An Israeli tourist was attacked in the Nepalese capital of Kathmandu on Monday night by a group of local men, apparently because they heard him speaking Hebrew, Ynet reported on Tuesday.
Almog Armoza, 25, told the Hebrew outlet he had been walking to his hostel, which is often frequented by Israeli visitors to Kathmandu, when a group of unknown men struck him from behind with an iron rod.
“If I hadn’t managed to run, there’s a good chance I wouldn’t be alive today,” he said. “If the first blow had knocked me out, it could have ended differently.”
Armoza said he had been recording a voice message in Hebrew when he was ambushed. “They came from behind. There were a few seconds between the first hit and the second because they thought I would collapse. I turned around and saw three to five people. One grabbed my jacket and another hit me again, opening my head,” he told Ynet.
The victim managed to kick one attacker, and ran some 500 feet toward the hostel. “They chased me, but when they saw I was getting close to the entrance, where there is security, they ran off,” he said.
He was evacuated to a hospital after alerting local police. “I probably lost a liter of blood,” Armoza told Ynet. “They stitched me up and did an MRI.”
Armoza said he did not believe the attack was an attempted robbery. “My phone was in my hand and they didn’t go for it,” he said. “I have traveled the world for three years. This isn’t how robberies are done.”
“The level of violence was meant to kill,” concluded Armoza, who missed his flight back to Israel due to his hospitalization.
Antisemitic attacks are rare in Nepal, where many young Israelis travel. Israel’s National Security Council has no specific warnings regarding the country, which is estimated to be at the lowest risk level for Israelis.
In April, authorities in Nepal arrested a Norwegian national whom they said broke into the Chabad House of Kathmandu and vandalized the place in a suspected antisemitic hate crime.
“The perpetrator’s in custody and we’re still learning about the details of the case,” Rabbi Chezki Lifshitz told JNS at the time, adding that no one was hurt in the incident.
