A Syrian-Palestinian man has been charged with assault after being filmed in Berlin attacking a man wearing a kippah in a video which went viral.
“Knaan Al S”, 19, was charged with bodily harm and slander after he attacked Adam Armoush in the city’s Prenzlauer Berg district on April 17.
The video of the incident showed the attacker hitting Mr Armoush, 21, with a belt, while shouting the word “Yahud”, the Arabic word for “Jew”.
Mr Armoush, an Israeli Arab, said he had worn a kippah after being told by a Jewish friend that it was dangerous to publicly wear the item in Germany.
Adam A., the victim of yesterday’s anti-Semitic attack in Berlin wanted to find out how risky it is to wear a kippa in Germany. He explains what happened. pic.twitter.com/yJ4fjHL9pK
— DW | Politics (@dw_politics) April 18, 2018
“The friend of mine, when he gave us the kippah as a gift, he said it’s unsafe to go out with a kippah on the streets of Germany, and we had a discussion about it,” he told the Deutsche Welle German national broadcaster.
“I was saying that it is really safe. I wanted to prove it, but it ended like that.”
The video of the incident went viral, with Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, condemning the attack. The assailant, who has lived in Germany since 2015, handed himself in to the police two days after the attack.
The following week, thousands of Jewish and non-Jewish people took part in rallies in Berlin and other German cities, all wearing kippot, to protest against antisemitism.
