Berlin: Muslim Arab Attacks Grandson of Israeli Killed at Munich Olympics

Lahav Shapira, the grandson of the Israeli athletics coach who was murdered by Arab terrorists at he Munich Olympics in 1972 was savagely beaten by an Arab, for the crime of being Jewish and defending Israel, at a bar in Berlin. More on Shapira’s ordeal can be found here: “Grandson of Munich massacre victim assaulted in Berlin in alleged hate crime,” by Toby Axelrod, JTA, February 6, 2024:

Police in Berlin have arrested a 23-year-old man who allegedly attacked and seriously wounded a Jewish student in a bar on Friday. The Jewish student and his family say the attack was a hate crime.

The victim, Lahav Shapira, 30, was hospitalized and underwent surgery for non-life-threatening injuries to his face. He is the grandson of Israeli athletics coach Amitzur Shapira, who was murdered by Palestinian terrorists in the Munich Olympics terror attack in 1972.

His older brother, Shahak Shapira, is a prominent comedian and writer who has lampooned Germany’s relationship to the Holocaust. The brothers moved from Israel to Germany with their mother as children, and Shahak himself entered public consciousness in 2015 after several Arab men beat him on a Berlin train because he had objected to their singing anti-Israel and antisemitic chants.

Police told German media that the incident at the bar began with a dispute between the two Free University in Berlin students.

There was no dispute. The Arab recognized Lev Shapira as a pro-Israel activist at the Free University, and that was enough to have prompted his punches to Shapira’s face, and then, after Shapira fell down, kicking him in the face.

During the argument [there was no “argument”], the younger man is said to have suddenly hit the older man [Shapira] in the face several times, causing him to fall,” the statement said. “The perpetrator is then said to have kicked the man who was lying on the ground.” Multiple reports said the two had argued about the Israel-Hamas war.

The family’s account is different. Shahak Shapira tweeted, “There was no political debate whatsoever. He was recognized by the attacker in the bar, who followed him and his companion, spoke to them aggressively and then punched him in the face unannounced.”…

This version of events — that there had been no political discussion, only some remark by the Arab just before he savagely punched Lahav Shapira several times in the face, and then, once he had fallen down, kicking him in the face as well, blows which required hospital treatment — is surely the true one. The Muslim assailant recognized Lahav as an Israeli who had been involved in pro-Israel activities at the university; that was reason enough to attack him.

The Free University in Berlin has been the site of several pro-Palestinian protests since the start of the war, all unauthorized as the university has not sanctioned any protests. The demonstrations are relatively unusual in Germany, where criticism of Israel is widely discouraged and antisemitism is heavily criminalized, reflecting the country’s reckoning with its perpetration of the Holocaust. Academics and students at the Free University protested the university’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian expression at the school after police were called to disperse a protest in December….

Apparently those German “academics and students” have gotten over any inhibitions they might once have had, given Germany’s murderous Nazi past, about supporting pro-Palestinian demonstrators calling for an end to the Jewish state with such slogans as “From the river to the sea/Palestine will be free.”

There is, of course, something especially touching about this particular Israeli victim of Arab hatred, because he is the grandson of an Israeli murdered by Black September terrorists, along with ten other Israelis, at the Munich Olympics in 1972. And his older brother, too, Shahak Shapira, was also the victim in 2015 of assault on a train by several Arabs, when he objected to their anti-Israel and antisemitic chants.

The Arab assailant ought at a minimum to be expelled from the Free University. If he is in the country on a student visa, that visa should be cancelled. If convicted of assault and battery, which in this case was also a hate crime — he attacked a Jew because he was a Jew — he should be given as long a sentence as German law allows, and once that sentence has been served, he should be sent promptly back to the country he came from, where he can spout his antisemitic venom to his heart’s content.