An orthodox Jewish man has been stabbed outside a kosher pizzeria in Milan. The victim was stabbed four times, including in the face, although one account said he had been stabbed ten times. Witnesses say the attacker shouted “I will kill you” twice in Italian before knocking the victim to the ground and stabbing him. A passerby intervened and in the process the attacker’s mask slipped from his face. Some accounts said that he appeared to be of Arab descent. He then fled to a car in which two men were sitting and they sped away. The victim was rushed to hospital and is reportedly in a moderate condition.
The attack took place in the Jewish Quarter of Milan. The Milanese Jewish community numbers around 7,000 people, making it the second largest in Italy after Rome. One member of the community told Le Repubblica: “We are afraid that this is an attempt to mimic the attacks in Israel” where there has been a wave of stabbings of Jews by Palestinians.
Whilst some sources named the victims as 40-year-old Nathan Graff who was visiting his father-in-law from abroad, others, including the Jewish community of Rome, said that the man was a local resident who worked in a wine shop.
We have seen other incidents of Jews being stabbed outside Israel, most recently in Marseille and New York. In Marseille, police claimed that the attack was committed by a mentally disturbed drunk man, but this was later debunked by a court which dismissed his plea of insanity.
Photo: La Repubblica
Sources: Courier della Sera, La Repubblica and Times of Israel
