Rabbi Boteach hit, threatened with arrest at Vienna anti-Israel rally

Shmuley Boteach, a prominent Orthodox rabbi from the United States, said that police in Vienna, Austria, briefly detained him and treated him as a suspect on Friday after anti-Israel protesters assaulted him on the street.

Officers led Boteach to a police station under threat of being arrested and taken there by force, even after two American tourists, one of them a retired police officer from California, told the Austrian officers that Boteach was the victim in the situation and that they had video to prove it, Boteach told JNS.

He added that anti-Israel protesters targeted him, likely because he wears a kippah, even though he did not provoke them as they were protesting in central Vienna, where he was with his wife, Debbie, for research on a book about the Holocaust.

Boteach said the incident was indicative of a reality in Europe that forces Jews to “avoid public spaces, disguise themselves in public spaces, or do neither and fight back against this oppression.”

A spokesperson for the Austrian police told JNS on Sunday: “During the aforementioned gathering, a brief disturbance occurred involving one person. Police officers on site prevented any further confrontation. Investigations are currently underway on suspicion of attempted assault and property damage by unknown perpetrators. No arrests were made at the gathering.”

Asked to respond to Boteach’s claims that he had been treated like a perpetrator, the spokesperson said: “For legal reasons, we are unable to provide further information regarding personal inquiries.”

A video of the incident that Boteach uploaded to Instagram shows him speaking animatedly with a group of people when another man positions himself behind Boteach and forcefully kicks him in the shin before walking away.

Boteach shouted, “Did you just kick me?” and followed the person. People holding Palestinian flags shove Boteach away as police officers enter the frame and isolate Boteach, breaking up the interaction with the anti-Israel activists.

Boteach is seen shouting: “Arrest him! He just assaulted me!” to the officers, who push him away.

‘Come to the station’

After some explanations and the intervention by two American tourists, the American police officer who spoke with local police and another woman who gave Boteach’s wife a video she took of the altercation, the Austrian police insisted the rabbi come to the station for questioning. Boteach objected because Shabbat was about to begin, he said, telling the officers he’d come in Sunday, but they insisted he come in immediately.

“I asked whether I was under arrest. They said: ‘You have to come with us, you have to put in a report, and if you don’t follow our instructions, you’re going to be arrested’.”

At the station, a police officer accused Boteach of lying, saying that Shabbat only begins on Saturday, Boteach added. (Shabbat enters on Friday night.)

“They were doing everything to degrade me, humiliate me. In the meantime, I don’t know what happened to my assailants,” Boteach said.

He added he is not interested in an apology from the Austrian police. “They should apologize, but that’s not what I want from them: I want them to arrest the person who assaulted me on camera,” Boteach said.

The incident demonstrates why Jews throughout Western Europe conceal their Jewish identity, he said.

“Basically, a Jew, Israeli or otherwise, has three options in Europe: to disappear from the public space altogether; to conceal their identity—tuck in their tzitziot, cover their kippah, not speak Hebrew in public—or vocally fight the people trying to oppress us.

“I and others choose the latter, but countless go for the second and third options, and that’s the reality right now on the very streets where Nazis persecuted, murdered, humiliated, beat and dehumanized Jews for being Jews just 80 years ago.”