JOSE Toledo had been told he looked like an Arab, but it hadn’t meant a great deal to him until last weekend.
As the Chilean tourist walked through central Jerusalem, a group of youths set upon him in what he, and police, believe was an attack by Jewish extremists who thought he was Arab. He had come to Israel to celebrate the wedding of a Jewish friend who had begun a new life in Israel.
Police said the group included five Jewish settlers from the West Bank, Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported.
Toledo, 43, suffered head injuries and possible loss of vision.
He was kicked, hit with rocks and bottles and bashed with a guitar until he lost consciousness, police said.
“I love Israel and this is my second visit here,” Toledo said from his hospital bed. “But I am not sure I’ll come back now.”
The incident is not isolated. Haaretz newspaper has carried front-page pictures of two Arab men bashed in Jerusalem by a gang looking for Arabs.
Leading Rabbi Ovadia Yosef has said he wished Palestinians may “vanish from the world, may God smite them with the plague”. Yosef is the closest adviser to Eli Yishai, the powerful interior minister and head of the Shas party, which helps keep Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in office.
Now Yosef has created a new controversy, saying: “Weren’t the gentiles born just to be useful to us, to serve us? If not, they have no place in the world. Only to serve the Jewish people.”
Another reason for rising tension is a decision not to charge an Israeli military figure who defended “choking”.
Former Kfir Brigade commander Colonel Itai Virov, defending another soldier convicted of beating Palestinians, said in evidence: “Sometimes a smack on the back of the neck or the chest or a jab with the knee or choking a person in order to calm them is reasonable.”
Virov was not charged due to lack of evidence.
Even at the highest level, Israeli-Palestinian relations are plummeting.
US-educated Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is considered by the US to be the most moderate leader for years.
But the pro-settlement Legal Forum for the Land of Israel last week convinced Mr Netanyahu to forbid his attendance at the opening of a renovated school in East Jerusalem because the school had been paid for by the Palestinian Authority.
Amid all this conflict, Palestinian militant group Hamas, which governs Gaza, is cranking up its anti-Semitic rhetoric.
Only weeks after Hamas gloated about its drive-by assassination of four Israeli citizens, Hamas’s Mahmoud Zahar said Jews would soon be “expelled” from Israel.
“Together, with blood, we could liberate our lands and holy sites,” he said.
The US wants Israel to impose a three-month freeze on settlements to keep peace talks alive.
The US is finding it difficult, even with large financial incentives, to convince Israel to put a 12-week halt to Jewish settlements, which are illegal under international law.
In New York yesterday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Mr Netanyahu held talks but failed to break an impasse that has stalled Middle East peace negotiations. As the meeting began, Mr Netanyahu said Israel was “quite serious” about finding a way to peace with the Palestinians.
But the seven hours of meetings produced little sign that talks, on hold since mid-September in a dispute over Israeli settlement building, might resume soon.
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