Adass clash rabbi: ‘I wasn’t scared’
POLICE have praised Rabbi Yoni Lowin, who threw an alleged attacker to the ground at Melbourne’s Adass Synagogue last Thursday.
POLICE have praised Rabbi Yoni Lowin, who threw an alleged attacker to the ground at Melbourne’s Adass Synagogue last Thursday.
Rabbi Lowin told The AJN this week that the man – who has since been charged with one count of theft, one count of criminal damage and two counts of assault – grabbed his beard and he simply reacted as other people would.
“I wasn’t scared to stand next to him because we have God looking after us all the time,” Rabbi Lowin said.
“He just pulled my beard so I put him on the ground.”
The alleged attacker, meanwhile, told The AJN that he wasn’t the aggressor, claiming his family had been chased by members of Adass 20 minutes before video footage of the event shows him allegedly committing assault.
The video has been viewed by more than 320,000 people after being posted on The AJN’s Facebook page.
The man said the footage, in which he is heard saying “Go back to Israel”, “You want to swear to Allah?” and “Do you really think you rule this land?”, does not show the full incident.
“Get the 10 minute footage from the police before you start talking about you being the peaceful nation and everything,” he told The AJN.
“I went back to ask them what was going on. They all surrounded me in a big mob.”
Claiming he was a trained army officer, he added that Adass is “hiding something, otherwise they wouldn’t have scared me off like that”.
Senior Constable Anthony Myers, who attended the scene and arrested the man, told The AJN that a group of three or four men had been walking to the tram stop or railway station when one of the men is believed to have taken a scooter from outside the shul.
“We believe that a group from the synagogue challenged him to get the scooter back, then they threw it over the fence,” Myers said.
“There was a verbal dispute and one of the males went back to the synagogue and he allegedly assaulted one of the people there.”
Myers praised the rabbis and others at Adass for how they handled the situation.
“They were very calm and dealt with him very well,” he said.
Adass Synagogue president Benjamin Koppel said he never expected the incident to attract so much attention.
“This is the first incident of a physical nature for some time,” Koppel told The AJN.
The alleged attacker has been bailed to appear in court on January 19, 2016.
JOSHUA LEVI
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