An elderly rabbi was shoved and threatened by a man who made references to Islam during a confrontation in Rome's historic Jewish Quarter on Wednesday evening, Italian daily Il Messaggero reported.
The rabbi was walking in the neighborhood at around 7 p.m. when he encountered the man, who spat on the ground and began directing insults at him. The verbal abuse escalated into threats before the man pushed him.
"I told him to leave me alone and that he could not speak to me that way, but instead of calming down, he pushed me," the rabbi told Il Messaggero. The rabbi described the assailant as apparently of foreign origin but fluent in Italian.
Despite being physically assaulted and threatened, the rabbi chose not to make a formal complaint to the police.
The incident follows other attacks in Rome's Jewish community. A 22-year-old French Jewish tourist wearing a kippah was pepper-sprayed and kicked by several men on August 7 and 8 near central Rome locations including Piazza Cairoli and Largo di Torre Argentina, with attackers shouting "Free Palestine." Italian police arrested a 31-year-old Algerian man with a criminal record in connection with the assaults.
Victor Fadlun, president of the Jewish Community of Rome, has expressed concern over a growing number of antisemitic incidents in the capital, with hostility increasingly taking the form of intimidation and harassment in public spaces.
