World News Round-Up: anti-Semitic rally near The Hague

Your weekly digest of stories from the international press, by Stephen Oryszczuk:

• Morocco

A Casablanca rabbi has been beaten up by a man angry at Israel’s Gaza operation. Rabbi Moshe Ohayon was attacked on Friday night as he walked to synagogue. He suffered a broken nose and broken ribs. The city’s Jewish community has called for increased security around Jewish institutions.

• The Netherlands

Dozens of demonstrators gathered near The Hague to shout menacing slogans about Jews. The rally, in Schilderswijk last week, heard participants shout: ‘Jews, remember Khaybar, the army of Muhammad is returning.’ It refers to a seventh-century massacre and expulsion in modern-day Saudi Arabia.

• Ukraine

A Jewish governor has pledged to restore a former mosque to the Muslim community of Dnepropetrovsk. Igor Kolomoisky was responding to an ongoing lobby by religious representatives for the building’s restitution. Built as a mosque in 1926, it was later confiscated by the Soviet Union.

• Spain

The World Jewish Congress president has appealed for the return of a Pissarro painting stolen by the Nazis which had been given to the German-Jewish collector Lilly Cassirer. Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum,  owner of Rue Saint-Honoré, Après-midi, Effet de Pluie’, is embroiled in a legal fight over it.

• Poland

Polish and Belarussian Jews attended a commemoration ceremony in Jebwabne, a town where, in 1941, Jewish residents were brutally massacred – many of whom were burned in a barn – by their neighbours. During the ceremony, rabbis and priests recited prayers, and victims’ names were read aloud.