi in the economic capital of Casablanca over Israel’s deadly air war on Gaza. (Photo courtesy:
A young man beat up a Moroccan rabbi in the economic capital of Casablanca over Israel’s deadly air war on Gaza, a newspaper reported on Sunday.
Tel Quel said on its website that the attack took place on Friday as Moshe Ohayon was walking towards his synagogue.
The unidentified assailant asked: “Are you Jewish? What’s the Tsahal (Israeli army) doing to our brothers?” the weekly quoted the rabbi as saying.
Ohayan said he was punched to the ground and then pummelled until he lost consciousness.
“I have lodged a complaint and am waiting to see what happens,” he said.
According to friends contacted by AFP, he suffered three broken ribs.
Moroccan authorities had no immediate comment on the incident, which took place hours before a demonstration held in Casablanca in solidarity with the Palestinians.
Rabat has condemned as “unjustified and inadmissible” Israel’s raids on Gaza, whose declared aim is to halt rocket attacks on its territory, that have cost more than 160 Palestinian lives since Tuesday.
Morocco’s Jewish community numbered almost 300,000 in the mid-1900s, or 10 percent of the North African country’s population.
But these numbers dropped dramatically in the decades after the 1948 founding of the Jewish state, and today only around 5,000 Jews remain.
