Jewish man, pregnant wife reportedly attacked in antisemitic incident in Venice

A Jewish couple has reportedly been attacked in Venice by three men calling the husband a “dirty Jew,” according to Italian media.

The Venice newspaper Il Gazzettino reports that the man and the woman, American tourists in the Italian city for a brief vacation, belong to the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic group and were therefore very recognizable as Jewish, with the man sporting a kippa and a long beard. The woman is five months pregnant.

According to Il Gazzettino, which quotes anonymous witnesses, the tourists were taking a walk near the iconic Rialto Bridge in the city center late Saturday night, when three men began harassing them, unprovoked. The men threw water at the couple and spat on them, before one of the aggressors freed his large dog from the leash and set the dog on the husband. The dog tried to attack him, but bit into the cellphone in his pants’ pocket.

The couple then managed to flee and reached a kosher restaurant owned by a member of the local Chabad community, where they had eaten earlier. The couple did not report the attack to the authorities and left the city to fly back to America a few hours later, but according to Il Gazzettino, other people from the Jewish community alerted the police, which opened an investigation.

“It matters little whether the victims are from Chabad or not,” Sion Yehiel Banin Rahamim, the owner of the Gam Gam restaurant, tells the newspaper. “It’s unfortunate that such serious attacks happen in our city, which I have always considered, and still consider, tolerant and intelligent. The attack was in no way provoked, and passersby acted as if nothing had happened.”