A 32-year-old man convicted by an Austrian court on Thursday for an assault on a Jewish communal leader told the hearing: “I don’t hate all Jews — only those in Palestine.”The unnamed man, a Syrian refugee who arrived in Austria in 2013, was sentenced to three years in a secure facility for mentally unstable prisoners. On Aug. 22, 2020, he attacked Elie Rosen, the president of the Jewish community in Graz, outside the city’s synagogue with a wooden club.Identified through the synagogue’s CCTV cameras, Rosen’s assailant was subsequently linked by police in Graz to at least six other crimes — including the defacing of the Graz synagogue with the slogan “Free Palestine.”Other buildings vandalized by Rosen’s assailant included an LGBTQ community center in Graz.“He is characterized by a complete lack of repentance,” Chief Inspector Fritz Grundnig said at the time. “He is filled with hatred of Israel, Jews, gays, lesbians and prostitutes.”The public prosecutor told the court that the assailant remained convinced in his belief that Jews should be targeted for “slaughter” and banned from living in Austria.
So how was this story headlined in El Dorar, a pan-Levant new site? That he was sentences "for his solidarity with Palestine!"
