Update on Assault near Glicks Balaclava

[from the Age]

Jewish community on alert after race bashing

JEWISH community leaders have expressed outrage over a brutal anti-Semitic attack in Balaclava on Saturday night in which a 17-year-old was attacked repeatedly with a baseball bat.

The incident began when two men shouting racial slurs assaulted Jewish teenagers outside Mister Glicks takeaway shop on Carlisle Street, near the corner of Orange Grove, about midnight.

Ephraim Manshari, 17, was ending his shift at the shop and had sat down at a footpath table with a friend when he saw a man he believes was a Sikh sprinting down the other side of the street.

"Then we saw these two guys walking up the street after him screaming "f---ing Arabs … Aussie pride … we have to kill them all," Mr Manshari said.

One of the men then crossed the road and walked up to the teenagers, asking them if they wanted to fight.

Mr Manshari tried to defuse the tension by saying he and his friend were going inside, but the situation quickly escalated. "I got up out of my chair and dialled 000, then he grabbed the chair I was sitting in and started smashing (shop) windows; he turned round to my friend and punched him in the face, then (the attacker's) friend ran from across the road and started smashing windows as well," he said.

The men ran off before police arrived, but they returned 45 minutes later with baseball bats and beat Mr Manshari's friend Alon Tam, 17, who had come running from his nearby home when he heard about the first attack.

"They pulled out two baseball bats and started whacking me from either side calling me a f---ing Jew," Mr Tam said.

He was helped by a Jewish security guard who happened to be in the area.

The two men were later seen hiding in some bushes but had disappeared before police returned.

A spokesman for the Jewish Community Council and the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Council condemned the "senseless" attack and urged the men to hand themselves over to police.

In a joint statement the spokesman said: "We are outraged at this violent anti-semitic attack which was perpetrated in the heart of the Jewish community … Members of the Jewish community should not be subjected to these sorts of attacks under any circumstances."

Mr Tam, who will have X-rays today, said that the Jewish community was "quite shocked" by the attack but that some people saw violent anti-Semitism as a routine occurrence.

"I guess when you're living in this area, most people see it as a thing you get used to and you just move on. Anything that can't kill you can only make you stronger," he said.

"A lot of people don't go to the police because some people think of it as normal and people have to realise that it's not."

Bagelblogger: That these attackers returned a mere 45 minutes later and preceded to club Alon Tam with base ball bats is of great concern, are these crimes being taken seriously enough by the Victorian Police?

References:
The Age: Jewish community on alert after race bashing

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