"Murderers, go back to your homes," followed by shoving and kicking. A French Jewish tourist, traveling with his family to visit his daughter, who lives in the Lombardy capital, was attacked along with his six-year-old son at a rest stop near Lainate on the Milan-Laghi highway.
The Prosecutor's Office is now awaiting a report from the DIGOS (Special Operations Division) on the attack, partly filmed by the man on his cell phone and posted on social media. The escalation was triggered by the fact that the man and his son were wearing kippahs. "Murderers, we're not in Gaza, we're in Milan," a man shouted at them. The father and son had entered the restroom area to use the bathroom, which is downstairs, but by the time they got down the stairs, the insults had already begun, creating a domino effect . After the shout of "Free Palestine," "others got angry, and I wasn't afraid and responded," he says. "I was angry. I'm not rude or violent, but when you have to defend yourself, you have to defend yourself."
It was at this point that the man, who lives in Paris, where he has since returned, began filming the incident on his phone, then took his son to the bathroom. Upon exiting the restroom, he said there were fifteen or twenty people waiting for him, asking him to delete the video. But he refused. "At a certain point, I found myself on the floor, and they took advantage of me like animals, kicking me," he continued. "I couldn't see my son, but luckily he was with a woman who cornered him. I saw wild animals."
After the attack, the police arrived: " They told me to tell Netanyahu to stop bombing. But I'm not Israeli, I'm French, " the tourist defended himself, complaining about the anti-Semitic climate. Davide Romano, director of the Milan Jewish Brigade, made the incident public. This attack "shows us once again how anti-Semitism is on the rise in our country," he commented. "If being recognizable as Jewish is enough," adds Noemi Di Segni, president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, "to be vehemently attacked. If a family can't move freely around the country, the legitimacy of hatred and anti-Semitism has already gone viral."
(Unioneonline)
