Canadian JDL member indicted for assault on Arab teacher

Yosef Steynovitz also charged with hate crime for punching, hitting 55-year-old Palestinian-American outside AIPAC conference

A Canadian member of the Jewish Defense League was indicted by a grand jury in Washington, DC, for charges that include an assault on an Arab teacher outside the AIPAC conference in Washington, DC.

Yosef Steynovitz, 32, of Thornhill, Ontario, faces one count of assaulting a man with a dangerous weapon and one count of assaulting another man. The third count, assault with significant bodily injury, refers to the beating of Kamal Nayfeh, a 55-year-old Palestinian-American community college teacher who was reportedly walking to the conference when the attack happened, according to the Canadian Jewish News.

The third count includes a hate crime enhancement for “anti-Arab bias” that could lead to an increased penalty, if Steynovitz is convicted.

The dangerous weapon referred to in the indictment is a pole, as well as a shoe, both used in the attack on Nayfeh.

According to the police report from March, Nayfeh said he got into a “verbal altercation” with Steynovitz, who then punched Nayfeh “about the face area.” Nayfeh fell to the ground, according to the report, and Steynovitz and Rami Lubranicki, 59, of Howell, NJ, who also was charged in the incident, kicked him in his side and hit him in the right eye with a wooden pole.

Steynovitz will be arraigned in court in the District of Columbia on January 3.

The Jewish Defense League was founded in New York by the ultra-nationalist Rabbi Meir Kahane in 1968. In 2001, the FBI labeled it a violent “right-wing terrorist group.”

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.

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