Here Paret, here is a real jew hater, so please, consider your disparaging words; this is just a forum on the internet, it isnt life and death:
Last update - 00:09 12/01/2006
Worshipers knifed in central Moscow synagogue
By Yossi Melman, Amiram Barkat and Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondents and Reuters
A man armed with a knife stabbed and wounded 11 people, including three Israelis, in a Chabad synagogue in downtown Moscow on Wednesday.
A spokesman for the Jewish community in Russia said that four of the wounded were seriously injured in the attack, which occurred around 5:30 P.M. (1430 GMT). The spokesman said that the wounded were taken to hospital, and that some of them were undergoing surgery.
Polyakova Synagogue Rabbi Yitzhak Kogan, who is also an Israeli citizen, was among the injured. A witness said Kogan and several security guards wrestled the attacker to the ground and held him until police arrived.
Advertisement
Click here to view a chronology of recent major anti-Semitic incidents in Russia
Moscow police arrested a man identified as Alexander Koftzev from Moscow, suspected of carrying out the attack. Moscow authorities reported Koftzev was in his 20s and belonged to a radical group with anti-Semitic and nationalist ideology. Other motives were, nevertheless, also being investigated.
Russian news reports said prosecutors considered the attack a hate crime and that the country's top prosecutor, Vladimir Ustinov, was personally taking control of the investigation.
Gaydamak offers help
Israeli-Russian billionaire Arkady Gaydamak, who lives not far from the scene of the attack, arrived at the synagogue. He said that he would have the wounded Israelis flown to Israel in his private jet on Wednesday evening. He also instructed a medical team to join the flight.
Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom spoke to officials at Israel's embassy in Moscow and instructed them to convey a stern message to local authorities that they should take strong measures to counter anti-Semitism.
Local Jewish leaders said that the incident was yet one more expression to the rampant anti-Semitism in Russia. Rabbi Berl Lazer branded the situation as a plague. "In places where Fascist ideas are being promoted they become reality, as we saw today in Moscow," he said.
Jewish Agency Chairman Zeev Bielski said the incident should be treated as "a terror incident and not only as an act of anti-Semitism."
"The grave incident in Moscow is the result of trends and many anti-Semitic events which have happened in the former Soviet countries," Bielski said. He urged local authorities to act decisively against anti-Semitism.
"We expect a thorough investigation and the full judicial process in this serious anti-Semitic terror act," he said.
Skinhead burst into shul
An initial investigation revealed that a skinhead wearing a leather jacket told the guards at the entrance to the synagogue "I will kill people. I will kill Jews," before bursting into the synagogue.
Avraham Berkowitz, the executive director of Jewish communities in the former Soviet Union, said people inside the building told him that the man got past security and began stabbing people, attacking six in all, including an Israeli citizen.
A secretary at the synagogue who gave her first name as Tatyana said she heard people screaming as the man stabbed them, but the man himself did not appear to say anything.
"I saw a man run in. He had a big knife," said one woman who worked in the kitchen at the synagogue and gave only her first name Svetlana. "I saw people lying on the floor, cut by a knife."
She said she had heard the man had attacked people in the kitchen while people were eating, and then went upstairs and began to attack people in offices before he was stopped by the synagogue's rabbi and others.
She said the man had a knife sheath hanging around his neck.
Among those wounded was the synagogue's rabbi's son-in-law, who is a rabbi himself and was undergoing surgery, said Berkowitz.
An eyewitness told Ekho Moskvyi radio that he overheard the man telling police after he was arrested that "he was killing them."
People milled about outside the building after the attack, including a man wearing a yarmulke who had blood stains visible on his shirt.
Latest in series of attacks
The stabbing is the latest in a series of incidents apparently involving skinheads or racist groups in Russia.
Rights groups have warned that hate groups have grown in recent years, with their anger targeted mainly at foreigners and dark-skinned immigrants from the poorer former Soviet republics of the Caucasus and Central Asia.
Many rights groups also say prosecutors routinely downplay hate crimes, choosing instead to bring less serious charges.
The Russian Orthodox Church, which has made efforts to reach out to Jewish officials in a country that has a history of pogroms and anti-Semitism, condemned the attack.
"Law enforcement agencies and authorities and all of society must do everything so that such a thing is not repeated, either in the center of Moscow or anywhere else," church spokesman Father Vsevolod Chaplin was quoted
as saying by RIA-Novosti.
Gorin said the attack should serve as a message to the Russian government and society to fight racism and anti-Semitism. This was "the latest result of the brazen and practically unpunished propaganda of fascism in this country," he said.
"If today's act does not sound an alarm, society faces grave danger." he said |
