Elderly African Refugee Attacked And Beaten In Jerusalem
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com

A 68-year-old refugee from Eritrea man was reportedly seriously injured by drunk youths who beat the man on Agrippas Street near downtown Jerusalem early Friday morning. A 23-year-old man who tried help the man fend off his attackers was also beaten.

Citing the news site Walla, the Times of Israel reported that the Eritrean refugee was “badly beaten all over his body.” The younger man, who works in  a bakery located near the site of the attack, was “punched several times in the face.”

Both men were taken to the Hadassah Ein-Kerem Hospital.

Last month, still unidentified arsonists set fire to an occupied apartment on Jaffa Road. The ten African refugees inside managed to escape. Four of them, all Eritreans, were treated for smoke inhalation. Graffiti spray-painted above a door of the apartment read, “Get out of the neighborhood.”

In May, an anti-African-refugee riot broke out in South Tel Aviv during a right wing anti-African-refugee demonstration attended by rightist and Orthodox politicians. Shops were looted and Africans were attacked. Smaller isolated attacks took place earlier in the month and in the days following the riot.

In late April, South Tel Aviv apartments housing African refugees and a daycare serving their children were firebombed. 

No known arrests were made in any of these attacks. 

According to the Times of Israel, on Sunday Israel’s Ministry of the Interior reported that the number of Africans illegally entering Israel from the Sinai peninsula had dramatically been reduced in June after Israel began a program to round up and deport Africans who entered Israel illegally, rewarding those who agree to deportation with small financial grants and air tickets home. Those who did not agree to be deported are being held in prison or in detention camps.